Exploring Our Children’s Potentials

Someone once said to me: if your kid eats well, your battle is ‘half won’.

And I guess that’s because each kid generally has about four mealtimes a day (breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner). And if each mealtime is a big struggle, you can imagine the amount of ‘stress’ it puts on the mom!

Well. I’d like to add onto the phrase though.

I would say: if your kid eats well, drinks his milk well and sleeps well, then consider yourself REALLY blessed because you’ve won 75% of the daily battle!

Now that I have Vai, I can look back and appreciate how relatively ‘easy’ Anya was when she’s around his age. She’d sit and eat whatever I served without much fuss. Her mealtimes were naturally messy too when she’s learning how to self-feed, BUT it’s nothing compared to Vai’s mealtime mess.

[Click here for tips to cope with messy eaters]

Weaning her off breastfeeding wasn’t much of a struggle as well and she accepted formula and bottlefeeding since she’s about eleven months old (though she’d only want to drink about 120 – 150ml, max. each time).

Falling asleep also wasn’t much of a problem. She could fall sleep by herself, anywhere, regardless of the amount of noise at the time.

I guess since I’ve been blessed with such ‘good days and months’ with Anya, it simply is time for me to see a more ‘realistic’ picture of a ‘real’ kid.

I’ve got to say, when it comes to eating, drinking and sleeping, Vai is pretty much the opposite of his sister!

He’s a light sleeper who can easily be woken up by loud noises (unless he’s really sleepy, he’d then be completely knocked out). During the day he can force himself to not fall asleep unless he’s breastfed. He hardly ever falls asleep by himself while on the pram (since birth, it only happened three times!)

He DISLIKES bottlefeeding. And right now, getting him to drink formula from his bottle will involve kicking, screaming, crying and spitting. And so I naturally stop giving him the bottle altogether.

[I’ve tried letting him drink with straws, spouts, spoon, everything. He sometimes is okay with these, but he’d drink VERY little, like 20ml!]

Ah. So as you can imagine, weaning him off breastfeeding does get pretty difficult. So much so that I now just breastfeed him on demand and not think about weaning him just yet.

Now, when it comes to eating, since he started his solids at 5.5 months old, his mealtimes have always been, … err should I say, more challenging that the norm? (read: it can involve quite a bit of food rejection)

Right now, at 15.5 months, he’d always want to self-feed or move his food from one bowl to ‘another place’, which can basically mean: the babychair table! (he’d then pick his food off the table and eat it)

And so yes, as much as I’d love to teach him some table manners on how-to-eat-more-neatly, it’s pretty close to impossible right now.

You know, when I see other people’s kids who eat, drink or fall asleep really easily, I honestly just feel so happy for them.

But I somehow don’t expect Vai to be like his sister or other ‘easier’ kids though, because I feel it’s just not fair on him. He’s an individual and he’s created uniquely by God. I do realise too that he’s blessed with many positive qualities.

I guess I just at times wonder if the day – when mealtimes are easier and drinking his formula involves minimal fuss – will ever come.

PS: If you have similar experiences with your kid, I’d love to hear about it! Do things get better as they grow older?