19 mo. -- picky eater
DD#2 has become a headache eater. She pretty much would rather drink a full sippy of milk and eat bread than anything else. I'm constantly fighting with her to eat something. She used to eat whatever we made for dinner but now will just sit there and say "no" for most things we put in front of her. Her pedi actually commented that she hadn't gained any weight since her 15 mo. appt which might not be a big deal if she's still finding her place on the weight curve but something to watch out for. Any suggestions on how to get my 19 mo. old to stop being picky? We no longer give her a full sippy of milk before eating. She only gets a little during dinner and then the rest after so she won't fill up on milk first.
Does your LO eat whatever you're making or do you just make something different for him/her? DD#1 for the most part has always eaten whatever we've made so I've not faced this before. I'm tempted to just start making DD#2 separate sandwiches etc. for meals since she won't eat what we're having usually. But then she won't eat much for breakfast either (tried cereal, waffles, oatmeal -- it's hit or miss each day). This is frustrating!
Re: 19 mo. -- picky eater
I'm lucky if I can get Wesley to eat what we do for lunch/dinner. Breakfast is usually easier, since we do waffles, pancakes (plain or with fruit inside or on top), oatmeal, cereal, yogurt, eggs, sausage and things like that. But dinner/lunch, he almost always has the same things - grilled cheese, ham or turkey sandwich, chicken nuggets, PB&J, peas, corn and/or fruit of some kind. He refuses to eat ANY kind of pasta - which blows my mind, since we LOVE pasta at our house. He has eaten country-style steak, salmon patties, fried deer steak, fish (flounder, mostly), but most things like that are hit or miss. He ate hotdogs for about 2 weeks, and won't touch them now. I have really limited Wesley's milk as well, since he'd drink a sippy full before dinner otherwise - he gets a milk sippy at breakfast and one during dinner, which he may finish afterward if he hasn't and still wants it.
Good luck!
I obviously haven't reached this problem yet, but ECUGirl had what I thought was a good solution for this. She would only ever give her son a peanut butter sandwich when he refused to eat. This way, he wasn't going to starve and he would get something nutritious, but she wasn't cooking a separate meal for him.
Good luck! I dread going through this with DD...
Holly is a pretty good eater, but I still make separate meals a lot of the time for her for dinner. I really don't see it as a big deal. I will feed her what we're eating if it's something she'll eat, but if I know it's not, she'll get something I know she eats. A lot of times, I keep stuff she will ALWAYS eat, like pasta (already prepared) on hand in the fridge so I can give her that, and add a fruit and veggie. So it's not like I'm truly cooking a whole separate meal. Even if she does eat what we do, I end up adding extra fruit & stuff, so I'm making her a "special" plate all the time anyway.
If she chooses to not eat what I've prepared, we typically don't offer her anything else.