Parenting advice about a picky eater...

In My Humble Opinion
1

And the picky eater in question is only ten months old, and I’m not even sure she’s “picky”, it may be her lack of teeth bothering her. Anyway, here is the situation:

My daughter is a congenitally slow eater. She’s also never been super enthusiastic about eating. She doesn’t have a whole lot of patience for it. She’s also a fierce individualist and no longer accepts spoon feeding and barely accepts bottles. She can’t yet handle a spoon or get very much out of her sippy cup, so things are tough right now.

She is also a skinny baby, at 75th percentile for height and 25th for weight. She was born at the 60th percentile for weight, and that began dropping off when she was six months old. The doctor has said that if it drops again at her twelve month appointment, we’ll need to run some labs on her to make sure there isn’t a health problem.

She’s also, right now, SO uninterested in eating (and SO interested in crawling, climbing, and eating lint from the floor) that sometimes she won’t eat enough in the course of the day to let her sleep through the night. Then I have to get up for a 2am feeding. That makes me tired.

So here’s the issue: there are a few finger foods which I know she will eat with gusto, in large amounts. They are buttered pasta, cottage cheese, green beans and oranges. There’s a constellation of other foods that she will eat sometimes, and of course many other foods we’ve never tried on her.

I don’t want to raise a picky eater, and was going to just give her some of whatever we were eating every night. Well, that often results in her eating no dinner at all and needing MULTIPLE overnight feedings. I don’t think I can continue with this hard line, especially since her intolerance for the bottle (a “feeding” is often 3-4 ounces) means she requires lots of them to fill in when she doesn’t eat solids.

Doper Parents: in this situation, which course would you take,

  1. Continue the hard-line eat-what-we-eat tactic, make the baby skinnier, keep losing sleep

  2. Give her the things she wants often and offer new things sometimes, watch her miss some meals and not gain as much weight as she could, lose some sleep

  3. Just give her what she wants to eat, hope she gains weight on it, sleep well.

?

2

Option 4. Give her some of what you’re having for the first half of your meal and supplement with the things she will eat for the second half.

This will cause problems, as she will just wait for the things she wants however I would worry more about her weight at this point than the bad habits you’re creating.

Oh or maybe option 5 - a portion of what you know she will eat along with a portion of what you are eating at the same time. She may still not try the new foods but at least you’re less likely to be teaching her that if she waits long enough she’ll get what she wants.

3

Since she needs to focus on keeping her weight up, I would do a combination of 2 & 3 - give her a couple things she likes at every meal (making up the bulk of the meal), along with some tastes of new foods on the side.

I have two kids - an adventure eater (who is underweight) and a picky eater (who is right on track for weight). I think offering new foods is always good, but some kids are just going to be “picky”. With my youngest, it’s the different textures that get him.

4

What I did with my two was give them their regular foods that they liked and added a small amount of something new almost every time. But I never made them eat the new thing or made any big deal about it. Generally, they ate kid foods and we ate adult foods, but we always offered some of whatever we were having with whatever they were having (of course, provided it was appropriate- a 10 month old probably wouldn’t like or be able to handle, say, steamed asparagus).

The new thing would become less new if offered repeatedly and then it becomes and old thing that they either they like or don’t like.

My boy is still an incredibly slow eater and eats stuff in strange way (like sandwiches from the top layer down to the bottom), but that’s just his way.

5

Have you tried her with a straw cup as opposed to a sippy cup? My daughter took to that much easier than a sippy cup. As for the other suggestions I totally agree. That’s all you can do. I did that but I still ended up with a daughter who only eats bread, cheese, cereal, pancakes, pizza and mac and cheese. Literally. She will not touch a fruit or vegetable. She’s 8. At the same time, she’s healthy, she’s growing like a weed and her pediatrician says not to force food on her otherwise she’ll end up with food issues.

6

The good news is, green beans, oranges and cottage cheese is a damn healthy diet for a “picky” eater. Proteins, calcium, fiber, vitamins. Most would stop at “buttered noodles” so count your blessings.

As for advice, I have none, but wish you the best of luck. I just wanted to point out that what seems to you a desperately limited diet, may really not be so bad.

7

My baby is about the same age, although she is a good eater (sorry!). What they have in common though, is that she’s bored with being spoon-fed and bored with bottles, so we’ve moved mostly to finger food.

A lot of the things we eat can be made into finger food with minimal extra effort in the kitchen. Some are messier than others and other people might consider them barely finger foods because of the mess factor.

