another battle in the food wars

N is three. She has always been a fussy eater, what with rejecting pretty much all fruit and vegetable matter except, of course, chips - which she refuses to believe has anything to do with potato.

However, matters are deteriorating. Foods which she used to eat are no longer welcome and remain, untouched, on her plate while she claims they are 'not tasty' or 'yucky', while freely admitting that she hasn't tried them. Sometimes she will taste the sauce while the food is being cooked, tell us that it is delicious and then utterly reject it once it is on the plate in front of her.

At this rate, bread and butter will soon be all that's left. And when she decides to reject that, where do we go next?

I have decided that enough is enough and so have opened up a new battle in the food wars. N has tactically retreated and is lying in bed, strategically sleeping. This is an even better way of avoiding questions like, "Why won't you try fruit?" than the usual answer of "I'm not going to tell you."

(As an aside, I managed to defeat her with some infant logic last week. I had been trying to convince her to go swimming for ages. We used to go but stopped a few months ago when she kept on refusing. Finally, she said that she would go 'tomorrow' so, the following day, I asked her again. She said 'tomorrow' again to which I said that she had said 'tomorrow' yesterday and that it was now yesterday's tomorrow. She asked if today was 'tomorrow that day' to which, for want of a better answer, I said 'yes'. I then asked again if she wanted to swim, she said yes, so I stopped the discussion, got her in the car and went to the pool. And she loved it - it was difficult to persuade her to get out of the pool, even after an hour of splashing about.)

The worst part of all this food business is that I was the same as a child but, given that I gave up randomly rejecting food well over twenty years ago, I have lost touch with that inner child and so have no inside knowledge on how to reason with her. Bribery is not working - chocolate has been withheld for some time, with the promise that if she tries fruit (even if she spits it out after a couple of chews), she can have some chocolate. She appears to have resigned herself to having no more chocolate.

Since chocolate is the 'carrot' (excuse the horribly inappropriate analogy), then we need to find a 'stick'. Threats of gradually taking away toys has led to shrieks of horror - and some of them, frankly, were almost from me since this is something I really, really, REALLY don't want to do.

Can I let my child malnourish herself through obstinacy or should I descend to psychological torture? Is there a right answer on this one? Please - if there's anyone out there - someone must know how to deal with this. A signed photo of Derek to the person who comes up with the most useful advice.

Speaking of Derek, I'm really not sure whether the world needs a four-and-a-bit thousand word picture-less picture book about a psychedelic monkey. N enjoys it, although she mainly likes the bit at the end with her in it. If only it had illustrations, I might have a bestseller on my hands. Failing that, I think it could be read on the radio - apparently BBC Radio 7 does kids' stories - which certainly solves the problem of the absence of artwork.

And finally, the moment you've all been waiting for. I am proud to unveil the new Mr Grass-Head, with the original Mr Grass-Head (now Mr Straw-Head by deed poll), standing (?) in his shadow.