My toddler hates eating

Parent Cafe
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<p>Sounds like you need a new pediatrician. </p>

<p>I have to say, that I never got very much good child-rearing advice from my kid’s pediatricians. There was ONE, who saw my daughter briefly in the hospital after she was born, who happened to have FIVE small kids of her own at home… and SHE had good advice. (Or at least – realistic – advice). </p>

<p>But I don’t think medical school includes any classes on parenting. There may be some pediatricians who have excellent advice to offer, but many are clueless as to the day-to-day realities of childrearing. </p>

<p>I have no opinion or knowledge on whether or not your d. may have an underlying medical problem. But I would concur with those posters who have suggested eliminating the power struggle, and trying to get a sense of what is is that your d. likes about baby foods. If it is the texture I would suggest try making your own – I say that because with home-made baby food, you can gradually decrease the processing over time. (In other words, the mashed bananas can become merely smushed bananas and later evolve to banana chunks and eventually banana slices). </p>

<p>Oh, and my son ate nothing but bean burritos for breakfast, lunch and dinner for about a year when he was age 5 or so. He did survive the experience.</p>

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<p>What is the big deal about your toddler eating baby food? (I’m directing this question to your pediatrician, not you!) It’s only pureed stuff. Plenty of us adults like “baby food”: mashed potatos, pureed squash, custard, pudding, etc etc.
Not all pediatricians have the best advice when it comes to the daily ins and outs of raising children. For one thing, many young ones don’t have their own children yet and can be pretty clueless. I know this from many years of close, personal experience!</p>

<p>Your child might have digestive difficulties. My S had (and still has) what the GI calls “irritable bowel syndrome”, which is essentially a catch-all for upset stomach that they can’t find the cause of. It has made it difficult for him to eat normally to this day (he’s now 25). For example, he doesn’t eat until late afternoon because any food he eats earlier just gives him diarrhea. He also has lactose intolerance.</p>

<p>My D didn’t eat food until she was almost a year old. She didn’t like it. She just wanted to nurse. So, I let her.</p>

<p>Does your child feed herself? Would she be more inclined to eat solid food if she could pick it up with her fingers? </p>

<p>sometimes, toddlers can be slow to eat. My D would ignore the food for a good 15 minutes, but as long as I didn’t take any notice of her behavior and left the food out, she would eventually start eating. </p>

<p>Here’s a suggestion: Maybe you could just leave a plate of some simple foods (blueberries, some plain noodles, other cut up fruit like watermelon --kids love watermelon) out where she could reach it. Don’t show it to her or even mention it to her, but every once in a while, when she’s watching you, pick up something and eat it. Smile, make a little comment to yourself, “Mmm, that’s good!” I would do this for as long as it takes, days, weeks, months, until she has a happier relationship to food. Even if she never tries any of it, you are modeling the kind of behavior and relationship to food that you want her to have. It can’t hurt.</p>

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<p>calmom, I see we are of like minds re pediatricians!</p>

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<p>She sounds like a small version of one of my kid’s friends. He has a VERY limited palette of foods–has tried other foods but they make him gag. Don’t know if it’s the texture or what, but something is going on. </p>

<p>I would say there’s nothing wrong with baby food for a while, and if you make your own you can achieve the texture she likes and include the nutrients YOU want her to have. </p>

<p>That and a multivitamin. :)</p>

<p>And I LOVE the idea of the teddy bear’s or dolly’s table!</p>

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<p>I refused to eat as a baby and toddler. I’d have two bites of something & I was done. My mother took me to our GP (no pediatrician for me, thanks) when I was about 2, and told him about it.
Dr: Is she sleeping a lot?
Mom: No.
Dr: Can she keep up with the other kids? Does she play & run & jump? Is she active? (This while I ran around his office & hid under his desk.)
Mom: Yes.
Dr: Leave her alone. No kid ever starved to death provided food was available.</p>

<p>I grew, thrived and never had a weight problem until I hit 40. (It turned out that my problem was oversized tonsils. It took me so long to eat, and I had to chew so long for anything to go down that I lost interest. Once they came out, I started to eat, but also never had to “clean my plate” - I learned how to stop eating when I was full.)</p>

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Switch doctors. Right now. I’m serious. This dr. is no good. Get recommendations from friends, and try other drs. out. Join a playgroup with your daughter and get referrals there. </p>

<p>I have been through all of this, and believed a lot of bad advice from my kids’s pediatricians in various places, to my kids’s detriment and to my high level of stress. The worst thing – other than lack of productive solutions from this pede – is that she is undermining your confidence as a parent.</p>

<p>A food issue with a toddler is NOT a parental failure, as you can see by the responses, it is very, very common, but it usually takes some sleuthwork to get it solved. </p>

