My younger daughter is almost 4, but getting her to eat her carrots is still sometimes a battle. She’ll eat most other vegetables-sweet peppers, broccoli, even olives-with gusto. But carrots are a little, well, challenging. Maybe it’s because her teeth came in very late, and she never really liked to chew as a baby?

For whatever reason, we sometimes have to come up with clever ways to get her to eat her raw carrots. Today, I tried the ‘crunch contest’. Each contestant sits at the table, and chooses a piece of carrot. The winner: whoever has the carrot that makes the loudest crunching sound. Thankfully, most carrots sound the same when crunched. So there is often disagreement about who won. This requires the game to be played repeatedly in order to determine who the winner is. Thus distracted, my daughter munched her way through 4 carrot slices today. Eureka!

How do you get your reluctant children to eat their vegetables?