A neat trick that got my toddler to try a few 'new' foods today

My kid is 3.5, and like many kids he started off strong with a diverse palate. We did baby led weaning, we fed him what we ate, we didn't cater to kid food, we eat a diverse bunch of foods ourselves and we exposed him to many, many things. But, as is normal and happens to most kids the pickiness increased a short time after he turned two, and he started refusing so many foods that he previously regularly ate with gusto. It's natural, but unfortunately we began to enable it a bit with too much 'kid food'. I'm not beating myself up, there were still many good nutritious whole foods in his diet, but I also want to encourage him to try more things.Today I got a poster board, and wrote "HisName's New Foods" at the top. I explained to him that if he ate 3 bites of any food we request he could paste a picture of it on the poster. When he fills the poster up, he can trade it in for a new toy and we'll start a new poster. In the first meal we had it up, he excitedly added cauliflower, tofu, green beans and peas. These are all foods he used to eat regularly, but has refused consistently the last few months. It will probably take 3 weeks or so to fill it up. He will get credit for repeatedly trying new foods, for example if we make green beans again next week and he eats them he can add them again. I want to give reinforcement not just to taking the bites and being done, but repeatedly eating them.Anyway, I was excited by his reaction so I thought I'd share. He's down there counting his sticker right now and excitedly asking if different foods he can think of would earn him a sticker.I just GIS'd pictures of food, print and cut them, let him glue and place. That way I can use pics that are bigger for most challenging foods, and tiny for 'easier' foods. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2eAAsrM