- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Working Moms
shamilton223
member
Toddler Food Issues
shamilton223
member
in Working Moms
Hi All. I'm hoping for some new ideas to help me with my toddler. He's 17 months old and pretty much refuses to eat cooked table foods.
He eats snack foods very well including crackers, cereals, bananas, grapes, apples, yogurt, cookies, and other things. He also still eats jars of baby food.
When he first started solihd finger foods (around 10 months) he ate anything we offered. His favorites were sweet potatoes, peas and carrots, and even shredded chicken. Now we can't get him to eat finger foods or any other cooked foods at all. He'll eat snack foods and jarred baby foods. Our trouble started in January following a bad stomach bug.
I've tried pretty much everything I can think of. I'm asking the question here because all my searches for methods to cope with this seem geared more toward stay at home moms who have total control and are aware of every bite their child eats all day. In my work situation I only really know what he eats at supper and just before bed. The other meals and snacks are eaten at daycare.
Today I've started in on my last ditch effort to get him to eat. I bought some Mickey Mouse (his favorite character) plates and put two small bites of table foods that I thought I had a high probability of him eating, rotisserie chicken and 3 sweet potato fries (he'll sometimes eat french fries from a restaurant).
It was a huge battle. The minute the plate went down in front of him, he started crying and screaming bloody murder. He picked up a potato and held it to his lips then put it down and screamed more. It was a fight but I eventually managed to get him to keep the plate with the "terrible foods" on his tray.
Eventually, I got him calmed down and offered yogurt and baby food. He ate like crazy so I know he was hungry. What else am I supposed to do? I have to work and he can't be put to bed super hungry because he has to have enough sleep that he and I can both function tomorrow. If he goes to bed hungry he'd be up every hour screaming.
I don't expect the daycare to be able to tell me every single day what he's eaten or to have the time to provide special meals and/or mealtime rituals for my child. So given those constraints, does anybody have any ideas?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Toddler Food Issues
Have you asked daycare to keep track of what he eats? I think it'd be a reasonable request, especially if you tell them about your concerns at home (and maybe only ask for them to do it for a week or so?).
Ellyn Satter has great advice about feeding toddlers/kids. I would look into her books/website.
https://www.ellynsatter.com/how-to-feed-i-24.html
DS2 - Oct 2010 (my VBAC baby!)
I wouldn't push it. Just offer the healthy things he will eat (looks like fruit and grains), a bowl of pureed food, and something new. I'd give the exact same veggie every night for awhile. They say kids need like 20 exposures to a food before they might even try it! Don't make a fuss, just offer dinner and leave it up to him to eat it. He won't starve. If he's truly hungry, he'll eat something, especially if the plate always has at least one thing he does like. You might think about contacting Early Intervention (if he's under 3...I already forgot the age) or a OT to discuss the possibility of some food related therapy if you are really concerned.
ETA: I remembered my other suggestion that worked with our kid. I always gave snacks in the same snack cups. After a few days of things he liked, I offered peas in the cup. Then diced carrots, etc. Since the cup was for "snack", he ate it! You can probably tell a kid that age peas are a new candy and they'll buy into it. Lying? Yes. Eating veggies? Yes.
What temperature are the table foods you're serving? My kids always balked at hot foods.
What if you put frozen peas in the snack trap? Sounds weird, but every kid I know seems to like it.
Also, if the food aversion started after a bad stomach bug, it may be that the foods he ate before/during the bug are off limits now. Could you try something totally different, like a peanut butter sandwich?
Or maybe you just take tiny baby steps away from snack foods towards real food -- serve crackers, than PB crackers, then let him see you spreading PB on crackers and serve him those, then try a PB sandwich. Or give him "trail mix" of cereal/pretzels in a snack trap, then add raisins, then add apple and cheese cubes, then try just apple and cheese cubes, then try apple and cheese on a plate.
You could also try getting him to "help" shop for groceries and prepare meals which can be hold this, throw this away and see if that helps
I'd really try to knock out the pured baby foods and just let him eat what table foods he will eat.
Also, if you have this concern, it is absolutely not too much to have an open dialogue with the teacher. At that age, many daycares still do a daily sheet that lists what they eat. Tell her your concerns and make her a partner in this. Working moms have this benefit that SAHMs don't.
