Creativity with food for fussy eaters

it's safe to say all toddlers are all kinds of fussy and pedantic about food. If those peas dare touch that mash they're uneatable, or that plate was meant to be yellow. It's a problem all parents face at one point, and certainly causes a huge amount of stress when you're sure your child is probably developing mild scurvy, because you've been reading far too many Internet articles. I don't claim to have a solution, I don't particularly believe there is any overnight fix. What I do have is an understanding that this is absolutely normal development, kids are still uncertain of the world and what's more suspicious looking than brocoli when mum is staring anxiously. First of how you act at meal time is important, you may feel like watching over them encouraging that one more spoon full, but meals are not time to beg for co-operation. You need to model healthy eating by sitting down to dinner together, many parents don't eat meals with their children or serve different food to what they themselves are eating. This is huge alarm bells ringing in the child's mind if they weren't already suspicious they certainly are now. Often too many rules and regulations are put on young kids too soon around table manors, sure have some basic rules, stay in your seat whilst eating don't throw food at the wall. But too a young child you've put so many restrictions on their inquisitive playful nature at meal times that they are doing all they can to regain control. They can't control what they eat, what time their meal is, have to sit a certain way, use cutlery correctly. In my opinion this is all too much, and completely unreasonable expectations to hold a child too, hell if somebody held me to those standards I'd be pushing back, and the easiest way for a child to push back is refuse to eat. A great way to slowly help them out of this faze is encourage involvement in growing food, shopping together for a recipe they've chosen. Their ideas of a meal may be unconventional to us for example pasta with baby corn and tomato soup, but if its a healthy well balanced meal why should we refuse? Expectations of table manors for example using a fork need to be dropped, for small kids they need to explore touch senses first before even contemplating trying a food. We understand this is important in babies, but as soon as they're two we expect adult manors. Instead of encouraging them too eat that one more spoon full, or demanding they sit there until the plate is finished encourage them to serve their own food, create butterflies, happy faces and mash potato mountains. Make games around how yucky those tomatoes are, through this they'll join the game of sniffing or licking it giggling away at how horrible it is. For us in our house our only rules are sitting down to eat and to try things even if that's just poking something and giving it a little bite then spitting it out. It's important not to make a big fuss or show frustration during this faze or it's an issue you will only ever exacerbate. So next meal get your kid involved create a make your own meal style dinner, encourage creativity and playing around food and most importantly relax.