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Austin Babies
s-a-r-a-h
member
Tips for making toddler meal time more pleasant?
s-a-r-a-h
member
I dread feeding DD. Dread. If she's not crying, she's throwing her plate/bottle/food on the floor. I never know if she's going to like what I give her - even if it's a food she loves. She's hardly eaten any of the main course during lunch at daycare since she started a month ago. I guess I have a picky eater on my hands, but I have no idea how to change that. Just the sight of certain foods can set her off. I know she would like some of the foods if she would just try them. I have a feeling this is just the start and she's going to get even pickier, but is there anything I can do in the meantime to keep my sanity?
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Re: Tips for making toddler meal time more pleasant?
I get so frustrated especially when Kate throws food on the floor. I don't mind it when she drops it, but the deliberate make-eye-contact- and throw makes me crazy.
We're lucky in that Kate is generally a pretty good eater, but we've had our struggles. My main goal is to offer her heathy choices and then let her eat what she wants. If I offer her a plate of food and she doesn't want to eat it, that's fine but I'm not going to be a short order cook either. Sometimes this results in her wanting a snack 5 minutes later which is also fine. She can have the same plate of food.
I do try to offer her come choices that I know she likes, but she eats what we are eating for dinner. I also figure that all I can do is offer so even if I know that she won't eat anything but the mac-n-cheese, I'll still put some fruit and veggies on her plate. Since I know she won't eat anything else if mac-n-cheese is on her plate, I reserve it for a treat. I also try very hard not to keep food in the house that I am not happy with her eating because I know that DH will be tempted to feed it to her. (So we don't have a shelf full of boxed mac-n-cheese. I buy it occasionally and it's gone almost immediately.) We try and make it not a power struggle by making it ok for her not to eat if she doesn't like it.
That being said, she eats most everything except for meat and veggies. If she was super tiny or loosing weight I might feel differently.
Can us give more info on how meal time goes in your house? Then maybe we can give more advice on how to change it.
Is it always at the same time? Are you sitting down with her as a mealtime or is she by herself while you're doing other things? Is she in a high chair or at the table? Is she getting baby foods or what you're eating? Do you keep offering alternatives or is it a "eat this or mealtime is over" scenario (neither is wrong, it just depends on the kid!!).
I will say that I still don't give Emily a plate because the urge to put it on the floor is just too great. She has only recently transitioned to where I can give her all of her dinner at once without her shoveling half of it onto the floor - before I'd have to give her just a few pieces at a time.
Lunch I never worry about with either of the girls. Either they eat or they won't. I've learned from experience with Abby - They will not starve to death no matter how little you think they are eating. Mealtime was always dramatic with Abby due to our previous mealtime spoon feeding struggles. Emily luckily is very much into eating food. She looooooves food.
Will is an incredibly picky eater. He has been since he started feeding himself ~11 months and it honestly hasn't gotten much better. We've tried a lot of strategies - offering him his own thing, offering him what we're eating only, offering him what we're eating and then giving him something we know he'll eat afterward.
Right now, we're kind of in a limbo b/c he doesn't understand that if he doesn't eat what we're eating, he's not eating. When he gets older, we'll start enforcing this...we tried to, but he was losing weight and we had to stop. So right now, we give him what he'll eat - this tends to be a lot of fruit, grilled cheese or PB&J, mac & cheese, etc. If I can, I'll grate veggies into his food, use purees in his grilled cheese, etc. We ALWAYS offer a veggie and a small portion of what we're having. If he eats it, fantastic; if not, I completely ignore it. I don't make a big deal about it - I don't want him to know that him eating/not eating has power over my emotions.
We've talked to the pediatrician about it in length and he said what's important right now is that he's eating. He literally will.not.eat if we don't give him what he wants - I don't care what any doctor says, it's the truth. We went for about a weeks span only offering what we were eating - he lost 3 pounds that week. He doesn't have the worst eating habits - he'll eat almost any fruit you put in front of him, just not veggies or much meat. We're working on making the things that he will eat the most nutritious they can be...he gets only organic. I make sure his bread is whole grain, stone ground if possible. I make his mac & cheese homemade w/ organic cheeses & whole grain pasta [and usually grate in zucchini before I bake it]. French toast gets pumpkin puree added to the egg mixture. I've had to get very creative about it! When he's old enough to reason with and understand, we'll start the battle of getting him to eat veggies and our meals, but right now it's not something we can truly fight.
If you want another thing to try to sneak in protein, Quinoa pasta is awesome. You might even be able to work the flour into some recipes too. It's 6g of protein in every 1/4 cup serving. Just something to try especially if he doesn't like meat.
