We Don't Waste Food

The life of a parent is full of maintaining a fine balance and drawing fine lines. In this case we absolutely despise wasting food and avoid it at all costs, but this can be difficult to do when raising kids who can invariably be picky one day and not the next. We want to raise them with a proper respect for food, but at the same time to not want to be pandering to their every wish so that we are guaranteed nothing will go to waste. Another fine balance to maintain. We've used creative means like this for years now, to get the boys to eat. There was the "supper timbit" stage when we'd deep fry things in ball form to get the kids to eat them. It is like a "gateway drug" for them - if they'll eat a new food in deep-fried-ball format, you can often convince them they'll like it in other formats, too. Yet at the same time, our kids are no strangers to going to bed (or to school in the morning) hungry because they would not eat what was on the table. They are very used to hearing the phrase "this is not a restaurant".

In this case rather than be authoritarian and demand my son finish his sandwich, I decided to see if I could "slighly reformat" the sandwich and trick my son into eating it by making a big deal out of it, making it as fun as possible for him, and part of that was making a movie and telling him he was going to be a Youtube star. It worked so well that a little while after making this video the other boy asked for his uneaten sandwich to be turned into a grilled sandwich ;)