Operation Hellion II

Yea, we are back where we were two months ago. Luckily it doesn’t involve tantrums this time, we seem to have a good punishment for that one which involves Quiet Tantrum Time in Moose’s room. It works for us.

Our new problem involves dinner. Moose has not really had any issues with eating dinner. He generally eats whatever I put in front of him. I think our issues may stem from being home with me so much during the holidays.

For lunch, we had things that he usually only eats during the weekend for lunches. Those things are frozen corn dogs, fish sticks, chicken nuggets, and beanie weanies. But, we kind of alternated those things each day we were home. Then we had normal dinner, I didn’t think it was a big deal.

Well, we’ve been struggling ever since we went back to our “normal” schedule. Moose fights tooth and nail and will sit and play during dinner, eating a bite or two, telling us he wants a corn dog or some such.

To tell the truth, I have been trying new recipes, some of which did have ingredients that he doesn’t care for. So, this week I worked really hard to create a menu to get him back on track with eating normally with us. Every night, he picked and played, and barely ate a bite. Then, the next morning woke up starving and eats an unreal amount of the typical sweet things we have for breakfast-pop tarts, cereal, yogurt...

So what do we do? We took away dinner rolls which are his favorite, using them as incentive (...eat all your dinner and then you can eat your roll...) but he still picks and then throws a fit when we don’t give him a roll. Same thing with offering a “treat” for eating all the meal, chocolate or something.

Both of us are exhausted by the end of the meal, which now involves an extra ten to fifteen minutes of sitting and watching him pick and try to make deals with us (...I ate one piece can I have a roll now?...) It is very frustrating and I’m not sure where to go now, except to wait it out.

I hate having no plan, does anyone have any advice? I know this is common during this age. I don’t want to make special meals, I rejoiced when dinner became a simple time again, I am not going back to different food for him. And it is not just vegetables or meat, it is the whole dinner!