1) Emiline says binky "mi mi." She had really started to get attached to it, and I didn't want it to become a lovey if we could avoid it. Over the last month, we've been looking for opportunities to withhold the binky, like not giving it to her unless she asks, then quickly distracting her if she started to ask, and then after she hadn't been using it regularly, it got lost for a few days. We kept it out of sight, too. At about the same time, she started falling in love with a stuffed dolly, so we decided to name it Mimi. It only happened a few times were she asked for "mi mi" and we gave her the doll that she was initially unsatisfied. Now it's regularly successful. Woot! Woot (knock on wood!) Nevermind that she's started sleeping with her hand down the back of her diaper...
2) For what seems like forever, we have been insisting that Jane "explore" her food, and nothing more. We made her smell it, mush it, swirl it, and we'd ask her questions about it to try and help her not be afraid of it and try to get her to play with it (our version of food therapy). After a while, we would make her just try one bite. If she did and didn't like it, then she could have something else. There were some successes here, we did increase her number of acceptable foods, even got her eating a little meat. But it also went on forever and it after a while it seemed like Jane really enjoyed the drama of refusing the bite and then coaxing her to eat one, etc., etc. So I figured she was big enough to suck it up and eat more than one bite. One night when Eric was gone, I ended up force feeding her three bites of a hamburger, I think it was. There were a lot of tears. But after that, I told her she could eat the rest of her hamburger the easy way or the hard way. And she did. And she's since had a whole bunch of other foods with minimal fuss, stuff she was terrified of even just a few months ago. We've only had to repeat the hard way one more time, even. Today I made "cheesy toast." Bread, tuna, and cheese broiled, something Jane has had a fit over in the past. Grandma came up stairs and talked to Jane about the recipe for Cheesy Toast (she's been into the difference between a recipe and ingredients lately). I put it on her plate along with apples and carrots, and without even asking, Jane had 3 bites!! And with just two reminders to eat her food instead of "rain" her carrots (pretend they were rain), she ate the whole thing! I'm kinda dumfounded and super pleased. I'm glad that it seems we have just about beat the picky eater thing! Woot! Woot! (knock on wood).
1 comment:
Sounds like a small victory to me! :) I swear one of my brothers lived only on air his entire childhood! For some reason he is the pickiest one out of all 5 of us and he's the middle child. Sometimes I think each child comes with one big challenge, at least as babies/toddlers. Cate's is sleep. That is by far the biggest challenge for her, we've had so many difficulties with her sleeping. Perhaps Jane's is food? At any rate it sounds like she is growing out of it and/or your ideas are working! You are so right to celebrate! :)
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