Kandice's Kitchen, Kids in the Kitchen, Mom School

Breakfast Painting {Toddlers in the Kitchen}

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Raise your hand if your Toddler won’t flippin’ eat!

Me! Me! ME…..

Cash isn’t a picky eater… per-say

He’s more of a ‘defiant’ eater which means that he doesn’t really care what you want him to eat, so long as it is on HIS time and at HIS convenience. He’s not exactly a grazer either…

Some days he just doesn’t want to eat. I hear, “I’m still playing mom!” like it is a chore to come eat. We’ve moved around the house, trying different eating surfaces from the dining room table, to the Mess Mat and then finally we’ve landed at the kitchen island where he can pull up a chair and help me cook.

Again, Cash isn’t a picky eater. He will eat a LOT of different foods. He actually really loves spicy foods like salsa and pepper jack cheese. The trick is getting him to commit to the action of ingesting something tangible. He would seriously drink milk ALL DAY if we let him…

I have developed many different method to get food into my kids body, which I’ll write other posts for. {someday} This specific post is geared toward my methods of making the action of eating not a chore. If he doesn’t want to “stop playing” to come eat, we’ll make eating the fun thing he doesn’t want to stop doing.

I WILL convince him that eating is fun and important! But also, as part of a daily routine, he needs to understand that there are specific times of the day meant for eating, like Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. He can’t always just eat on his own schedule. There are 3 other people in the house who are eating at one time, dude.

{Cash is also the king of bedtime negotiations… It’s bedtime buddy! Noooooo I’ll eat! I’ll EAT!… Like it’s a gift to me that he’ll pay me off with to avoid bedtime… see, he knows he’s working the system}


Enter Breakfast Painting! 
Super easy. Painting is something that Cash LOVES and doesn’t get to do that often because of little brother spilling paint. 
All you need is food dye, water and paint brushes. 
He was hooked. #momwin

White bread isn’t the most nutritious breakfast but I don’t even care… the kid ate something solid and LOVED it. Not just the food, but the experience of eating a meal together. That is much more important at this point to me, than what I get in to him. I need him to enjoy everyone gathered around for a meal so he’ll want to do it more often. 
Eating needs to turn into a good routine for him. So we’re building up from here. 
Plus, Wyatt got to paint too! 
We also ALWAYS have a smoothie breakfast now because Cash thinks they’re super awesome in his Ninja Turtle cup! Another cool convincing tactic 😉 I have an entire blog unit on Toddler Smoothies in the works! They love them and they have NO IDEA how many vegetables they’re eating!

 #thereisahandfulofspinachinthatsucker

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