Getting 2 year old to eat finger food and lumpy food

......Or if you don't want to take the hard line approach..... ;) Make it into a game, pieces of broccolii can be little trees and they can be giants eating them, "who can be first to eat something orange", etc. Put one piece of finger food on their plate each day and give a lot of praise to whoever tries theirs. Don't tolerate food throwing though, they are old enough not to do that, since you have 2, you can reward the one who isn't throwing (or hasn't yet thrown) and motivate the other to behave too. lol - maybe I shouldn't have said "hard-line" because it makes it sounds as if there's no fun involved! We always have a good social mealtime and we do have fun... maybe "zero-tolerance to mucking about" would be better! Anyhow, another thing that you could try is to get them involved in making their food. It's no guarantee they'll eat it afterwards, but could help. Mini pizzas, pies, cheese straws, meat and veg skewers... or if they've been really good, they could dip chunks of fruit in melted chocolate and roll them in sprinkles... hmm.. might do that right now, actually! lol. Try not to let the perk get centre-stage... like some people discovered their children will eat anything with ketchup on it - great, but do you really want them having ketchup with every meal?

......Or if you don't want to take the hard line approach..... ;) Make it into a game, pieces of broccolii can be little trees and they can be giants eating them, "who can be first to eat something orange", etc. Put one piece of finger food on their plate each day and give a lot of praise to whoever tries theirs. Don't tolerate food throwing though, they are old enough not to do that, since you have 2, you can reward the one who isn't throwing (or hasn't yet thrown) and motivate the other to behave too.

They eat sandwiches and rice crackers etc but wouldn't touch a piece of chicken or a meatball. Chunky food is thrown on the floor or spat out. It might just be laziness that they don't want to bother with chewing. I may have to be tough and let them go hungry so they move on more. Thoughts? If they can eat things they like that are lumpy, then you know it's not physiological, which is brilliant. At 2, they're at a pickle age where they can get fussy, so you really have to lead the way, and the pace. If they like sandwiches, you could try using them as a familiar, liked presentation method to introduce new things, like chicken or sausages and then when they've come to accept the new textures and tastes, bring them into the main meals. Also make sure that the sandwiches are in a meal-time context, not snacks. Keep snacks minimal, so that by mealtimes, they are hungry. I take a bit of a hard stance on meals and have done from the start. What I serve up is what they will get to eat. Yes, they will have pudding too, but I'll adapt that depending on what they've eaten (and you may choose to do pureed fruit or yogurt as a pudding as a reward/ relief for eating a proper dinner). If they spit out what they eat, they get told "no". If they do it again, I move the plate away. Same with upending the plate or throwing food on the floor. If it's on the floor (and the floor's clean), I scoop it back up and pop it down in front of them again. I don't go up and get more. If they've done that once, I watch them and at the first cheeky glance and hand twitch, I move the plate out of reach and ask them if they've finished their dinner. It will stay out of reach until they ask to eat again - no back and forwards, 'cos that's another fun game... like food hokey cokey! If they don't want to eat any more then they don't get any more... end of. They're not going to waste away in the time before their next meal. Anyhow, the no-nonsense approach seems to have worked with my two. Yes, they don't like certain things and I allow them to leave it as long as they've tried it (if at all possible), but in general, they are well-behaved at the table, eat with knives and forks and will tuck into a wide range of things. Oh, and eat with them to show them what you expect from them. It also makes it far more relaxed and sociable... I dare say any of us would be a bit disconcerted if someone was just watching us eat! Good luck! Patience and strength! <em>edited by Hello.Again.Kitty on 24/08/2011</em>

what happens when you try to give them chunky food? What do you do or what are you doing while they eat? At 2 years old, I'm sorry to say, they are waaaaay past purées (like over a year past). I'm kind of also waiting for your response to Kiwispiers because basically, if they are eating snacks like crackers, chunks of fruit etc, then their mealtime purees are pure habit and affectation - they can deal perfectly well with chunks but choose not to. BUT if they are really not eating [i'>anything[/i'> with any need to chew, then you could have a few issues: babies will gag if they try to swallow something too big for them, but they are (more often than not) keen to experiment because they are not emotionally developed enough to really be fearful... toddlers? Gosh. Also, there'd be the issue of those chewing muscles not having developed as much as those of a chewing baby. I'm really hoping they snack on solid, chunky stuff!

do they eat any finger foods, eg sandwiches, rice crackers etc? Is it just that they don't like to touch teh wet/sticky things?