Nature’s Candy

It’s hard to get children to eat healthful foods.   It’s easy to get them to eat foods that don’t provide for a balanced diet.  Candy, ice cream, birthday cake, etc.   It seems there is always a reason for there to be something special (not necessarily dessert-specific).    And when you have a taste for those foods, they become the preferred-foods.  

We have things we do to encourage and ensure the children have a reasonable diet.   For example, my son doesn’t want to pack his own lunch, so I pack what I think would be the best for him.   Since he doesn’t get a choice when he’s at school, he eats what I send or he’s hungry.

My husband does a good job of making meals that have a good nutritional content and typically aren’t fried or overly sugary.  My children have learned to love broccoli and spinach, for example through his cooking.

We encourage fruits as well, keeping a good selection of options at the house.   We run into phases with the children though—particularly with bananas.   Either I can’t keep them in stock or no one will eat them.   And with the ripeness timeline of a banana looking something like the image below, I end up eating mushy bananas a lot.

But the children do like fruit.   My son called me upstairs to do something with him this morning.   He was beaming in excitement and said, “look at this, mom.”   I saw a very ripe strawberry in his hand—not in the kitchen, over cream carpet, in a room he wasn’t suppose to eat in.  But his next sentence made me forgive him and just go with it for the day.   He said, “it’s nature’s candy!”

I got some cherries at the grocery store later in the day and while he was eating dinner I asked my son if he wanted cherries or, “nature’s candy” in his lunch box for tomorrow?   He said, “mom, cherries are nature’s candy too.   All fruit it.  But I want the cherries and can I have some mango too?”

The Big Boy Update:  My son asked his sister on Friday night, “can I borrow your braille cards?  I’m working on a magic trick.”   She said yes and after donning a black blanket transformed into a cape, my son said to me, “pick a card.   Now put it back”   Then he peeked at where I put the card.   He told me about my card in stages, telling me first the color, then the suit and finally number.  He was very pleased with himself and I was definitely impressed I told him.   He demonstrated several other tricks in progress he was working on, mostly of the hide it under the blanket cloak so you can stick it under your arm and then say it’s disappeared.   He was so excited though to be fooling me.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has a new thing going.   It’s the, “I can hear you” thing.   Today she got sent to her room and did an impressive rendition of a tantrum because we asked her to come to us so that we could talk to her (she had pinched another child).   Four times as she walked away from us she said, “I can’t hear you”.   And she can hear.   Better than anyone I know.   She admitted later she didn’t want to tell us what happened.