<p>I heard that “no child ever starved out of stubbornness” from a pede (during the “Starve Wars” as I fondly termed it), but one of mine had the distended belly and matchstick arms and legs that put the lie to that. And one of mine who happily ate anything and everything wound up with rampant allergies to every food that is good for you. </p>

<p>Here are some don’ts (some of which conflicts with advice other people are giving you, but use whatever works for you):</p>

<p>Don’t provide a circus or any entertainment just to be able to shovel food in the kid’s mouth. Don’t read books to her while she eats, or do anything other than talk to her. Because this is an endlessly escalating situation, and you have to create a whole dinner theater after a while, or she just won’t eat.</p>

<p>Don’t chase her around the house with morsels of food. It’s surprising how many parents I’ve seen do this. </p>

<p>Don’t look worried, upset or attach too much importance to food or mealtimes. Try to be casual. It’s hard!</p>

<p>Barring allergy, metabolic issue or anything, this is a control issue. Daughter is obviously very smart, and she has decided she can control you and the situation this way. Lots of intelligent children do this (and I think it’s a problem of the ‘firstborn’).</p>

<p>On the other hand, don’t let your pediatrician or other kibbitzers looks of alarm (Gasp! Baby food!) determine what’s best for your family. Starting now, and always.</p>

<p>The problem of baby food as I see it is that you have to feed it to her. She is trying to own her own eating, and it may be counter-productive to spoon food in her mouth. Lots of kids survive on Cheerios as they work it out. Here’s a schedule you can try, each step represents a week:
Week 1. Dry cheerios, milk in a sipper cup. Give her a spoon to play with.
Week 2. Dip some of the cheerios in applesauce. Put applesauce on the spoon. Milk in a sipper cup.
3. Cheerios plain. Applesauce in a container (suctioned to high chair) with a spoon. Milk. Small bits of chicken.
4. All of the above, alternate chicken with beef.
5. All of the above, add cooked carrots, cut into grippable wands.
6. Rice cereal with milk in bowl w spoon and any of above.
7. Add mashed banana to rice cereal.</p>

<p>Gradual introduction of food like this will let you see if she has rashes or allergic reactions to any of these things.</p>

<p>Of course she will make a mess! That’s what they do! Put a drop-cloth (shower curtain or whatever) under her chair.</p>

<p>Good for you for asking CC parents. I wish I had that resource when I was floundering around with parenting problems.</p>

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<p>I think it’s more accurate to say that a food issue, especially where a toddler balks at eating, is not INITIALLY a parental failure. It’s how the parent reacts to the balking that can escalate the toddler’s behavior and set up a bad pattern. Failure is the wrong term here (and I strongly agree with Anuddahmom that you should fire this pediatrician), because there is nothing wrong with your wanting your child to eat, but sometimes we have to go against our inclinations to be effective. The important thing is to not react. It’s amazing how early a baby can figure out power dynamics.</p>

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<p>Also, every child has an innate “personality” when it comes to food. Some will eat anything, some are balkers. None of this is the parent’s fault, unless you count passing on certain genes. From my own personal observations, I’ve noticed that there is often a correlation with children who have trouble transitioning between activities (the ones who pitch a fit when they have to do something different).</p>

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<p>mousegray - there could well be something to your hypothesis about transition issues. Some friends and relatives drove me nuts trying to get me to shove things in my D’s mouth during the first year, even though she was completely healthy. I am so thankful I had a pediatrician who just told me to trust that she was doing well and to just ignore the scoldings about how she needed to be eating this and that. </p>

<p>Recently, I overheard a conversation between a young mother and a older relative or friend in a restaurant. The mother said that the baby, who was about 3 months old, was still on nothing but breast milk and was sleeping well but not completely through the night. The older relative insisted it was because the baby wasn’t eating enough and should be put on cereal right away. She was badgering the mom about it. It was all I could do to keep from turning around and telling the woman that food has nothing to do with a baby sleeping through the night and that the breastfeeding was absolutely the best thing she could be doing. I had visions of this mom force feeding the baby rice cereal that night.</p>

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<p>Let me give you my sympathies.
Believe me I know what you are going through.
My oldest weighed 2lbs 7oz @birth.
When she came home from the hospital she weighed 3lbs 10oz. It seemed like years before she hit 20lbs and I bet she was6 years old before she hit 40lbs.
Luckily we had an excellent pediatrician who would let me bring her in often for weighing and measuring and for moral support.
She was not on the chart of normal weight for years and her head was also small, but it was growing- which is the important part.
They have great gummy vitamins now and as long as her head is growing try not to get in a tizzy.</p>

<p>Child of mine and other parenting/nutrional books by Ellen Satter are must have resources.
Also recommend co-op parenting groups often run by the community college and held in community centers as a resource.</p>

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<p>This is a great suggestion for any parent. Sometimes these are also offered through the adult school of the local public school district.</p>

