Strange Food Habits? Or Normal? What You Can Do
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Kids can do some pretty (seemingly) strange things. Many of them are perfectly normal for their age though, as strange as they can seem, those strange behaviors are teaching your child a lot about their world.
Refusing ‘broken food’.
A cookie is a cookie and tastes the same if it’s whole or in a few pieces. Yet, your toddler is absolutely refusing it because it’s broken. Or you’ve cut up the fruit they wanted all of 5 seconds ago, not they’re acting like you are the cruelest human to ever walk the planet.
What the heck?
Kids around this stage are exploring their worlds in overdrive. They are discovering the power they have, and they are just learning the power of their words and actions. They also love getting a reaction from you.
When you hear, kid’s love pushing your buttons. There is a bit of truth to it.
What can you do?
Don’t bother trying to explain it’s the same food, your toddler is not very likely to understand or care at this age. Just calmly tell them the food is there if they want it. Don’t give in to getting them a new one, it could set up a precedent of them acting out more to get their way.
Tossing their food to the ground, over and over and over and over…
Food time suddenly is a battle of wills (and your sanity) over who has more patience. They keep on tossing everything to the ground more times than you can count. The dog is eating great, but your little one not so much.
What the heck?
It’s a fun game, and whenever they do it they get both the food or cup back and mommy or daddy have a funny reaction.
What can you do?
Implement the three strikes rule, and don’t react. Simply count down, and after that- meal time is over (or just take away the thing they were throwing, if it’s only one thing). Granted, they don’t understand counting but they’ll eventually get that if they toss it, they lose it.
If your child was hungry, they would be eating. Usually when they start ‘playing’ the toss game, they’re already full.
Your kiddo won’t so much as look at beef. Yet, downs chicken nuggets like they’re going out of style.
You get read the riot act every time you try to give your child beef, but they have no problems with other meats like chicken nuggets.
What the heck?
Before you start thinking Jr is a vegetarian from birth (unless, your raising him that way- in that case well I would gather he is so, part of this won’t apply.) it’s a texture thing. Meats like beef are tough to chew. They require quite a bit of effort to chew, and have a ‘weird’ texture. Chicken however, especially preshaped nuggets are much easier and more familiar.
What can you do?
If breaking out the food processor liquefying all beef is out of the question (or just a bit too yuck), wait a bit before re introducing beef again. When they’re a bit bigger, and more experienced little foodies they’ll have a much easier time with chewing meats.
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