Strange habits and bread crusts

Over the past few weeks I have noticed how our little man started leaving bread crusts behind on his plate. At first I didn’t take much notice but after a while a realized that he does it on purpose (and not because he can’t bite it or isn’t hungry any more). It struck me as odd that he would this though since nobody in our house leaves bread crusts behind or cuts them off. Well – it took as a while to find out what was behind this new habit.

Call me a pedantic but for me there's something fundamentally wrong with not eating bread crusts (or even worse: cutting them off on purpose like some people do). It's like wasting food and the crust is a perfectly good part of the bread that can be eaten just like anything else. Especially when it's actually the healthiest part of a slice of bread (see research article here).

So I set about showing Noah that the crust can be eaten and that he should eat it. This didn't really go down well with him and he decided to become a bit fussy about it. We kept trying to encourage him to eat the crust but the results were somewhat random. Then one day we discovered that apparently it is common practice in our daycare centre to cut off the bread crusts! No wonder he started not eating them at home. It's really beyond me why they would introduce a bad habit that could potentially last a life time for no reason. We asked them straight away to stop doing it and they agreed (well or we think so anyway).

Thing is – ultimately you don't know what happens in the daycare centres during the day ... it can be something simple like cutting off the bread crust but it still affects your toddler's behaviour at home. So next time you see your toddler doing something out of character or suddenly starting with a new habit – make sure to ask your daycare staff about it.

-Stef