It’s taken me a while to realise that we have a son who will eat almost anything (except avocados but loves olives) and a son who has a sweet tooth and doesn’t require as much food in one sitting but many larger snacks throughout the day(apparently…unless it is sweets). Our youngest son can take over an hour to eat his breakfast some days and other days he is like an F1 racer and it’s gone within 10 minutes.

The usual meal time routine is :

• Me : Come on – eat up
• Him : I’m tired
• Me : Oh dear – too tired for pudding then
• Him : No! (and has another mouthful) – I need the toilet
• Me : No you don’t – that’s just excuses
• Me : thinks to myself – I wonder if he really does and then we have an accident to clean up ..argh
• Me : Ok – go but be quick
• Him : Takes his time on the loo and finally comes back
• Me : Your brother may be excused as he finished 20 minutes ago and has patiently been waiting.
• Finally we get to the end of the meal

Sound familiar? I try and use all the tactics but…sometimes think our youngest son is perhaps someone who prefers to graze and this would be more productive. He appears to have a fast metabolism as has no extra fat on him. I also know most of his tactics because I used to use them as a child on my own mum…

So, I have tried the more snacks during the day with no real time limit and it appears to work. I now do this on the odd occasion as I also can’t have a child who doesn’t have a ‘meal routine’ for when he is in school full time and there is only a certain amount of time to eat.

I’ll be interested to see how he gets on as he grows…Do you have a child/children like this?