Toddlers: 12 - 24 Months

BLWers

Anyone have any advice for BLW with toddlers?  I realize all kids are pretty much eating the same foods now, BLW or not.  We are finding that LO still eats the foods she wants and ignores the rest (unfamiliar?).  Then she asks and signs MORE MORE MORE for the things she likes to eat.  The girl would exist on blueberries alone if we let her.  (Should we let her?)  Back when we were starting with BLW if she asked or signed MORE then we gave her more. 

We try to mix up her dinner plate with half of what we are eating for dinner, which she won't eat 90% of the time, and half with things like fruit, yogurt, cheese, etc.  The other night she took her hummus and spread it halfway up her arm before I could stop her. 

I realize a lot of BLW is experimenting with food texture etc. so she does touch her food a lot, but it's still more playing than eating. 

She's perfectly fine with her height and weight so I am not concerned for her health.  I just feel like she is at the age where she gets dinner and that's that.  I definitely don't want to be cooking two dinners, and I want to get away from adding in snacky type foods at dinnertime.

She still nurses quite frequently and I realize that she won't EAT until I wean her.  I nurse her at 4pm and 7:30pm.  Dinner is at 6pm.  She doesn't eat much better at daycare though, and that's qquite a long stretch to go between nursing, you'd think she'd be hungry?

What are you all doing? 

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Re: BLWers

  • For us Chloe gets what we are eating and that's that.  We've been doing this since she was about 15 months.  However, if we are eating something I know she doesn't like very much (or I think she won't like) I'll put a small something else on everybody's plate.  This way she isn't getting something different from the rest of us.  

    I don't do "more" with dinner unless she has eaten a decent amount of what's on the plate first, or if its the veggie (she can have as much of that as she wants).  My daughter could also exist on blueberries alone...or at least try too. 

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  • If I want her to try something new, I put it on her plate first alone. When that's gone or she decides she's tried and doesn't love it, she can have something else from what's on the menu or fruit already in the fridge.

     I also put three things on her plate any of which I'm okay with her eating or not, all based off of what we're having. So if she's already had too many blueberries in a day for example, it's not even an option.

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  • imageLalaMama81:
    Stop giving her the yogurt, cheese, fruit & snacks. Give her what you are eating and that's the end of it. She will eat if she wants to. And IME, weaning has nothing to do w/ eating food. 

    This plan sounds like so much less work for me and I love it!

    And thanks for the experience about weaning b/c I dont want to feel forced to do it just to get my kid to eat her dinner.  Thank you for that as well.

     

    Thanks for all the comments, looks like this mama has to be a little stricter.  And I have to start monitoring her blueberry intake.

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  • I did mostly BLW, though we offered a combination of everything.  DD's always been very adventurous, but now that DD is a toddler, sometimes she just gets in a mood where she wants to whine or refuse things. 

    What I have found to be a pretty effective tool is the WHEN-THEN method.  This works great for mealtimes and equally well for other tasks like bathtime, getting ready, etc.  It's not a bribe because the "reward" is something appropriate that they would have gotten anyway.  Examples: WHEN you sit down, THEN you can eat your dinner.  WHEN you eat some chicken, THEN you can have some blueberries. WHEN you're done eating, THEN you can go read with Daddy, etc.

    If my DD wants nothing to do with the food I offer, I'll just take her out of her high chair for 10-15 minutes and try again later.

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  • I had never heard of BLW until I came to the Bump, but apparently we did it with DD.   We just fed DD table food from 8 months on, b/c she rejected all forms of baby food and cereal.  She's a great eater now. 

    She eats whatever we eat, period.  She doesn't get special items made specifically for her and she will eat almost anything.   As long as it is something healthy, I will let DD eat it as much as she wants. 

    For example, DD loves bananas, apples, carrots and broccoli.  You'd better believe that I will let her eat as much of any of these things as she wants.   She also loves grilled chicken.  She can have as much as she wants. 

    If she absolutely refuses dinner, I will try to give her fruit or yogurt (which she will always eat) and if she refuses that I have to assume she just isn't hungry. 

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  • imagejlsimon56:

    imageLalaMama81:
    Stop giving her the yogurt, cheese, fruit & snacks. Give her what you are eating and that's the end of it. She will eat if she wants to. And IME, weaning has nothing to do w/ eating food. 

    This plan sounds like so much less work for me and I love it!

    And thanks for the experience about weaning b/c I dont want to feel forced to do it just to get my kid to eat her dinner.  Thank you for that as well.

     

    Thanks for all the comments, looks like this mama has to be a little stricter.  And I have to start monitoring her blueberry intake.

    I only cut DD off on blueberries when her poop turns completely blue... Which happens all the time... Hehe

    Yeah, good luck with the "don't offer her anything else" thing. I personally have a hard time enjoying my dinner when my child is sitting next to me crying because she wants grapes. We always give her what we're having, and she eats it most of the time. Sometimes after a few minutes she starts asking for something else though, and I'll frequently give her fruit then. She eats that, and very often it "jumpstarts" her and she starts eating the main dish again.

    Kids (mine anyway) seem to go in spurts of eating well and not eating so well.  I have no explanation for it but feel we have little choice but to go with the flow.


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  • DH and I had a pretty lengthy discussion about a similar topic last week.  It can be hard to distinguish being a picky eater and honestly not liking something. We agreed that when the time came we would try this strategy with DD...

    1) You have to take 3 bites of the food before saying you don't like it.

    2) If you still don't like it, the other option is a plain sandwich & that's it. 

    Hopefully this will prevent me from becoming a short order cook and from giving in to only the most preferred foods at meal times.

    To be fair - this is a parenting theory.  We haven't had to put it into practice, yet.
  • imagelrachelle80:
    My kid went through two different food strikes where she ONLY would eat clementines and yogurt. She would eat *maybe* five bites of breakfast, lunch, and dinner combined. She got clementines and yogurt as snacks, but I gave her the other meals based on what we were eating. If she didn't eat, she didn't eat. I know that sounds awful, but she never went hungry and we never made a big deal of her eating or not eating one way or the other. And she got through them just fine and is back to being a great eater. It's very common - it's something for them to control in a world where they can't control anything. 

    We do the same, although we haven't had any drastic food strikes like lrachelle.  But he certainly goes through phases where he isn't interested in certain foods.  He was anti-meat for a while, and lately he hasn't been into leafy greens.  

    I do try to incorporate his phases into our meal plan a little - so when he wasn't eating meat I'd have a couple meals a week that were meatless - either with beans or tofu as the protein.  But I kept including and serving meat so I'd know when he was out of the phase.  I also make sure to include an aspect of dinner I know he will eat.  Last night we had chicken, which sometimes he's not into, so we also had couscous, tomatoes, and bell peppers, knowing he would at least eat those.

    Like you, I still nurse (twice a day), so I'm not terribly concerned about what he eats since even if he has no solids, I know he's getting some nutrition.  And he continues to climb the growth percentiles, so I'm not worried about his phases.

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