Chalk this up as one of those things that you only really notice as a signpost of how far someone’s come.

The Monster’s been a picky eater for a while now – when he was a baby, he’d eat just about anything that was put in front of him.  Today, his diet’s far more limited, and it’s usually a guessing game as to what he’ll eat (though, at least, we know he’ll almost universally accept chicken fingers when we go out to eat…)

He has, however, discovered something new in the house – that R will eat just about anything that’s put in front of him.

R is a happy, chubby little toddler at this point, and… well, toddlers aren’t really known for being choosey eaters, are they.  I’m not quite sure how the Monster discovered that fact himself, but he did.   It started innocently enough – probably with R coming over and pulling food off of the Monster’s plate when R is not tethered up in the high chair – and we chided both of them for it as inappropriate.  It moved into the Monster purposely moving the plate to where R could find it… and now it’s transformed into a phrase we don’t want to hear at mealtime:

“Give to [R]!”

There are variations on this phrase, but this is the general theme now.  He lifts his plate and offers it to the nearest adult if he can’t himself get to where R is sitting.

I do like that he’s put two-and-two together and realized that R will, undoubtedly, eat just about anything that’s put in front of him.  (And better that he’s trying to give food to R than to the cats.)  However, it’s also an issue of ensuring that the Monster gets proper nutrition, and knowing that his brother’s turning into a human garbage disposal is not going to help with that.

At least his special ed teacher’s now added feeding issues to his IEP – done entirely on their end, without input from ours – so we can play around to see if we can get him eating more on his own and making more of his own food choices…