Very limited diet toddler advice?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Everything you said, but especially this. I also model this for my kids by trying things I think I don’t like, and…whaddaya know, you don’t outgrow this phenomenon of someday enjoying things you once disliked! In the past year, I’ve suddenly developed a taste for zucchini, and a tolerance for whole chickpeas. (Lima beans, sadly, are still Yuck. But I keep trying!) When I find one of these, I am sure to say so, out loud, so they know what’s going on. “Wow, I’ve never liked zucchini before, but this is really good! I’m so glad I tried it again!”

But also this:

It’s likelier than anything else that this is a behavior issue of trained parents, but given the other couple of concerns with this particular child - none of which are worrisome taken individually, but may add up to something more significant - I’m thinking a consultation would not be a bad idea.

22

Dammit, I came here for the “Diet Toddler” jokes and instead I get a bunch of practical parenting advice? What the hell is wrong with you people?

23

I’d make a terrible dad.

‘I don’t want this!’
‘That’s what we’re having. Eat it, or don’t.’

I had meningitis when I was an infant or thereabouts. (I have no recollection of it.) My parents took me to the Navy hospital. The doctor took one look at me and said, ‘We’re taking him.’ It seems that I refused to eat when I was there. The doctor and the dietician couldn’t offer me anything I’d eat. My mom said, ‘Feed him brussels sprouts.’ They looked at her as if she were mad. But she insisted, and they tried it. They were, I’m told, surprised that I ate them heartily. I’ve always liked those tiny mutant cabbages. :slight_smile: (My sister is fond of reminding me that, due to the doctor-order diet to get me the nutrients they said I needed, I got to eat lamb chops while she had to eat fish sticks or something.)

24

I’m a supertaster (I had a test for it), and I can tell you that the water pasta is cooked in affects the flavor more than the brand of pasta. The kid is four. He probably sees the box. I wonder what he’d do if the parents put a different brand in the box of the brand he likes.

I’m also inclined to put food in front of him, and tell him this is dinner, and that’s the way it is, but I would take him to the doctor first. It would be horrible to do that to a child who turned out to be one in a million with a rare metabolic problem, or Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. Also, it is possible for small children to show symptoms of OCD. It’s unusual, as people who have the disorder as adults usually don’t have symptom onset until adolescence, but there are young children who show symptoms.

How verbal is this child? with a four-year-old, you should be able to lay down the law, and tell him that he is eating what the rest of the family eats. If he doesn’t have those verbal skills, then autism is a real possibility, and I’m surprised he hasn’t already been evaluated. But at any rate, even autistic children can have their food preferences increased. There are a lot of behavior techniques for introducing new foods to autistic children with limited repertoires.

A four-year-old in normal health will not starve if he doesn’t eat for a day; as long as he has free access to water, he’ll be fine, although this is another thing to talk to his pediatrician about.

Personally, if this were my kid, I would start at the pediatrician’s office. Make sure the child does not have an underlying disorder, and the pediatrician is not concerned about his development, then ask how long an experiment in withholding his preferred foods should be allowed to go on before the parents need to give in, or offer him something like a PediaSure, for the sake of his health. If he really does hold out for an extraordinarily long time, he needs to be evaluated for something: what exactly, again, the pediatrician can advise.

25

Off-topic, but I just wanted to reassure you that this is super-normal. Most kids are relatively adventurous as babies/early toddlers, and then hit a phase (for mine it was around age 2) when they only want what is familiar, and sometimes not even that. There is a theory that this is adaptive behavior to protect children that are old enough to wander from sticking random poisonous berries and whatnot into their mouths.

Anyway, all of mine have more or less grown out of it. They still have some stuff they don’t care for (but then, don’t we all?) but they’re not in that super-picky stage anymore.

26

I am of the opinion that it is a lot more important to have a relationship of support and trust than to force your kid to eat what you think they should be eating. My toddler went through the common “white food” period, the “foods cannot touch or mix” period, and also a period where she wanted to drink about a half gallon of apple juice a day. We just went with it without comment. I’d offer a wide variety of foods but if she didn’t want to eat them, so be it.

Now she eats a lot more types of food than I do (as an adult). It just took her awhile. I remember being a very “picky” eater, and I was picky because a lot of what normal people eat made me nauseous to even look at it. Canned spinach, creamed vegetables, velveeta cheese, hot dogs, pickle relish, bologna, mayonnaise, mustard, canned tuna, for a few right off the top of my head. Most of these I still can’t eat.

What I’m saying is, adults have an extremely strong urge to ignore children’s feelings and force them to ‘behave’. Being empathetic (not sympathetic, or pandering) is uncomfortable, even painful. You might slide into re-experiencing the inarticulate powerlessness of childhood yourself, and nobody wants to go there.

Let your kid eat what he wants, he’ll get over it if you eat healthy yourself.

