Jake, Will and a Green Smoothie

Since, I started making green smoothies for my family to eat certain things have become apparent:  1. my kids are even odder than I thought, and 2. Jake is occasionally blindingly brilliant.

On Thursday, I’d whipped up a green smoothie of spinach, strawberries and bananas (I realized I don’t like strawberries in it).  But unfortunately I ran out of bananas so Friday I made a spinach, strawberry, mango smoothie.  I assume Will agreed with me that I had not come up with the best combination but I decided he was going to finish his.  After all – I’d drunk my whole glass.  I kept prompting Will to eat his smoothie.  Then Jake piped up, “Will, first smoothie, then I’ll give you my green pepper.”

This was brilliant for two reasons.  First, although, I think Will likes green pepper I don’t know that it’s a very preferred food.  If I was doing a first/then with Will I probably would have offered a corn chip.  Jake proved that I can use green pepper for a reinforcer, which, honestly, had never occurred to me.  And secondly and probably most important from Jake’s point of view, Jake got out of eating his green pepper by giving it to Will.  Thus not only is he helping me, Jake is creatively avoiding a non-preferred food.

Once Jake gave Will a piece of his pepper, Will started dipping his pepper in the smoothie.  Which excited me because obviously someone at school has brought veggies and dip and Will was imitating what he has seen. 

 

And in the background Bri and Lizzy were arguing over who got to drink what was left of the smoothie.