Mealtime Battles

Faith is one super fussy eater. This mee suah dish cooked by yours truly is one of the rare dishes she likes to eat - minus the ikan bilis and soy beans though. :p

It is unbelievable how fussy she is with food - most of the time for dinner, she only wants plain rice, egg yolk, some soup and nothing else! Occasionally, she would eat the taukee, taukwa or tauhu in cut/mashed up form. Otherwise, she would pick out even the tiniest green morsel in her bowl or spit out a tiny bit of cod fish I have sneaked into her rice.

Unlike most children, she doesn't like those popular staple foods like fried rice (!), bee hoon, kway tiao, yellow noodles, pasta, macaroni, sausage etc! Needless to say, she eats very little veggies and NO fruits. Even now, I still have to mash up the carrots, potatoes and sometimes pumpkin and mix them up with her rice... like preparing baby food.... except that this baby is 6 years old! (Of course, she loves her ice-cream, chocolate, chips and all the junk food.)

Terrible, right? I am so ashamed to tell people I used to teach Home Economics. Though I can tell you a list of ways to make children's meals attractive and appetising, I never imagine this mealtime battle is so hard to conquer in reality....

I have been giving her vitamin B supplement to improve her appetite for about a year already but the situation is more or less the same - she just eats slightly more of the same food and takes forever to chew and swallow a mouthful. We have been nagging at her on a daily basis and now we are at our wits' end. :(

I wish we have been stricter with Faith's choice of food when she was younger. Now that she is older and more resistant, it is really difficult to introduce new types of food in her diet. If not for all the Meiji (2x/daily) and UHT (1-2x/daily) milk she is drinking (which adds up to about 800-1000ml), I think her growth would probably have been stagnant at age 4. I have not weighed her recently but I think she hasn't hit 20kg yet and Angie weighs almost the same as her, if not more.

Angie is the total opposite - she is a food connoisseur who genuinely enjoys her food. She is a such pleasure to feed because she is always willing to try new food. Whenever she sees us eating, she would ask in a sweet manner, "What are you eating?" and then happily accept if we offer her a bite. Now she eats almost everything we eat. We always have to remind her to eat slowly and chew properly before swallowing. If we deny her the food she likes, she would look very sad which softens my heart. These days, she often tells me, "I'm very hungry do you know?" So cute....

Now, back to the skinny one. I'm so worried for her when she goes P1 next year. :( I doubt she will have enough time to eat much during recess. How is she going to last from 7am to 2pm??? Think the only way is to make sure she has a big breakfast before leaving the house. I am thinking of milo oatmeal since it is quite substantial and nutritious. This means she has to wake up really early since she takes a long time to eat. For recess, maybe I'll just pack something simple and not too long to eat like a packet of UHT milk, cheese cube crackers and some biscuits she likes.

So one of my New Year resolutions for 2012 is to get Faith to eat more variety of healthy food. Even if she eats just 1 new food a month - by the end of the year, she will be eating 12 new food! I must win this battle by hook or by crook!!!!