27

He does have to get enough vitamins and protein. He doesn’t have to be a gourmand, but he eats three things. If his pediatrician says not to worry about it, and to continue giving him the limited diet he wants, because he’s getting enough vitamins, protein and fiber, then fine. But there’s a reason to encourage children to eat a variety of foods, and it’s to make sure they get a balanced diet.

I’ve worked with autistic people who had a limited food repertoire, and some of them had to have supplements with things like Ensure with fiber mixed in. Otherwise they would get sick.

I let my son pick what he wants for breakfast and lunch, as long as he picks from categories of food, so he has a balanced diet, and at dinner, we have a “one bite” rule, which means he has to have some of everything on the table on his plate, and he has to taste everything, but he doesn’t have to eat a whole portion of it.

He’s 7, and really enjoys picking out his breakfast and lunch foods, and now helps in he prep. Pretty soon, he’ll be making his own lunches the night before school, and he knows how to pack a balanced meal. He’s been working on picking his own foods, and learning food groups since he was 4. Of course, we’re lucky in that he isn’t especially picky. Our biggest problem with him is that he doesn’t like to have the same thing twice in a row. If he had something for dinner last night, he doesn’t want it for lunch today.

28

Kids can go a couple days without eating and still be fine, but they’re usually hungry enough after a day to eat something. If it seems like they’re only eating one or two things all the time, stop offering that for a while. As long as there are choices in any given meal they can decide if they only want to eat, say, half the broccoli but all the mac & cheese. (Clean plate club?—power struggle and lays the groundwork for eating disorders, as does pandering to their likes and dislikes which doesn’t take care of the problem either and usually makes it worse in the long run, then crops up in other areas…bedtime, manners, homework, curfew, work ethic…) (Oh yeah, you’re going to be a parent for a long time.)

As long as they’re eating a variety of foods over about a week they’re getting the nutrients they need over all. If you take them to the doctor first you’ve already established This Is A Big Deal so try to be laid back about it first. Obviously though, do have them checked out if they’re still not eating at all.

A smile and a shrug will get you through a whole lot of phases. Make sure you’re clear about what’s expected and give them some time to comply in their own way. That way everybody “wins”, it’s not An Issue, and there’s more time for the fun stuff. They might come up with a new way to fix Brussels sprouts.

29

He doesn’t have to know what the doctor visit is for. Little kids go to the doctor for routine check-ups, and they get colds and things like strep a lot more often than adults do, so a four-year-old doesn’t need to know he’s going to the doctor for questions about his diet. One specific brand of pasta, chicken only from KFC, and infant cereal is very restricted, and just odd enough to merit checking in with the doctor.

It sounds like there already might be some behavior issues, too, for the parents to have narrowed down the diet to these foods, especially the pablum, and asking the doctor about handling them is worth a visit as well.

30

Grudge, if he communicates by bringing you the cereal and milk, and tries to get pots out for the pasta, does this mean he doesn’t verbally ask for it? How much is he talking?

31

On first read I really rolled my eyes at posters mentioning autistic spectrum based on this alone, but there have been several mentions now of other issues and concerns and while a diagnostic label would not really change how you deal with this particular issue too much, if this is part of a whole package of developmental … variations … then maybe the concern is not so eye roll worthy. The fact that you referred to a 4 year old as a toddler might be telling us something. A label, if appropriate, can open up a whole toolbox of support and interventions.

What has been the tempo and pattern of his learning communication skills? Do you remember when he first started to pretend play? How does he play now? How does he interact with other kids? What does he find funny at this point? How is he at self help skills? At adapting to changes in the usual routine other than these food choices? What would you label as his greatest strengths? Where does he seem to lag?

32

We did the “this is dinner, don’t like it, don’t eat” approach. I’m not making five custom meals every night, screw that. Couple of caveats, though.

If we made spaghetti for dinner, spaghetti, salad, some type of bread. A child could eat just pasta without sauce, or just salad, or just bread, or any combinations of their choice. But that was dinner.

The only other exception was if we made a very strongly flavored meal, or something a specific kid didn’t like. They could make their own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but that was the only option.

Nobody has any food issues, and all are a healthy weight.

33

My kids are teens now, and my son has a diagnosis of Asperger’s, but I distinctly recall making meals with the well known and preferred items, and also consistently adding small servings of one or two “new” things.

My boy ate chicken strips and mashed potatoes, and the adults liked that fine, too, so I would round out the meal and the adults options with simple things such as some cherry tomatoes or some green beans, for example. I never required the kids to eat or even acknowledge the new item, but over time the new items became familiar items, if not liked items. I never made any big deal about if and what they ate- I just made a good variety of offers and let them choose. Food is subject to so many personal issues and I just wanted healthy family meals that pleased as many as possible. I believe my son’s food issues were about texture, not taste.

The “new” item would be routinely ignored and regarded as a foreign invader at first, but then it would become a boring plate decoration, and at some point it would often become an edible item. This took time and patience and often resulted in food waste (which I hate), but in the end it was worth it.