We do a combo of your 1 and 2 scenarios - she gets finger food versions of whatever we eat (by this I mean I make her portions before salting ours, although I do use other seasonings, or steam her portion of veggies longer because she really can’t have them al dente when she doesn’t have teeth) and will supplement with things I know she likes when what we’re eating doesn’t lend itself well to baby portions. I sometimes shift the dinner portion sizes to give her more of things that 1. are filling and 2. I know she likes IF I am feeling like she needs to eat more to get through the night.

Everything goes on her tray more or less at the same time, and sometimes she eats quickly and sometimes eats more slowly, and I think it has more to do with her mood than with food preferences.

Here are some finger foods that have worked well for us: any steamed veggie cut small (carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, squash, peas, baby corn, asparagus); banana or avocado chunks (they are slippery so I toss them in a baggie with crushed Cheerios, like the old Shake-n-Bake chicken, and she can grab them better); baked apple slices; cheese like cheddar or jack cut into small sticks; fork-pulled chicken, turkey, pork or beef; finger-pulled fish; regular potato or sweet potato home “fries”, toast cut into sticks with cream cheese.

My other suggestion is to put whatever you want her to eat in the cat’s dish … according to my daughter, the contents of the cat’s bowl are the most exciting things she could possibly put in her mouth. :smiley:

8

Heh heh. Through the rest of your post I was imagining Mimi throwing each of the foods you listed onto the floor. This made me laugh, though. The kid won’t eat hard cheese 75% of the time, but she looooooves cat food.

9

We got all the wrong advice for our daughter who started out picky and became pickier as time went by.

Everyone shrugged off our concerns that she was picky. At the age of maybe 3 or 4 she ate things like cottage cheese, peanut butter, buttered noodles, grilled cheese, toast, and maybe 3 or 4 other things, and that’s it. She would not try anything different and we didn’t force it.

Our doctor wasn’t concerned because weight was OK, and everyone we talked to said “yeah, well, she’ll grow out of it. Don’t worry.”

So, we didn’t worry. We kept offering new stuff, but she wouldn’t eat it. It got so bad that at one point I told her she wasn’t leaving the table till she tried a piece of turkey. She sat at the table with the turkey in her mouth, tears in her eyes, drooling into a napkin and me growing increasingly more impatient for about 30 minutes before I gave in.

I haven’t tried that since.

So, my advice, at this stage is please get her to keep trying new things. Even if it’s frustrating sometimes, she needs to keep trying new things.

My daughter’s height and weight at age 14 are normal, but she still won’t eat meat or vegetables and has stuck to the core of what she ate at 4 years old. I wish we were given different advice 10 years ago. It’s the one parenting thing I feel I’ve failed at.

My son, who is almost 13, will eat anything.

10

Leaffan, do you feel that your son is a good eater because you handled him differently, or just because it’s the way he is? Do you feel sure your daughter would be a better eater if you’d had the “fights” with her earlier?

11

I don’t think we did anything differently with our son; he just wanted to try everything and still does. They’re only 17 months apart in age so we didn’t know that we had a problem with the first one until the second one was eating anything and everything.

I think we should have had fights with her earlier. Well, not fights per se, but we should have made it very clear that she needed to try different foods. By the time we clued in that she wasn’t going to “grow out of it” it was too late.

As someone who also eats anything and everything I feel she is missing out on so much, not just from a culinary experience perspective, but it scares me from a health perspective too.

12

Sometimes I think about the number of times I’ve prevented the baby from eating cat food … and then I think about the number of times that implies that I didn’t realize she got into the cat food … and then I want to stop thinking about it!

13

I agree with Moonlitherial. I have heard (no, I don’t have a cite!) that it can take up to 25 times of eating a food before the child will like it. So even if she doesn’t like a food now, keep at it. But I agree that she should have food available that she does like. I don’t believe she should go hungry at this age. In general, I have found that picky eaters are born, not made. If you continue to offer her a variety of healthy finger foods (don’t skimp on the fat though! Babies/toddlers need fat), and make sure she does not go hungry, I think that’s all you need to do at this point. Kids this age often slim down a lot because they are so BUSY!

My son refused to eat pureed baby food from the very beginning. So I had to learn how to prepare table foods for him, but in the end it worked out really well because he could feed himself and I didn’t have to buy separate baby foods. To this day (he is 8) he won’t eat applesauce or mashed potatoes or anything with a smooth, pureed texture. He is still fairly picky. My daughter, on the other hand, will eat pretty much anything and has from the very beginning.

