NB: I am really enjoying the title of this post, as if – after 6 years of practice – I have some secret cache of parenting tricks. I don’t, but I’m pretty confident a few of the things we learned to do on the fly, or habitually (but originally accidentally), can be helpful to others, so I’ll try to spot them and share along the way.

Hack #1: Snack Foods as Inspired by Still Life Paintings

We used to stock a small drawer with “snack foods” to encourage the boys’ independence. Unfortunately, however, those snacks that could be stashed without refrigeration were almost all convenience foods (read: not particularly nutritious and packaged individually in a way that makes me cringe at our ever-growing waste production).

One day, I bought a big, casual-looking bowl and stocked it full of gorgeous fruit: apples, pears, clementines. I left it right in the center of our kitchen table. The boys saw it and went bananas (ha). They ate so much fruit in the following days that I was able to catch up with Steve the Wine guy twice that week. We now buy 2 small bags of lunchbox-sized apples each week just to keep the bowl itself stocked. To the boys, they seem to enjoy it not just because they can help themselves to snacks, but also because there’s this choose-your-own-adventure component involved.

With very few exceptions, we make a point to give them the green light when they ask if they can help themselves to the fruit bowl. Does it interfere with dinner appetites sometimes? Yes, but then again, there are worse things than filling up on fruits and carrots (which we also dole out liberally if they simply cannot wait for the meal itself & their pleas for food are so intense that surely someone will call CPS if they find out in which conditions we force our children to live).

All that said, a warning: appealing though the fruit bowl may be for those of us that live here & have few qualms sharing germs with small children (which is to say, those of us who prefer not to follow in Sisyphus’ footsteps), a visitor to our home should double check their fruit selection as closer inspection of our beautiful bowl of fresh fruit does — on occasion — bear the signs of a certain toddler’s early efforts at eating in moderation.