I’ve been thinking about posting a thread about this. The Dudeling (2+ y.o) isn’t picky per se, but eats minimal vegetables and lots of simple proteins and grains. I want to pull everything except veggies and dole out the gruel, meats and cheeses in proportion to his intake (loosely based on the ‘myplate’ concept). He’s of healthy weight and we’ve plenty of fresh and various veggies to choose from.
I have no problem putting in earplugs until he gets hungry enough to eat a bowl of broccoli, as long as he’s not going to keel over. Mrs. Devil on the other hand…
Not really. Some kids are much more interested in the world around them than in eating. If I never put food in front of Celtling it would not occur to her. I’ve tested this thoroughly - she’d happily starve as long as she was intellectually challenged. She might eventually get tired and grumpy, but she’d solve that by going to sleep before it would occur to her to eat.
She’s nearly five now, and I’ve taught her slowly but surely that this feeling needs food to fix it. But it was by no means a natural connection for her, or anything that she had a natural drive to do.
Not a parent but as a babysitter I did get a few kids (under age 5) to enjoy vegetables with gusto by stir frying them (very quickly!) and by roasting. Try different oils too, like peanut or sesame.
And definitely go to the grocery store and try stuff you yourself may not eat or be on your radar, like beets or kale or whatever.
Another idea for older kids (i.e., kids who can chew) - dips. My oldest went through a stage where he’d eat anything if he had “dippy sauce”. Vegetables into salad dressing, fruit into yogurt, meats into whatever sauce works.
I also second the grazing idea someone mentioned up thread. On a parenting board once, someone suggested putting a bunch of different small, snacky (but healthy) things in a muffin pan and just leaving it within reach throughout the day. My kids have always grazed a lot and it is a healthy way to eat, as long as what you’re grazing on is healthy.
LOL - I think all babies gravitate toward a cat bowl if there is one available - we don’t have cats, but the first time we visited someone who did while Moon Unit was crawling, I put her down, and a minute later heard :::rattle::: and KNEW what was going on.
The foods your baby will eat are at least nutritious, so be thankful for that. I was going to say that very few kids will truly starve themselves, then I re-read and saw that weight gain is a concern in your situation.
My personal suggestion would be to always have some acceptable foods on offer as well as a bit of what you’re eating. I would think that once she starts to notice what you’re having, those cogs will turn and her brain will think “Hmmmm, mommy and daddy really seem to love that haggis, I think I’ll eat it too!!”.
Calorie-wise, you can sneak extra calories into what she’s eating. For example full-fat cottage cheese vs. low-fat (if you’re not already doing that).
It’s not unheard-of for kids to lose interest in eating when there are all these sudden new skills (like standing!!) that are more interesting.
Might standing-height grazing foods be an option? e.g. leaving foods out at a table where she can grab them and snack during brief breaks in the playtime?
How does she respond to the high chair? Is it a torture device? If she’s OK with it in reasonable amounts, could you plunk her into it for snacks every hour or so, for just a couple minutes?
My personal WAG is (barring any true health issue) that she’ll eventually settle down to a reasonable pattern, height/weight wise, and she might just be destined to be on the slender side of average - which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I would guess that it’s the increasing disparity between the height / weight percentiles that is the concern. If that levels off, they won’t worry so much.
Perhaps letting her graze is a good idea. All of the baby books are against it, which is why I haven’t tried it. A muffin tin of things on the floor (things that won’t get ground into the carpet, I might add…) could really help the situation though, especially since she’s so interested in eating anything she picks up from the floor. She almost ate a SPIDER this morning fcs.
Dweezil came >>this close<< to eating a housefly (similarly not kosher, especially since it was already dead when I spotted it and no knowing HOW it was slaughtered, LOL). I saw it on the floor, went to grab a tissue to pick it up, and by the time I got back, Dweezil had it in his hand and the hand was headed to his mouth. He was PISSED when I took it away :p.
My kid is two and a half and has been through a couple of picky phases. Like yours, though, she always decided on a restricted diet that was pretty balanced. Garlicky green beans have always featured very heavily.
We’ve always just gone with option 4 - a mixture of new stuff and her choices. Often mixed together - like when she decided cheese wasn’t food, I stopped giving it to her plain, but we’d mix a touch of it into the pasta bolognese that she loved, so she started to get accustomed to the taste. After a month or so she quits being picky again.
