[TBH]

I can't force my son to eat. He's too little (only 2). I couldn't force "one more bite" into him even if I wanted to.

I do sometimes cajole him, but it's for selfish reasons. If he doesn't eat enough dinner, he wakes up every fifteen minutes all night because he's hungry. When he's older I plan to make only one meal, and if he doesn't like it he's welcome to fix himself a PB and J.

But at this age, I do often sit there and say, "do you want a quesadilla? A sliced apple? Some carrot sticks? Smoothie? Peanut butter on graham crackers? How about some rice? Pasta? Anything?" These are all things he likes, and we keep leftovers of his staple foods stockpiled in the fridge so we can just heat things up if he wants something different from what the grownups are having.

But I do not like the power dynamic that develops when I can tell he's refusing to eat just to watch Mama and Papa get more and more desperate as we imagine the sleepless night ahead. I know I probably need to just say "too bad if you're not going to eat, that's your problem" but since we don't let him "cry it out" at night if he wakes up, we all suffer if he's too hungry to sleep.

Funny how everything's connected. I don't let him cry by himself in his crib at night, therefore I feel I can't let him go hungry if he refuses to eat dinner. Each parenting decision creates a domino effect.

If he really won't eat, we usually just do other parts of the bedtime routine (bath, stories, etc) and then bring him downstairs for a really big bedtime snack. That usually works pretty well.