I don't want my food, I want yours!

How do you get a two-year-old to eat? This is a question that I ask myself everyday. My two-year-old seems to survive with a bite here, a bite there. However, I've found that when she says she's done and I go take a bite of her food suddenly she wants to eat it. Or sometimes she won't eat what's on her plate, but she'll eat what's on mine. The good news? She's getting more to eat. The bad news? I'm getting more to eat.

I figure that my increase in eating happens for two reasons. First is when I eat something off her plate in order to get her to want to eat. Sometimes when I do this she really doesn't want to eat more and I find myself finishing her plate for her. The second is when she eats off my plate. I tell myself that I'm not eating as much because she's helping me eat it, so I take larger portions and end up eating more than I would have if we hadn't shared food.

Of course the best cure for this would be for her to just start eating well on her own, and that's not going to happen. At least not for a while. So I need to commit to leaving her food for her and if she's all done I need to throw her food away or put it in the fridge and not eat it myself. And the other solution is to dish her food off my plate onto her own plate. If that doesn't work and she still wants to eat off my plate I need to leave my portion size and listen to my hunger instead of my justification.