Wednesday, September 28, 2011
I need help
my issue for the past weeks or possibly months is this.... Colby hardly eats! i'm a picky eater, and andrew is picky with textures...when you put that together you get a child that doesn't eat! I don't know if anyone has figured out sneaky ways to get their child to eat. Here's our situation, for breakfast i feed him a banana (sometimes he eats almost the whole thing, sometimes it's 2 bites) then he has maybe a couple crackers and goes to town on milk. For lunch i can get him to eat a chicken nugget and maybe a little bit of string cheese (if he's in the mood). for dinner...NOTHING. i try to feed him what we're eating, but he wont touch anything if it's not chicken nuggets or fruit. he wont even put it near his mouth. i try to feed him yogurt and such, but he wont eat anything off his spoon because he thinks i'm giving him baby food (which he hates now). eventually i get desperate and right before bed i'll give him a bagel (which he'll have a couple bites) and then i give him more fruit. the last couple nights i haven't given him fruit because i don't want him to get used to the thought "if i don't eat that, i'll get fruit" but then again i don't know if he's too young for me to be putting my foot down that much? i know he drinks a lot of milk, so thats basically where he's getting the idea that he's full, but even when i take his milk away he still wont eat food that easily. as far as veggies go, SOMETIMES he'll have corn, but veggies usually don't happen. oh and 1 more thing...i haven't been feeding him in the high chair because all he does is throw his food over the edge and i get mad, so i just put a plate on the floor and he eats on the go. it's not what i want him to do, but i need him to eat! any advice?
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Oh boy. This sounds like Kaleb at Colby's age. It's so frustrating, I know. It does get better. Sometimes kids don't need as much food as other times because they're not growing. If he was starving, he would eat. And I didn't believe it when people said that to me either. :)
ReplyDeleteA few things I thought of when reading your post: Maybe establish certain meals when he can have milk. So he knows that only for breakfast and at bedtime does he get milk. That will limit the space it's taking up. In those two meals (and maybe a snack during the day) should be enough milk for his diet.
Also, have you looked in the baby aisle for some veggie snacks? They make crackers now that have servings of veggies in them for kids like Colby. It's better than no veggies, right?
Another idea: do you have a booster seat that straps to the chair? Because if you do, then you could put that on the floor, but strap him in so he knows that he has to stay put when you eat. But then it's not so far to drop stuff and drive you crazy. I think that's part of the reason kids do it.
Hope those help. Either way, feeding children can be one frustrating thing! Kaleb never eats any of the dinners I make! UGH!
Lucy was the same way with not wanting to be fed after she started refusing baby food, but she has surprisingly come around recently because in our new apartment her high chair has to be on the carpet because our kitchen is teeny tiny, and I didn't want her to be throwing her food over the edge when it was really messy, so I started feeding her some things again and she will take it now. :) Whoa, that was a long sentence. Anyways, umm, I don't really have any advice, I like Kadie's though. :) And I do agree with the whole he will eat if he's hungry, because I worried about that with taking Lucy off her bottle, I was very worried that she wasn't going to get enough to drink, but she seems to be doing just fine and I think that applies to eating too. But I hope he starts getting better just for your peace of mind! :)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.askdrsears.com/topics/feeding-infants-toddlers/feeding-picky-eater-17-tips I like this quote: "our job is simply to buy the right food, prepare it nutritiously, and serve it creatively. We leave the rest up to the kids. How much they eat, when they eat, and if they eat is mostly their responsibility"
ReplyDeleteDon't stress, Tara. Our job as parents is to help kids have a healthy attitude about food, and encourage them to trust their bodies - when he's hungry, he will eat. I have also read that while what they eat in a 24 hour period might not seem balanced, over the course of a few days (or a week), it works out to be more balanced, so he ends up getting all his nutrients... if that makes sense.
One other thing - in my child nutrition classes in college, I learned that you have to introduce a food at LEAST 10 times for a kid to TRY it, and another 10 times before they LIKE it. So just keep offering good food, and he'll come around. Just don't force it.
ReplyDeleteI think maybe it's the age? All my kids have been that way at about a year. If you just keep introducing it he might surprise you one day and just take a bite. Just hang in there.
ReplyDeleteSo funny...kind of. I just can totally relate. My little guy is the craziest eater, he throws stuff sometimes and that is really annoying, (still trying to figure out how to get that to stop) and if he can't squish the food with his fingers he won't eat it...so feel lucky that Colby at leasts eats chicken nuggets. :) We have the same problem with veggies, and of course he loves fruit. If you can figure out a solution I'm all ears...it sounds like they have the same issues. :) Not fun for us. :) good luck!
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