I get that you don't want him to go to sleep hungry. But the next time you have a day off or two, I would make a meal with several table foods he might like and only offer that. Let him learn that you won't be responding to his cries with yogurt. Yes, maybe you will have a bad night. But you will have a couple of days to recoup and get into a new pattern.
I have a Daughter born 2/26/2013. She is pretty much amazing!
I know you want your LO to eat something, but the fact that he cries and screams and you give in and give him baby food is going to lead him to belive that all he needs to do to get what he wants is to cry and scream. I think you've got to cut the baby food cold turkey.
I'd just offer him all sorts of different foods. Eggs, beans avocado, guacamole, hummus, pancakes, waffles, just keep trying things. Eventually he'll eat them.
I highly recommend the book Feeding with Love and Good Sense. It both has a lot of great practical suggestions and just useful information about child nutrition. I don't follow her suggestions 100% but it was very helpful to me with DS1 who was/is more picky.
Just to summarize (and it doesn't give the book justice): prepare one meal for the whole family. Try to have at least one thing on the table that you know your child will like (even if it's bread) but keep offering all the other foods. Neither pressure him to eat what you offer nor get up to get him a separate meal. Your job is to provide a nice, nutritious meal and his job is to decide what and how much he wants to eat. It may take 20 times of seeing a certain food on his plate to try it and 20 more times of him chewing it and spitting it out before he really gets into it (this is exactly how my DS1 was - while DS2 is just a food processor). Do not stress about him starving - he won't. But do send foods you'd like him to eat to daycare and request that they don't give him the stuff you don't want him to have, like cookies.
It's amazing how much the quality of your dinner time will improve once you remove the "battle" aspect from it.
I didn't read the other PP so sorry for duplicates. While this is not uncommon at all, it is a little bit early, I would try and double check that there are no texture adversion/swallowing issues and if that isn't a problem then just brace yourself for the loong haul. I thought that 'fixing' a picky eater would be easy until I had one. At 17 months I would give your LO something that you know that he will eat (even if it is just bread) along with a few thing he won't/hasn't in the past. I think it is important to present it all at the same time so that he doesn't think that if I refuse this I get what I want, but don't make it an issue, he either eats or not. I would also cut the baby food, I'm not a nutrionist but I would be concerned about too much soft food and that becoming a preference and him developing a texture aversion.
This has been a long road, but we are starting to see progress with my 2.5 yo. Around 2 we started attaching more strings. If she tries a bite of everything on her plate she can have PB&J if she doesn't like her food and she can have dessert if she tries all her food (which happens maybe once a week). We also now make her try a bite of something else before she can have seconds of something she likes. She often doesn't touch her dinner, she can have something from the fruit bowl, but that is it after dinner, she is hungry in the morning but sleeps all night. Oh and ironically, she eats tons of stuff at daycare that she won't touch with a 10 ft pole for me. GL
I have found that day care snacks them later and later as they get bigger. So DS is usually eating a snack at 4 or 4:30 when I pick him up. When we eat dinner at 5:30 or 6:00 he is often not really hungry and prefers snacky foods. Day care also feeds them snacks that I would consider meals, as they have kids that are there until 6:30. So a bowl of chicken noodle soup is more like a meal to me.
I send DS snacks based on what they have on the menu each day. Today they were having grilled cheese sandwiches as a snack so I sent fruit for DS. If he has a grilled cheese at 4:30 he will not eat dinner!
This is the basic philosophy I've followed. When DD was younger, she regularly got a few pretzels or grapes on her plate b/c I knew she would always eat those. At least 1/2 the time, she'd end up eating the rest. I rarely comment on DD's food choices.
Last night, I made chicken and black beans and rice (and a banana. .. ). DD didn't want the chicken but ate all the black beans and rice she was served and then asked for a yogurt, which we got her. That's a fine meal to me. There were no tears, no screaming. She eats chicken most of the time so for whatever reason she didn't want it last night.
I offer one food at a time. Usually veggies first (or the least likely to be eaten food first). Do one new food plus one you know he will eat. I have also been guilty of sneaking veggies or chicken into applesauce.