Please eat some food!

It is strange how one week Clayton will eat like the meal in front of him may be his last, and the next week you can’t entice him to eat unless the food is loaded with sugar and comes pre packaged in bright colors. Clayton is always on the move (he runs not walks) so I know that he is expending energy. At times it seems he must be solar powered. He only needs food to grow, and that seems to happen in spurts that ebb and flow to some unseen chaotic pattern (I will have to ask my sister-in-law Nikki about planetary powers that may be at work).



To compound the problem Clayton is a very picky eater. He won’t eat certain textures, flavors, colors you name it and if it is something new, good luck in getting him to try it. I tell my wife that the delicate palette comes from her side of the family but she strongly denies being a picky eater. She compares herself to her family and says she is not picky, but that so and so is the picky eater in the family. I tell her that comparing her eating to her families is not a fair comparison. It is like a mouse telling an elephant “I’m not small, I am the biggest mouse in my family!”. At times it is difficult NOT to force feed the kid.

The one thing that I have found works with Clayton is reverse psychology (at least for now). If I tell Clayton he can’t have something because it is mine, he then decides that he should eat it for the sheer pleasure of denying his fathers satisfaction. Mom can’t do the reverse psychology thing, dad is the only one that can do it in a way that is convincing. I have gotten him to eat a whole plate of vegetables using reverse psychology, with me pleading with him to not eat my green bean and him laughing manically as he eats the very green bean I ask him not to eat.

We have decided that milk may be a part of the culprit. Yes he needs to drink milk but Clayton will often substitute milk for food. Time to reduce the milk so he eats more solids! So far it is working... or is it another one of those growth spurts that makes us think he is eating better?