34

My four-year-old is doing the same thing (after being an adventurous eater as a two-year-old). I cannot let her go hungry as some posters have suggested, as when she gets hungry she starts getting out-of-control emotional and practically hysterical. (She gets this from me. In retrospect, a lot of issues I had as a kid stem from my emotional control just being completely absent when I was hungry, and no one realizing it.)

We have one “comfort meal” – white rice and beans – that she is allowed to have if she doesn’t like what’s for dinner (it helps that she is happy to eat this, which we usually have in the rice cooker, so it’s not really an imposition to give it to her). She is also required to eat a (small) amount of vegetables before she can eat the rest of her meal. And whatever we’re having, she has to try one bite to see if she likes it (as others have noted, she has found things she likes which she didn’t realize she liked, although it’s more usual that she declaims she doesn’t like whatever it is).

35

Mine is two and a half, but we deal with food in a couple of different ways. First is that we don’t ever talk about food in a negative way. Broccoli isn’t gross, it is green or healthy. Pizza isn’t fattening, it is tasty or cheesy. Food is spoken of in only positive or neutral terms. It doesn’t make her eat everything all the time but it does stop her from automatically believing something to be terrible before she has tasted it.

We also clap and cheer whenever she eats something new. She is at a point now where she loves getting claps and cheers so much she will seek out new foods just for the excitement of having us cheer for her. If she tries a bunch of new things or eats a four bites of something that isn’t particularly her favorite (carrots, watermelon, etc.) we will actually stand up, dance and sing while we clap. It is a little bit of overkill but if it means she is getting some variety I will make an ass out of myself in the privacy of my dining room without a second thought.

36

If KFC went under and the pasta and sauce recipes changed, the child would surely learn to eat something else. Let him keep the baby cereal option and offer him a choice of a couple of healthy foods every meal. Don’t get him KFC or his special pasta/sauce for like a year.
Autistic or not, being extremely picky is very unpleasant. He needs your help to get past this.

37

This is true, and the reason that there are several (non-punitive) behavioral techniques for expanding the diets of autistic children. It’s not part of autism, really, just the result of poor communication skills of the autistic child, the same way that tantrums are not a natural or necessary part of autism, but they tend to come more frequently, and for a longer time (that is, until an older age) from an autistic child, because the child sometimes gets frustrated with his inability to communicate-- or he thinks he has, and doesn’t “get” the response.

38

Have you asked him to “help” you make dinner? He doesn’t actually have to do anything, maybe just hand you the ingredients, or even help you stir things. Maybe he’ll feel more like eating something that he helped with.

Also, would he be willing to take a multi-vitamin?

39

I was a very picky eater as a kid (and still now as an adult). I probably would have starved myself to an unhealthy level had I been forced to eat what was made without my input. I have major food issues still because of the methods used on me, how they didn’t work with my personality and tastes.

So when my kid refused to eat, I worked with it. By 4, my kid could help me cook some things. The urge to try new things increases if the kid helps shop for it, prep it, cook it, plate it. As language improves, kids can say “I like peanut butter, not peanut butter and jelly”. They have the vocabulary and the ability to get specific. I’m sure some 2-year olds can do that, but it’s harder for some kids. Hell, even now as an adult I can’t tell you why I like tomato sauce but won’t eat tomatoes.

My kid also had some physical issues. Whether they were caused by the not-eating or a symptom of it, I’ll never know. Mine just plain old wouldn’t eat, so it’s a little different from being picky, but when there was eating, it was picky eating.

It’s very, very different now. I get asked “Can I try this?” We haven’t added much new to the diet, but at least everything I make gets TRIED.

I read a book once that just said not to stress out over every meal and it changed my whole outlook. I used to cry because there was like 200 calories being consumed in a meal, ribs showing through clothes. Every skipped meal was a nightmare. But I just did my best and when he grew up, a lot of it passed. I couldn’t change the diet, but I could change how I perceived it. And when we have regular-kid pickyness now? It’s not that hard to cook some frozen chicken nuggets or pull out a lunchables or make a PB&J. It’s better for ME to make something different for us both and let it go than to force feed a kid.

There is no magical answer, as every kid is different and doesn’t eat for myriad reasons. Just don’t sweat it, see a doctor if it affects growth. Involve him in the process.

Plus when mine went to school? A HUGE change. Part of it was being so hungry from all the activity, but it was also due to seeing what all the other kids did every day.

40

A bit more than that: behavioral rigidity, the need for sameness and predictability, restricted/repetitive behaviors, and extreme sensory high and low reactivity (depending on the sort) are really part of the package for many. It is not just the poor communication skills.

Whether or not this child ends up with a label, if he stays on a food strike for days when given only a variety of healthy choices of what is the family meal (and snacks) to choose between, then the techniques used for autistic children with severe food issues may be worth considering …