No lettuce for me, thank you.

For the last few months, we've gone back to some feeding/mealtime principles we read about in a book by Ellyn Satter.  Basically, we decide the when where and what's for supper, she gets to decide how much she eats.  We don't make her taste everything, but we offer it.  If we do ask her to taste something, we tell her that she needs to try it, but if she doesn't like it, she can spit it back on her plate.  Basically, try to make everything as little pressure as possible and just keep offering things.  The book said you may have to offer some things 15-20 times.

We've also decided to just go with whatever we're eating, and not be "short order cooks".  If say, we're having stew, we don't make something like chicken nuggets or hot dogs just for her.  But, if we have something we know she won't eat any of, we will put bread and butter on the table.   And we usually have sliced up carrots for the salad.

Sophie likes to announce as soon as she finds out what we're having what she does or doesn't want.  We got tired of hearing, "I don't want any ***!"  So we taught her to to say, "No *** for me, thank you."  Now it's just a common thing at mealtime.

"No carne guisada for me, thank you."
"No peas for me, thank you."
"No fish for me, thank you."
"No gumbo for me, thank you."
"No stir fry for me, thank you."

Sometimes she even says it for things we know she likes or has eaten in the past.  Whatever she says, we always respond with, "Okay."  Of course, it will often be for something we weren't going to ask her to try anyway.  Like yesterday at lunch I had some salad and she said, "No lettuce for me, thank you."  Every once in a while I might offer lettuce to her, but rarely.  I just said, "Okay."

Last night at dinner we had salad again and as we sat down, Sophie again said, "No lettuce for me, thank you."  Okay.  We ate and after my meat & veggie, I decided to have some salad, so I was putting some on my plate and she said, "Can I have some lettuce, please?"  I glanced over toward Stephanie, but I knew she was avoiding eye contact with me.  I played it as cool as I could and put a little piece on her plate.  "Can I have some of that thing, too?"  So I put a little Italian dressing next to it.  She didn't touch either one and shortly after that asked to be excused.

After she left the kitchen, Stephanie and I were about doing high fives and end-zone dances!