I’m very strongly against making food a Huge Big Deal in any way. I figure making food into some emotionally charged source of upset and tension and confusion will have much worse consequences than giving her green beans instead of broccoli. Also, with a toddler (which I know yours isn’t yet), a lot of issues are about flexing their will, rather than actual pickiness. If you decide to turn something into a battleground, the defiance will last a lot longer than if you refuse to allow any emotional charge to seep in.
If you doctor wants to run tests on her because her weight falls further, is that a huge big deal? What would such testing involve? Why work yourself into a lather to avoid it if it’s not really a big deal, anyway? Maybe she actually has a problem that such testing would reveal, in which case you’ll be glad you had it, and maybe it would show that there’s nothing wrong with her and you’d be able to just carry on. What’s the downside?
I would keep offering her a reasonable variety of foods, on a predictable schedule, and let her eat or not eat whatever she does. If you’re introducing something that you know she doesn’t like as the main dish (or suspect that she won’t), then make sure there is a side that she likes. Then just let her eat what she’s going to eat. If you haven’t read them yet, you might be interested in the works of Ellyn Satter. I like Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family, but any of them will do, really.
Do they give any justification? I always thought frequent small meals were healthier for adults - why not for wee people with wee little stomachs? (Snacks aren’t necessarily unhealthy.)
With five kids of my own, plus numerous nieces, nephews, cousins, friends’ kids, etc., I’ve seen the whole range of eating preferences, and everyone from “eats anything not nailed down” kid to “eats only four foods” kid has grown and thrived, if that makes you feel any better. For a busy little one like yours, though, I’d second advice already offered: let her graze when possible (Cheerios spilled from the tin onto the floor won’t kill her,) offer dipping sauces to make meals more interesting and interactive, and continue to offer a variety of foods. Naturally, you worry (I have one of those long skinny babies, too. She gets a hemoglobin check at every doctor visit, but she is maintaining her own growth pattern, developing normally, etc., so the pediatrician isn’t worried.)
The big issue is that virtually everyone will offer well-intended advice, often couched in always/never terms. But as a parent, you know your child best, and you figure out what works for your family. There are virtually no “always/never” situations in the wild and crazy world of parenthood. So if ketchup is the magic elixir to get my girls to eat meats? BFD. The extra vitamin C helps them absorb iron more efficiently, and mealtime is civilized, and it works, no matter that my mother thinks it’s an affront. It’s not like the kids are requesting a bottle of Heinz at a state dinner or in a five diamond restaurant!
P.S. For every baby book that says “never let kid do X,” you will find another that offers exactly the opposite advice. Trust yourself.
Poor kids, did you know that when they approach the age they start to walk, their palate changes. Everything, especially veg etc, becomes bitter. This is actually a clever way of preventing toddlers from eating dangerous things, but very unfortunate for the children, to whom everything genuinely tastes horrible while the adults don’t understand. I’ll see if I can find a cite for this, I read it somewhere…
I’ve never worked with children that young, so I can’t really say regarding the weight problem. However, I worked with children 4+ and we had a very strict policy. It was: finish the veg first, absolutely everything else comes after (veg was always our problem). They would have the pleasure of sitting at the table for an extra hour with nasty me and a plate of vegetables. First screaming, cursing, threatening. Later just crying. At breakfast they would see another plate of vegetables and another hour of screaming. I always really felt for them, I could tell it wasn’t naughty or fun but they really, really hated eating certain things.
It never lasted long, at most 3-4 meals and that’s if they managed to sneak other food. In the end they all learned to quickly down the vegetables and then go for what they liked. All of them, no exceptions. Once we got through the hard part, it was fine after that.
Maybe you should save that policy for later, when she can better understand these things, and just try to be strict for now, while still making sure that she eats something. If she is accustomed to some strictness regarding supper, it will probably be easier when she is older and is fully expected to eat certain things.
IMHO the goal is to find the sweet spot that is neither a food fascist or a short order cook.
As parents our job is to offer a wide variety of fruits, veggies, grains, and protein sources, to not give the chance to fill up on junk, and to otherwise bug out.
That sort of parenting style is referred to as “authoritative” by the academics, and is, compared to the more rigid “authoritarian” and the more lax “permissive” and “neglectful” styles, associated with much less risk or later obesity and disordered eating.
