Pets help to get your child to eat!

This is something I've just found to work in the last few days, but it works really well! My daughter has become a fussy eater recently and often pushes her food away from her before even trying it. One time when she did this, our dog (Hardy) was sitting beside her chair (hoping to eat anything she dropped), so I asked her to show Hardy how she ate the food. Her face lit up (she dotes on our dog), she grabbed the food and started eating really happily! Each time she got a bit bored I said again, can you show Hardy how you eat that? and sure enough, she would tuck in again! It worked fantastically! I guess this would also work if you had other pets too - any animal (or toy!) that could 'watch' and be impressed at the eating. The great thing about a dog is that he wants the food too, so he naturally watches each mouthful just in case it drops on to the floor and he can eat it!

Liven up lunch! Inventive packed lunches for fussy eaters

My 2 sons are both extremely fussy eaters and because of their fussiness, have always taken a packed lunch to school as they generally don't like cooked food. I found very early on that just making sandwiches every day would soon become very boring for them and tried to come up with some other ideas to make their lunches more interesting while remaining fairly healthy (I state 'fairly healthy' as I do include chocolate spread, but it is occassional and the school don't mind). Here are some alternatives I've found to work, I hope they help you too:


Cheese scone with butter
Plain scone with butter and jam
Brioche with jam or butter or chocolate spread
Scotch pancakes with butter
Bread rolls with filling
Pitta bread with filling
Bagel with filling