Tantrums while eating

BabyBugutsky

It doesn't fail. Breakfast, lunch or dinner there will be some sort of fit. LO won't eat unless he has a spoon or something to play with. Then he eats a few bites then nothing. I feel like he isn't eating enough. He only gained 1kg from 7 months to 1 year. I've tried getting rid of the spoon but he just throws food everywhere and cries and screams until he almost makes himself sick. 

What do I do? LO also stops eating when the dog comes around but DH thinks it's hilarious how LO giggles when he drops food and the dog eats it. LO has also started to fake cough to get out of eating. 

Any tricks I should try to get this all to stop? 

lmbrandt

Some of this sounds all too familiar!  Our meals get progressively worse as the day goes on, dinner being the worst.  I feel like half the time he is just WAY more interested in running around and playing, and doesn't want to take the time to stop and eat.  At dinner time he MAY take a few bites and then just sits there, or pushes all the food onto the floor.  Drives me CRAZY.  He is refusing foods that used to be his favorite, so finding things to put together for him is a challenge with hopes he'll take more than two bites!

What's really driving us nuts too is he'll stop eating, won't let you put anything in his mouth, and puts his arms up to show he's all done.  We put him down and he will run around the kitchen and family room and come looking for food.  He will eat just about anything if he is free and can walk by you, put it in his mouth, and take off.  I hate it because I know it's not safe for him to be walking around and eating, but sometimes it's the only way he will eat anything!  I am also scared when we do it that we may be reinforcing some bad habits.  I want to play tough and not give him anymore when he says he's "all done" and wants out of his highchair.  BUT, I worry so much he's going to bed on an empty tummy!  Maybe I just let him go to bed hungry and sooner or later he'll learn?!

amp61470

I've got a picky eater. My doctor said to not give him choices put one thing in front of him and he eats it or doesn't. He said he won't let himself go hungry. I try it but then I worry too. It's been a slow process at my house! 

missliz53

See I think mine would let herself go hungry. And then she would follow me around crying because she's hungry. We have this battle too and it's just not one I personally can fight. So I let her play with a spoon and stick her fingers in her bowl and when that stops working I resort to a toy. This was what her oc suggested. She also suggested letting her use a thick carrot stick as a dipper. That didn't work for us personally, but now after months of fiddling around with a spoon, she is starting to put it into her purees and then her mouth. I have a lot better luck with finger foods generally if I add flavor to them. My go-to is parm cheese and a little bit of country crock. She loves sauces so I make up a few mini containers of stroganoff sauce and I can add chicken, peas and pasta and it goes down. I buy the frozen green giant veggie boxes that have sauce for my lunch and save a serving for her. She really likes rotisserie chicken too. I typically leave out salt when I cook, so I will add just enough salt to her food so I can barely tell it's there and this really helps the food go where it's supposed to. I don't have any tricks for fruit. Mine won't touch it if it isn't pureed except to evict it from her tray or squish it on her toes. She also comes around to get bites from my husband and I, but she stands there and chews it or spits it out. I wouldn't let her do this if she were walking around while munching. 

dmbfan46835

Wait. Are you sure we don't share a child?! I hate meal time. HATE. A couple of nights ago it was so bad that I brought my laptop to the dinner table and turned on word party to shut him up. Then I was able to actually sneak food in his mouth and he didn't even notice! Used to be one of our favorite times of the day. And I love making him new tasty healthy treats and half the time they go in the trash. Now I dread meal time. 

BabyBugutsky

So glad I'm not alone!! Today was better. Dog ate most of the meals but whatever. I resort to whatever he will eat. LO has his faves and hodogs and KD are at the top. I don't care what he eats as long as he eats!

dmbfan46835

Gonna try moving him to a booster and eliminate the high chair. Maybe he will feel less confined if he's with us at the table?

BabyBugutsky

dmbfan46835 said:

Gonna try moving him to a booster and eliminate the high chair. Maybe he will feel less confined if he's with us at the table?

We had tried that but then he started to not like the booster. It was like his car seat. He wouldn't go in it. So we went back to regular high chair. Maybe we will do the same..try the booster again. 

ForeverEverAfter

My LO loves meals, but I have a daycare baby who is very picky at home. They sit at the table with everyone else, same food for everyone, and we only get up when everyone is finished or full. The first few days he didn't eat much, but I didn't give any in between food (we eat every 2-3h here), and he now eats nearly everything I serve. He's still picky at home though, maybe because he knows they'll give him snacks right afterwards?

dmbfan46835

Mine isn't the food. I think it's the confinement. He just HATES being in the chair. Also loses his shit the moment we put him in it. He will eat if you sit on the couch or give him a snack just fine. BuT we eat at the table at our house so I guess we will try the booster and see if he is happier with less confinement? He does the same thing st MILs. But sits at a table with the kids at daycare and supposedly does ok there. 

jen83mn

My LO started refusing to eat a month or so ago if whatever we put in front of him he didn't want. We used to give him one type of food at a time otherwise he'd just push everything onto the floor, but once he started whining about what was in front of him, we tried a new approach. Now we give him 3-4 different kinds of food, small servings of each, on his tray right away at the beginning of the meal, along with his cup of milk. Since we started that, he's done so much better. No whining, because he gets to choose what to eat and when to eat it (or not to eat something if he doesn't want to). The pressure is off me and I can actually eat my meal at the same time instead of preparing his "next course," so it works for us Of course there are times the food still ends up on the floor once he starts getting full and wants to be done, but we're ready now to take the tray away when he's all done before it all ends up on the floor.

As for non-finger foods, lately he's been refusing to let us spoon feed him (but if we give him the spoon he just wants to play with it or throw it), so I put a few spoonfuls of the food (yogurt, applesauce) on his tray first and let him taste it with his fingers. Soon he's scraping it all into his mouth with his hands, and I just spoon feed him the rest in between him shoving his fingers in his mouth, haha.

He's a good eater most the time, but my stress has been trying to figure out what to feed him everyday (breakfast, lunch, and dinner, since I have to prepare meals for grandma's house when I'm working). That in itself stresses me out, especially when options are limited because he only has 7 teeth and can't eat everything we can yet. But I came across some good words of advice that has made me feel better:

It's your job to put nutritious food in front of them. It's their job to decide what and how much to eat.

Once I stopped stressing about him not eating this or not eating enough of that, I felt so much better! However, I can definitely understand your concern if you can't get your LOs to eat anything! We have a few tried and true favorites that LO will always eat (bananas, applesauce and oatmeal, crackers and natural peanut butter, yogurt, cut up cheese), so we always try to include one of those options at each meal as part of the meal so there's something familiar he enjoys at each sitting. He usually starts with that, but then he tries the other stuff too