"Ivan eat up..."

Ivan went for his 2-and-a-half-year-old checkup last week. His development is not so ideal. He weighs only 12kg and at 88.5cm tall, he is short and a little underweight for his age. The nurse "calculated" (which Lars and I are very skeptical about the way she did it
) by plotting a mid-point between Lars's height and my height and "announced" that Ivan should be around 176cm tall when he reaches adulthood.
She also tested him to see his speech development. And since she is new (the original one who used to see Ivan since he was a baby has left), Ivan had no interest at all to talk to her. She was trying to get him to repeat stuff after her and asking him questions like, "What is this?" while showing him car, cup, cow, dog, etc. He just ignored her and all his attention was on the cars which she brought out... Later she went through the "checklist", which they use to assess the development of a kid and told us that since Ivan doesn't know what is "på" (put something on top of something) and "i" (put something inside something), she recommended that we bring him to a speech therapist! Hubby was angry. He told her flatly no. We know our son can talk, though he is still not speaking sentences which has more than 3 words, but he is speaking. There is definitely no problem with him in talking or the ability to communicate, he's just not familiar with her. So she changed her tone a little and said that when he started pre-school after the summer, he may start to speak more. So she set another appointment with us to assess him again in November. Hubby and I were just furious. How dare she after spending 5 mins with our son and based on some sort of checklist, determined that he has problem with speech!

When we reached home I was feeling defeated and feeling like a failure. I told hubby that we should probably send Ivan to my mom so she can "fatten" him up. Hubby was just angry and told me to ignore whatever the nurse said. I told him I really try my best to get Ivan to eat properly. 1 year ago when we went for his 1 year old checkup, the old nurse (well, she is old and very kind) told us to put in more fatty food in his diet, which I have been doing since then.

I have even try to make his food more appealing and more interesting...

Breakfast - his favorite way to eat is white bread, butter, cheese and cucumber (good thing he likes vegetables!)



Lunch - pancakes, omelettes, stir-fry macaroni, rice or noodles



Dinner - He always eat the same kind of food as we do when it comes to dinner and the only person to make him eat up is hubby...



With all my effort, still nothing seems to work. Ivan is not eating so much, he usually cannot finish the meals I prepared for him. And when Jovan comes home from school and saw the left-over, he'll finish them. So now, Ivan is a little underweight and Jovan is a little overweight!

However, strangely, after his checkup last week, he started to speak more words and is clearer in his speech and he's also eating more. He probably felt insulted by the nurse too! Whatever the reasons are that attributed to the change, I'm happy that he's eating good, at least for now.