New rules

For 4 years I've been feeding Gus what ever he wants for dinner. Nuggets, frankfurters, plain pasta, with a small piece of broccoli or cucumber to appease the veg gods. This has been working for him. Of late it has been working for me less. Gus' iron levels are sickeningly low and lets face it he's 5 now and can do with a little more variety in his diet.

So Sunday night the new regime was brought in.

No yelling - Children or Parents

No smacking.

Mum will serve everyone a reasonable portion of the same meal.

Everyone will eat a reasonable portion of said meal.

Bread and butter are the alternative when a reasonable portion is less than sufficiently satisfying.

Not eating a reasonable portion will result in 'bed time'.

Four days in and we are experiencing a level of success that, quite frankly, I thought was not going to be possible in such a short time.

Tonight Gus ate 1 whole ladelful of vegetable soup. I wont kid you there was much discussion about how he didn't like the look of it and how he wasn't hungry and how he was going to go to bed if he had made no effort to eat/taste the soup before everyone else was finished their meal. About 2 3rd's of the way through the meal Gus broke and tasted the soup. Hallelujah. One small bite deserves another and before too long the meal was finished.

Gus is stubborn but most of it's for show. While he was eating he would make faces to show his apparent discomfort in eating the soup but there was a definate twinkle in his eye that told me it was just for show. Cheeky.