Regarding the food thing. Some tips from the eating specialists (actual pediatric feeding specialists, which I am reading up on, as my older son has oral defensiveness and selective eating secondary to oral trauma as an infant, plus a choking incident, plus possible reflux… ah, the joys of parenting!). Anyway, tips that WORK, even for kids with issues:
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Make trying a new food just a fact of being in the family. One taste, with permission to spit it out if yucky. Whatever is on the plate for dinner for everyone else, one taste is the rule. Simple backup meal is okay, but don’t rely on it until all other options are rejected, including ‘just the noodles’. Children who are willing to put one bite in their mouth, hold it there for a moment to assess, and then spit it out if it is rejected are generally healthy eaters. Establish and maintain other age-appropriate eating rules, including encouraging self-feeding, not requiring cleanup until the meal is complete, not making mealtime into distraction-game-playing time to trick them into eating, not requiring them to eat when not hungry, and permitting them to leave the table after a reasonable period of time (no more than 30 minutes for most kids, or eating becomes a chore). Established social rules also includes not saying ‘yuck’ until you taste it, and even then learning to say ‘I don’t like that’ rather than ‘yuck’, and learning to use a napkin, plus whatever social rules you have around eating (grace, etc.). Requiring a degree of participation because it is family rules and everyone has to do it actually helps.
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Do not force anyone to eat anything. If your child isn’t prone to eating issues, you may get lucky and not cause oral defensiveness. But with up to 40% of kids having eating disorders including truly damaging degrees of selectivity (‘picky eating’), and given that forced feeding is one of the three main reasons for such issues (the others being lack of established eating rules and physiological/trauma-based reactions such as reflux or oral trauma), forcing them to actually eat something they dislike is more likely to cause problems than prevent them. Requiring them to taste is one thing, to swallow is another. (Plus, they often self-identify food allergies more easily than we think - my son also was allergic to eggs, and would taste things with eggs and spit them out. It was usually a few minutes before I’d see the rash starting to develop around his mouth. I had to trust him to tell me his body rejected the food.)
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Do not stress about food. They pick up all sorts of reactions that you don’t want them to.
As for other stuff:
I second the ‘fair does not mean equal/evensies’ thing. Fair is that each gets what they need.
With two, protecting ownership is valuable. Gabe has his toys. We labeled the ones that were potential ‘house’ toys but that he had established as HIS toys. I protected his ownership of those toys, too. It was never a matter of ‘your brother will stop crying if you just give him your (cherished toy), so do it.’ Instead, I would ask, and if the answer was no, I would explain to Brendan that the toy was Gabe’s, and he did not want to share it right now. This lack of entitlement on Brendan’s part has led to some interesting NOT-younger child behavior, and has been noted by friends who are long-term teachers. Notably, at 18 months old, he understood ownership to the degree that if he was told a special thing belonged to someone else, he would refrain from handling it until given permission to do so. He also does not fight giving back a toy (though he protests verbally, he relinquishes easily) when he has been told it is not his. Taking turns is beginning to take root already, and he’s not even two. Another thing that this did was give Gabe the social benefit of sharing. If he chooses to share a cherished toy, it was his own graciousness that was the cause, not my insistance. He gets to feel good about sharing because it is his own choice to do so. He also shares more than most kids his age, happily - he feels good about it, not defeated and powerless.
I also find it very very useful to permit negative feelings about others. That is, either child can be frustrated, angry, or annoyed at the other, and that’s fine with me. They do not get to hurt each other about it, but they are entitled to express their feelings. This lets them release how they feel, and get back to the business of siblinghood, most of which is learning negotiation skills, it seems.
The older they get the more they benefit from working it out themselves. I read some research that showed that for very young kids, parental intervention and management of their interactions helped increase sibling bonding. The older they got, though, the more parental intervention made the bonds weaker. We give guidelines for working it out - ‘figure out a way that both of you can share that toy’ - at first, then progress to ‘you can figure that out together’ (more general guidance). We stay out of the solution unless it is patently unfair to one party and the other appears to know it.
We also remind them of their affection for each other as regularly as possible. Even before Brendan was born, he kicked me hard every time Gabe yelled or laughed nearby, or when he climbed on my lap. I chose to interpret that as excitement, not angst. So before his brother even arrived, Gabe knew that he was loved. It made a lot of things much easier for him to digest.
When you tell your kids you love them, tell them not just what they are good at that you love, but what they enjoy that you love. This keeps your approval from being about their successes, and lets it be about who they are.
I recommend the book Siblings Without Rivalry - it really helped me manage the sibling thing better.