[blparent] finger food suggestions for an almost toddler

[Veronica Smith]

sounds like you definately need a change.  Finger foods here I come.  Vienna 
sausage chicken or beef, chiken nuggets, pieces of cheese, gold fish, 
cheerios, oyster crackers, Chex cereal, small pieces of fruit, a smaller 
spoon and a little bit of something in a small bowl. Smile! V
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jo Elizabeth Pinto" <jopinto at pcdesk.net>
To: "NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 12:26 PM
Subject: [blparent] finger food suggestions for an almost toddler


> Hi, all.  Sarah and I just got finished with the lunch from hell.  Or at 
> least that's the way I perceive it--she seems pretty satisfied with the 
> world now that it's over--she's babbling happily and playing with the pots 
> and pans in my kitchen cupboards like nothing happened, like her clothes 
> and mine, and our hair, and the high chair aren't covered with Gerber 
> spaghetti and meat sauce, like we weren't both near tears five minutes 
> ago.  I feel like I got hit by a train and dragged for a little while.  A 
> slight exaggeration maybe, but only a slight one.
>
> Sarah and I have been having battles lately over the spoon, most of which 
> I lose.  It isn't that she doesn't want food, she's fortunately not a 
> picky eater.  She'll try anything.  The deal is, she wants to feed 
> herself.  Fair enough, that's the end goal, right?  But the spoon is too 
> cumbersome for her, so she resorts to her hands.  That's fine, as long as 
> she's eating diced banana or sweet potato or bits of meat or hard-boiled 
> egg yolk, or whole round peas, or Cheerios.  But those foods alone hardly 
> make up a balanced diet.  She needs other things that are too soft and 
> runny to pick up, like yogurt and such, and she absolutely won't allow me 
> to feed her with a spoon.  If I can manage to hold down her two wildly 
> waving fists with one hand, she flops her head madly from side to side so 
> I can't get the dreaded spoon anywhere near her mouth with the other, and 
> she ends up with food behind her ears, across her eyebrows, down her 
> neck--you get the picture.  And you can imagine the screeching sound track 
> that goes with it.  I'm finding it hard to be calm and patient.  This 
> time, after many tries, I gave up on the spoon altogether because I don't 
> want the high chair to become a power struggle or a source of traumatic 
> memories, and I sure don't want to cross the line into force feeding.  I 
> had that done to me as a child and still suffer the effects.  I thickened 
> the Gerber spaghetti and meat sauce with cereal so it would hold together 
> and just let her shovel it into her mouth with both hands from the high 
> chair tray, and then cleaned up the big mess afterward.  Gerald can feed 
> Sarah with a spoon, but she certainly isn't willing, it's just that he can 
> see the flailing hands and the dodging mouth and sneak bites in on her. 
> But he isn't here most of the time, and I have a responsibility to figure 
> this out.
>
> Anyway, besides the catharsis of writing this all out when I feel I have 
> to tell most people most of the time that things are utterly perfect, 
> otherwise I'm afraid they'll be doubting me as a parent and, in the case 
> of my family, wondering if they should intervene--I guess my question is 
> how do I resolve this stalemate?  I know I should give Sarah more finger 
> foods, and I'll be looking for every new idea I can get on that front. 
> But till she can feed herself with a spoon, how can I help her and the 
> mealtime skirmishes that nobody really wins?  It's so odd because she has 
> no wish to hold her own bottle or learn to drink from a cup, but she wants 
> to feed herself no matter what.
>
> Thanks,
> Jo Elizabeth
>
> "Don't throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds 
> water."--Swedish proverb
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