<p>ETA: And later, a parent cooperative nursery school is a great thing, for you and your child.</p>

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<p>The best parenting advice I have ever heard/read is the first line of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care.</p>

<p>“Trust yourself. You know more then you think you do.”</p>

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<p>“Trust yourself. You know more then you think you do.” </p>

<p>This would not include the parents a friend of mine used to encounter–she’s a social worker–who filled the baby bottle with Coke and propped it and the baby up on the couch in front of the TV. :(</p>

<p>But yeah, it probably applies to anyone who would actually be consulting Dr. Spock. :)</p>

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<p>I have a family friend with a 13-month-old D who doesn’t like to eat. She hates going in the high chair and doesn’t like being fed with a spoon. She gets a lot of attention about this. She also has trouble with transitions and is already putting up a fight with whatever the parents want to do next. Just saw some parallels there with OP’s D’s issues. (This child I am speaking of seems very smart, by the way!)</p>

<p>This child’s mom is a speech pathologist and used to work at a major children’s hospital. One of the things she did there was work with very young children who had swallowing issues. Some kids can’t do it properly and need therapy for that. I was thinking that perhaps that might be an issue for OP’s D. She can swallow baby food texture OK, but not anything thicker or in larger pieces. </p>

<p>And I’d find another pediatrician too. Find one with a bunch of little kids at home. Mine had four under the age of 8 and he was quite sympathetic.</p>

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I read it religiously, but eventually wondered why, if I knew more than I thought I did, I needed 600 pages of directions from Dr. Spock. :D</p>

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<p>How many kids has the pediatrician raised?
I have 7 kids, now ages 5-21. I think it is perfectly fine for a 1.5, 2 or even 3 year old to eat “baby food.” Heck, I’ve seen 5yos eating it. I can’t imagine why anyone would think a 17mo old is “too old” for baby food. </p>

<p>I had a “Happy Baby Food Grinder.” You could try grinding up whatever you are eating and give it to your toddler.</p>

<p>One of my kids was a “low birth weight” baby. I nursed her until she was two. I had another baby and a long distance move that year. After she quit nursing she didn’t like to drink cows milk. She was very picky. I never made food an issue (because my parents DID) and let my kids eat what they wanted. That kid lived on bananas with peanut butter, chicken nuggets, a little yogurt, oatmeal, and kool-aid. She had a terrible flu the week she turned three–I took her to the ER because she was dehydrated. She weighed 19 pounds, very frail and small boned. (I realized that I was not attentive to her growth/nutrition due to the move/new baby) They X-rayed her whole body because they thought she was abused! I had to find a way to get some milk into her. I started warming up the cows milk and putting a little sugar or chocolate milk mix in it. That’s all it took to get her to love milk, and though she has always been small for her age, she quickly filled out and became healthier. (My mom thought it was ridiculous that I would warm up sweet/chocolate milk for a 3-4 year old. So what? That’s what it took, so that’s what I did.) BTW, that kid is is almost 8 now and she drinks cold white milk.</p>

<p>Anyway, if your D is healthy/normal weight, don’t worry. Let her eat what she wants. Some good advice on this thread. Don’t make it a battle. Put food in front of her. She will eat (some of ) it. Good luck. It’s just a phase.</p>

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<p>My niece was the same way. Every meal was a battle. It didn’t help that she was the first child and had both sets of grandparents living close by. Every meal they tried to get her to eat something. She went through a phase around age 2-3 that she would only eat broccoli. Everyone was up in arms. She also weighed very little. My own D was two months older but looked huge next to her cousin. The battle over food went on for years. My niece is now 15 1/2 and eating is still a big deal. She eats very little and is small. She only eats what she wants. The big issue came up when her Mom insisted that she stay in a car seat till she weighed a certain weight. I think my niece was one of the few 3rd graders still sitting in a car seat. Her sister who is 5 yrs younger passed the oldest in weight I think at age 4. I know there were periods of time that the pediatrician was quite concerned. I think for my niece it eventually became a power struggle and it was one battle that she was able to win. I think she also has since found she is lactose intolerant.</p>

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<p>I don’t think the only good pediatricians are those who have raised kids. My D’s pediatrician was a single man - I wouldn’t trade him for the world.</p>

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<p>It does help to be experienced however.
My younger daughter has issues " on the spectrum", and even though the pediatrician knew me, she still would discount my observations and concerns, if they weren’t obviously evident during the short visit.
It wasn’t enough of a deal to change, but it could have made life for me much easier if I had , had more support and access to resources.</p>

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<p>Gee Mom60, I would be delighted to have a kid who would only eat broccoli! Generally, when it came to broccoli or other green vegetables in my house, it was the other way around.</p>

<p>As to the car seat issue - its possible that the Mom was simply following state law, or at least appropriate safety recommendation, as to the child’s weight.</p>