Dessert. Evie is straight up addicted, and it is driving us crazy!

Evie cannot stop thinking about dessert. From the moment we sit down to dinner, she starts asking about dessert. Are we going to have it? What are we going to have? It makes no difference if we say yes or no, she still asks non-stop. Can we have cookies? If she has even a hint that there is dessert (but especially if someone tells her in advance that we will have dessert) then she absolutely refuses to eat. You can practically see dessert dancing in her eyes. She’s a dessert junkie.

We don’t make Evie clean her plate. We are trying very hard not to give her food hang-ups. I myself have a plate-cleaning obsession, which is my biggest issue when trying to lose weight; even if I am eating healthy, I still have a drive to clean up food, and I end up eating things I don’t need, or even want. I’m not saying that it is because I had to clean my plate when I’m little, but food issues are so tricky, and so many of us end up with them, so we want to at least try to do what we can.

So, we don’t want to force Evie to clean her plate, and we don’t want to make dessert too much of a fuss. We try treat dessert as just another phase of the meal; it’s not a reward for eating, it’s not anything special at all, it’s just part of the meal. However, this has become increasingly difficult.

With toddlers, everything is about power. Eating usually ends up being ground-zero for these struggles, because it is one of the very few things they have control over. And the only way to win a power struggle with a 3 year old is not to play.

We’ve tried a few things, more-or-less unsuccessfully. One thing is to just not have dessert at home, since she gets dessert pretty much everywhere else she goes. However, we still get the constant dessert questions. Also, sometimes she doesn’t eat anything just in case we change our minds and decide to have dessert after all. We’ve tried making her take take two bites of everything, even if she doesn’t have to clean her plate. This just ends up making dinner a huge whining fight about everything. The only thing we’ve done that has been a little successful is to convince her that applesauce is dessert. She doesn’t buy that one completely, but there have been many nights where she at least gets one healthy thing in.

So, we have two new strategies to try:

1. From now on, fruit only for dessert – Like I said, the only way to win is not to play. So we aren’t playing anymore. Dessert is fruit only. (Grandparents, this means you too! You can still bring delicious desserts, but they will be kept hidden until after bedtime!) If she skips dinner for dessert, then she still eats healthy. If she doesn’t want fruit, then she knows there is no possibility for anything else. The one caveat to this is that I still think it should be somewhat interesting. We have to remember to put the same amount of effort into dessert that we do into the regular meal. I think the whole thing will fail if she catches on that we are just saying, “Oh, here’s a banana.” So we’re going to try to have things that are still fruit, but maybe we’ll reserve things for “dessert fruits”. For example, putting cinnamon on sliced up pears, or having dried dragonfruit.
2. Evie’s try-it – Evie has a chart. Every time she tries something that she’s never tried before, she gets a sticker. When she gets 10 stickers, SHE gets to plan the meal. We’ve only been doing it for a week or two and it has been exceeding my wildest expectations. Not only is she trying all sorts of stuff, but she’s already passed the 10 sticker mark. And what did she plan for her big meal? One of the new things she tried to get a sticker!

We’re still feeling our way through yet another difficult parenting decision, so we might need to tweak things a little bit, but hopefully this will bring a little relief to dinner-time!