# My child hates eating.



## angie3096 (Apr 4, 2007)

She does. Well, she doesn't hate eating junk. But she will not eat anything else.
I know, you'll say, all kids her age are picky (she's four). But no. Spend a day with her.

Bit of history. I'll try to make this short. She had kidney reflux as a baby and took prophylactic antibiotics for a year. They destroyed her gut. She was a failure to thrive baby. She narrowly avoided a g-tube. She had surgery so she could stop the abx, and started eating! Yahoo. Not a huge variety, just breastmilk and fruit. She got up to about 18th percentile at her 18 month checkup. I pooped out pumping (I was an e.p.er because she would not nurse). She started losing weight again, wouldn't eat enough table food, so I started giving her pediasure. And processed food. At the time I did not care what she ate, I just wanted calories in her. It was a miracle! She made it to 25th percentile by her 2 year check up. Yahoo again!

Here I am with my problem. She is four. She is addicted to pediasure. She will eat that, and a few fruits, she'll eat canned soup and Annie's mac n cheese. Pasta roni or spaghetti. Maybe a cheese tortilla here and there. And she'll drink milk. She'll also eat sugared cereals and flavored oatmeal.

I have tried to stop pediasure entirely and her weight plummets because she won't eat enough. I have cut back a lot (a can every other day, if that) and she is back down to 18th percentile.

Dilemma #1 is this: if she has not eaten dinner and begs for a can of pediasure, do I give it to her? If I don't, she'll often go to bed without eating at all.

Dilemma #2 is this: I really want her to be eating a decent diet. As in at least a few servings of raw vegetables a day, and no more processed food. If I serve only healthy food, and she won't touch it, but asks for pasta roni, do I cave? If I don't, she will go to bed without eating. And after a few missed meals she will start crying, but she won't eat what I serve her. And I start to feel like an ogre.

I consider myself a very GD mom, so "eat what I give you or go hungry!" doesn't feel right to me. We do model good eating and say, "Look, mommy and daddy have yummy broccoli! Mommy and daddy love this!" but she says "I don't want what you have. I don't like that!"

Opinions, please!









Angie
P.S. Sorry this got so long. Thanks for making it to the end!


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## Pinky Tuscadero (Jul 5, 2003)

Make friends with the food processor! You can hide a ton of veggies in mac -n- cheese by shredding or pureeing them. I even got my DH to eat squash that way! Have you tried fun meals like shish kabobs, food chunks with dips and toothpicks, or even just a snack tray? Some kids will eat anything if they can stab it, dip it or eat with their hands out of a divided tray.
I agree-you can't force her and obviously don't want to starve her. Keep trying. I know some other mommas will chime in with ideas.
HTH!


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## Mamaga (Jul 14, 2005)

I second that you should make friends with your food processor or blender. You can hide vegetables in tomato sauce. Also you can bake vegetables into quick (and not so quick) breads - think pumpkin, winter squash, zuchini, carrot, applesauce etc. Bread is a great home for whole grains too - try whole wheat pastry flour or adding oatmeal, what germ or wheat bran to the batter. How about whole grain noodles in the mac and cheese? I remember when I was a kid my brother was a very picky eater - for a while he lived on english muffin pizzas- once I "caught" my mom hiding wheat germ under the cheese - to this day we've never told him. Also, will she try a smoothie? All manner of cooked dark leafy greens could be added here or perhaps nut butters or tofu for protein. I've been playing around with cornbread lately using whole wheat flour for the white flour and also adding wheat germ or bran, melted honey instead of sugar and frozen corn to make it more nutritious.

Peace!


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## pixie-n-hertwoboys (Aug 17, 2003)

yep hide those foods LOL I hide all kinds in smoothies, sauces, etc. and my kids aren't picky eaters hahha I'm just a mean mama!

oooh muffins? would she eat say a muffin with pineapple, carrots, nuts and flax flour hidden in it?


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## rainyday (Apr 28, 2006)

Does your dr worry when her weight drops to the 18th percentile? That's really not a big drop from 25th. How are you built?

Now, bear with me. This may not be pretty, but I think it's important, so please read through it all.

Have you read Ellyn Satter? I _really_ love







her for food advice. She's a big believer of the whole back-off and let them make their own food choices. Her thing is that there's a division of labor for feeding a child: you provide healthy options, they decide if and how much to eat. It's HARD advice to follow, and it's been hard for us to follow consistently.

I guess I would like at what you want for your daughter in the long run. Do you want her to eat Pediasure and mac and cheese? If so, then keep on doing what you're doing. If not, then figure out how you _do_ want her eating, and feed her that way. Do you want her to be responsible for knowing how much to eat and when to stop? Then give her that responsibility, so she'll learn how to listen to her body.

She hasn't had to listen to her body's needs because the Pediasure has been fulfilling them. If she's going to learn to eat responsibly, she's going to have to come off the Pediasure and learn. This will probably be hard and she'll probably lose weight. But what happens if you keep giving her Pediasure indefinitely?

I'd really suggest figuring out what you think is a healthy diet, and then offering those things, and pretty much only those things. If you cave, you teach her that she can hold out and get the junk. Then, in the long run, she's not learning how to eat healthfully.

One thing we did when we decided we needed to change our DC's eating habits was to always offer at least one healthy choice that we knew he'd eat. For us, this was often whole-wheat bread with butter. We tried really hard not to worry when he didn't even eat the "safe" food. We got rid of all the crackers and snack foods like that, so he couldn't fill up on those and we didn't have to worry about saying no because they just weren't around. We stopped baking desserts very often, so he couldn't fill his caloric needs with brownies. After a LONG time, he started eating more adventurously. Now he will almost always try whatever we serve (we never prompt him to or even encourage him), and he'll often eat lots of it. The other day he ate sweet potatoes, which he's always insisted he hated. He picked one up on his own, ate it as if he always did so (!), and kept going back for more. He's a great eater now, and it truly amazes me. It makes me incredibly glad we went through the agony of throwing out the junk and backing off according to Ellyn Satter. It was a long, painful process, but the end result has been so worth it.

In the meantime, yeah, hide veggies in homemade mac and cheese, make muffins with pureed carrots or mashed sweet potatoes, and so on. But please think about how you really want her eating in the long run. So many of us never learned to listen to our bodies as kids and instead learned to gorge on junk food because it was the easy answer. We all know the problems associated with this way of eating, and the best way to avoid it is to help our kids learn to eat healthfully while they're still young.

I'll get off my soap box now.


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## granolalight (Nov 1, 2006)

great advice, rainyday. I'm having issues with food too, in fact I just posted about it, and will look into the author you suggested.








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## tboroson (Nov 19, 2002)

You said she has reflux. Does she still have digestive issues?

A friend of mine had a son about your daughter's age who had a similar issue. He was prone to throwing up, very frequently, and pretty much whenever he tried a new food. Poor kid was terrified to try new foods. Not for lack of effort by his mother, she's a wonderful person and tried so hard to convince him to eat other foods.

About 7 weeks ago, she cut gluten and dairy out of his diet. In that short time, he's lost some weight (body wise, he was on the opposite end of the spectrum from your dd), his behavior has drastically improved, his potty training has taken a leap forward, he's stopped vomiting, and he's trying new foods for the first time ever! It's been totally amazing.

Cutting out gluten and dairy were *hard*, because that was 90% of what he ate. She subbed nut milks for his regular milk, rice and soy cheese macaroni (Annie's, I think), and she's slowly been getting him to try new foods. He tried hummus the other day, she was over the moon!


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