H is usually fed at the same time every day for meals and we hardly ever sit down together for a meal. In the mornings, I'm getting things ready while she eats, and for lunch and dinner, I'm usually busy preparing her next "course" or making our own meals (dinner is especially tough since we feed her right when we get home from daycare/work and dinner isn't even prepared for us yet). We'll offer alternatives if she hasn't really eaten much. We try and feed her what we're eating if it's something she can eat or we're out to eat, but I usually throw something together for her during the week since we typically don't eat at the same time as her.
She typically gets breakfast as soon as she wakes up. I'll put her in the high chair (at the table) with a sippy cup of milk while I make breakfast, which is usually half a banana sliced up and dusted with wheat germ. She used to eat eggs (mainly scrambled), but lately she wants nothing to do with them. I'll also usually offer some kind of whole grain - like dry waffles or cereal - and some yogurt with a fruit mixed in. She's usually pretty good about eating breakfast as long as I don't try to give her eggs or baby cereal (she only wants Cheerios). I've even tried making her eggs into a breakfast taco, but she just eats the tortilla and throws the egg on the floor.
She gets lunch while at daycare, and as far as I know, they sit all the kids around a table and give them their food in a bowl with a spoon. Today they got ravioli, peas, bread and oranges. She only ate the oranges, plus the yogurt/apples/sweet potatoes I sent. She almost always eats her AM and PM snacks (usually carb/starch heavy foods like animal crackers, pancakes, Goldfish, etc.). We hardly ever give her snacks at home. Lunch on the weekends usually consists of some fruit and a sandwich or wrap with cheese and turkey. I've been wanting to try and mix in some veggies but haven't done it yet.
Dinner is usually a hodge podge of things. We feed her in the high chair, and she usually gets some pasta, tofu dusted in graham crackers, some yogurt and fruit if she hasn't already had it, maybe some turkey lunch meat and occasionally a pureed veggie if she'll tolerate it (I usually have to alternate bites of yogurt and veggies to get her to eat it or do a bite of half and half). We've tried offering her small bites of veggies (peas, corn, green beans, carrots, etc.) and she won't touch them. She also doesn't seem to like meat too much (I've tried giving her a little bit of meatball and hamburger).
I picked up some dinner foods at Whole Foods a few weeks ago and she seemed to like the chicken nuggets okay. I also tried giving her some spinach bites, potato fries and fish and salmon sticks, and she took one bite of some of the foods and spit it right out. She wouldn't touch the spinach (she seems to avoid all things green).
I was a picky eater as a child, and now I understand the frustration my parents must have been feeling.
I wouldn't necessarily call my DD a "picky" eater, but she generally only has one really good meal a day - the rest of the day she just grazes.
Breakfast is usually the most solid meal of the day -- she eats one or more of the following: scrambled egg (I usually try and mix in chopped spinach), fruit, yogurt, waffles, pancakes (I make a batch & freeze them on the weekend), toast w/ apple butter, raisin bread (we really love this one), instant oatmeal (DD really likes Kashi) or bagels.
The rest of the day, I try to only offer healthy "snacks" which are basically individual components of what I could consider a full mean - dry pasta, tofu, veggies, fruit, etc. We're pretty lax about "what" she eats "when" and try and focus more on what she eats over the cumulative week - some days she only wants fruits, the next veggies, etc. I realize that is harder when your kid is in a daycare setting, but it has really helped me stop focusing on her eating "3 squares a day." I also keep a stash of these in the pantry at all time - DD will eat a billion of these if I let her -- and I like that it has fruit/veggie/grain all in one.
As for the throwing - we definitely don't put up with that. Ditto Rosie - mealtime is over (for now) when she starts throwing a fit and we try again when she is calm and interested in eating. I've noticed that a lot of the time (for us, at least) DD throws a fit because she's not hungry and we're trying to force her to eat.
I don't do food battles with my kids. Its just not worth it to me. They eat entirely on demand. They eat what they want, when they want it.
This works out very well for Jakob, who'll try anything. We also don't keep much junk food in the house, so he mostly eats good foods.
Layna is my problem child. She's extremely picky and doesn't try new things. She lives off fruit, hot dogs and yogurt. But I truly believe that trying to force her to eat things or setting certain times she should eat - I really believe that will make things worse. Food is supposed to be enjoyed, not a battle of wills. She's growing well and is healthy so I don't worry about it. If she were underweight or sickly or something, it might be different.
I was never raised to clean my plate and I think family dinners are overrated. Meal times are peaceful and happy times in our house. Sometimes, its just DH and I at the table because Layna had a yogurt 20 minutes ago and Jakob says he's not hungry. But there's no tears, no arguments. Everyone is happy.
Ditto this. We were having a hard time at dinner until we realized we were letting M have too many snacks after work. He wasn't hungry by the time he sat down for dinner so he seemed like he was getting pickier and pickier because he wouldn't eat. We stopped the snacking and now he'll eat a lot more and dinner is much more peaceful.