If she does not find a curve to follow (and 25%ile, 5%ile, heck 1%ile, are all fine curves so long as she follows it along once she finds it … some people are lanky and it is okay) then she needs to be evaluated for the things your doc is thinking of, but not because she is thin, because she is consistently crossing curves down.
The books are recommending three meals with one or two snacks as necessary–just that food is available at certain times and they eat it then, or they wait until the next food time. It’s part of civilizing them, teaching them that some things happen at some times etc. Also at this stage they’re such messy eaters that it’s gotta happen in the high chair, so the logistics of grazing are complicated… as I just found out when I left a dish of Cheerios on the floor, and Mimi promptly up-ended it and scattered the Cheerios all over the kitchen floor (sigh).
I’m a fan of Dr. Spock but not of his late conversion to veganism, and I collect editions of his book because it’s so interesting to see how his advice changes over the decades. He’s a big advocate of a “hands off” approach to feeding kids, but the older editions say to feed the baby three meals but no snacks. I can’t do that with Mimi and it isn’t the way people live in the 21st century. So she gets her early bottle at 5:30 (when she’s still asleep and doesn’t object), breakfast around 8, lunch at 11, snack at 3, and dinner at 6.
You’re right that it isn’t really a big deal, and I know other moms who have gone through the same nonsense. It works me into a lather because in her first two weeks of life, I failed to breast feed her. Lactating hurt me, and she was a slow and largely disinterested eater even then. She didn’t gain weight like she should have, she got a little dehydrated, she was lethargic, I was hormonal and constantly in tears (on top of recovering from the c-section), my husband and I were new parents and so stressed that we had nasty fights over what to do, and the lactation consultant was a real stinker who shattered my self-confidence by telling me that EVERYTHING I did was wrong, wrong, wrong.
So I’ve got some lingering issues about being able to feed my daughter and have her thrive. I try to contain them, but the experience of having had a newborn that I couldn’t feed… ugh. Especially since I’d airily assumed I’d be able to do it.
I was going to post a lighthearted quip, but first, Sattua please stop using the word “failure” about your attempts at breastfeeding. It did not work out for you. That’s OK. You tried your best but circumstances outside of your control did not allow that particular path to go forward. And you had crappy advice. A lactationist is supposed to be your advocate :mad: One of the many suprises I had as a new dad (I’m Mama Zappa’s husband, BTW) was that breastfeeding is not simple. You’d think that something the survival of the species depended on would be fall-off-a-log simple and a zillion percent reliable. Nope, not close on either score.
Anyway, please let that one go. You’ll have so many other things to feel guilty about … Or as my aunt said (and she’s just about the best Mom I know) “You’re not really a parent until you’ve dropped the kid on his head the first time.”
What I came here to post was the book Gregory, the Terrible Eater. Gregory is a goat who does not like to eat tin cans or old shoes, and his parents are concerned. Fun story! I read it to my kids often, back in the day.
(BTW, if any of what I wrote is less than supportive, or if it does not help you feel better, it’s my fault. As the southerners say, “Bless his heart, he means well but he can’t help it.”)
Have you tried giving her some choices about what to eat? Not in a, “What do you want for dinner?” kind of way but more along the lines of, “Do you want peaches or strawberries with dinner?” Everything I’ve read has indicated to me that children behave much better when given a little bit of control.
This is solely based on what I’ve read though. My kid isn’t old enough for this to be an issue yet so I am fully prepared to chuck the books out the window if that doesn’t work but it seems logical to me.
You know what? I think you’re worrying too much. My children are grown now and as I look at young mothers I realize how much worry is wasted over trivial things. We get caught up in being perfect parents and raising perfect little people. Just take a deep breath and relax.
If your baby doesn’t like certain foods, who cares? Just let her eat what she wants for now. When she’s older and you can reason with her, then you can start insisting on trying a bite of this or that with each meal. But she’s way too little for all that. At her age, all she needs to know is that food is good, meal time is happy and you love her.
The ‘20 yucks to one yum’ rule from the best parenting book I have ever read. He explains that you really don’t have to worry about it. Luckily below is the bit in question.
Or as my aunt said (and she’s just about the best Mom I know) “You’re not really a parent until you’ve dropped the kid on his head the first time.”