Tag Archives: preschool food

Fabulous Smoothies Your Preschooler Will Drink

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I have the most stubborn breakfast-eater on the face of the planet. Oh, I am sure that there are some children who might almost measure up, but my daughter will happily go without food until noon if I let her. I try not to let her. In fact, I have been known to beg, cajole, plead, threaten, and use all sorts of untoward parenting behaviors just to get her to eat a few bites. I believe that she is truly not all that hungry in the morning, but unfortunately she has blood sugar crashes if she doesn’t eat until later … Continue reading →

Better Living Through Chocolate

It’s Easter, and this means that it took my daughter an hour and a half to go to sleep last night. This is by no means due to her chocolate intake, of course. She had two Easter egg hunts and a special family dinner yesterday, and the chocolate threshold was quite high. Thank goodness for our special smoothies in the morning, or I suspect that her vegetable tally would have been close to zero yesterday. Chocolate is a vegetable, isn’t it? It comes from the cacao tree. Now, I have nothing against chocolate. It does contain sugar and it does … Continue reading →

Cloudy With a Chance of Stinging Nettles and Smoothies

Last weekend, we went out to pick stinging nettles. This was a fun excursion. Stinging nettles grow wild around our city, although I’ve never had the opportunity to pick them before. They grow near sunny ditches, and we have a lack of both sun and ditches in our particular neighborhood. When we got home, I steamed the nettles and we ate them for dinner. They were a lovely cross between earthy flavor and leafy green. They are also supposed to be very nutritious. Unfortunately, my daughter took one bite and determined that they were icky. Oh well, at least she … Continue reading →

Sneaky Ways to Reduce Your Preschooler’s Food Waste

I can be a sneaky, sneaky mama. However, when my daughter starts to eat a pear, takes a single bite all around the middle and then determines that she is finished, I despair. I don’t like wasting food. Here are a few sneaky ways that I avoid food waste. I cut things up. Cutting things up means that when my daughter eats half a pear, there is still half a pear for me to eat. It means that I get more logical about portion sizes, and that is always a good thing. While I may be the odd mom who … Continue reading →

Defusing Food Power Struggles With Your Preschooler

Preschoolers are all about defining themselves in relation to the rest of the world, especially their parents. This can show up as a power struggle, and it’s a sign that your preschooler is becoming his own person. But when the power struggles come to the dinner table, parents can struggle with balancing their child’s need to define his food preferences and the need to have that child eat a healthy diet. A diet of chocolate and chips might sound desirable to a preschooler, but it doesn’t cut it nutritionally, of course! How can you opt out of the food power … Continue reading →