14

You are describing Celtling to a “T”. LOL! Food-optional, sleep-optional child. I know your pain.

I tried a million approaches, and you will too. One thing I found is that she is a grazer. She really only wants 5-6 bites of anything at any time. Except spaghetti with meatballs, which she will eat until she pops. LOL! This is really quite inconvenient, but it’s also the healthiest way to eat. Having a small appetite will serve her very well in the future, so I never push her to eat more than she is hungry for. I will remind her about the food if she’s distracted, but I never berate her to eat.

Do you have a super taster? Does she reject anything with bitterherbs in it? How to Tell if You are a Supertaster hate broccoli? Love peas? If so, this is not going away, and it’s not a control issue either.

Bottom line - she needs nutrition to grow and develop her full potential, so the key to survival is taking everything from the molecular level. Protein, vitamins, minerals, whole grains. Does she have at least one in each category? If so, you’re really fine. Give her a small bit of what you’re eating plus a meal of what you know she will eat. If you can find a multi-vitamin that she likes, score! give her one before dinner each night. It will give you the comfort to approach the rest calmly.

One thing I love is the Barilla “Plus” pasta. She loves it and it has much more fiber and protein (made with legume flour mixed in.) Don’t be fooled by the ones that say they have veggies in them though - read the nutritional data, you’re not winning anything for the extra money.

If she doesn’t like milk try soy milk. Don’t give in to the urge to fill her up with juice during the day. Even pure fruit juice has very little nutritional value, and will only suppress her appetite while increasing her sugar cravings.

Somebody mentioned the cup with a straw, this was a win for Celtling too - we get a lot more soymilk into her this way. You can get a bag of 100 straws at the dollar store. Also, a bowl of oatmeal or a banana before bed may help her get through the night.

When she’s a bit older (old enough to understand the rule - it’ll be different for every child) give her a small plate of what you’re eating , and make a plate of what she likes. After at least one bite of everything on plate one, she can have plate two. Eventually she will begin to ask for more of certain items from plate one. Slow but sure.

For now, put a taste of each element on your plate on one side of the dish, and a full meal of what she likes on the other. Do not police what she does or doesn’t eat at this stage! She is too young to think it through, and will just become reflexively defiant about trying new foods. It doesn’t have to be as overwhelming as it sounds. I make a big batch of rotini every Sunday so I can pull it out whenever I need to bulk up her meal. In most cases though, I can just pull elements of whatever I’m making as I go along and set them separately on her plate. (i.e. She loves noodles, tomato sauce and cheese - hates lasagna.) This is perfectly normal pre-schooler stuff.

Good luck, and hang in there!

15

Thanks, TruCelt. She isn’t a supertaster because she will almost always eat broccoli but has never voluntarily eaten peas or any orange vegetable. I often wonder if it has anything to do with the piles of broccoli I ate while I was pregnant.

Yep, I’m onto the Barilla thing. Fortunately she doesn’t seem to differentiate between different kinds of pasta, so she gets some good nutrition there.

I’ll have a look at the baby cup aisle and finds a good watertight straw one. She’s not bad at getting stuff out of her sippy cup, but she has a bad habit of flinging things on the floor right now. After three or four drops, my sippy-cup patience is usually through for the rest of the meal.

16

Yeah, I never retrieved anything more than once. This was not a game I wanted to play. Argh!

17

That little squirt just pulled herself up to stand for the first time.

18

One thing I always remember the doctor telling me about picky eaters:
A child will eat whatever you give them before they starve themselves to death.

Too many parents give in quickly when their kids refuse to eat what their given with the thinking “well, I have to give them something they’ll eat, I don’t want them to starve to death!”. They won’t.

19

But they will wake up every two hours all night if they haven’t eaten enough during the day. Also, your doctor will give you the stinkeye if their weight percentile keeps dropping off. Which is why this thread was started.

20

Congratulations! *

I’m agreeing with option 4, a mixed plate of favoured foods and new things. Could you mix a tabespoon of minced veges through her buttered pasta?

My kid was a great variety eater, but if she was having a ‘no eat’ day, nothing on heaven or earth would get a scrap of food past her lips so I remember the night feeds as well. [jaws voiceover] Just when you thought it was safe to hit the pillow [/jaws voiceover]
*Now go through the house and move everything breakable up another half metre.