My previous post about weaning talked about how we ended up doing Baby Led Weaning, all of which went really well. The variety of foods E ate was fantastic.
This sadly changed as E turned two, not straight away but a few months in when she could talk more. E started developing a strong opinion on what she wanted to eat and what she wasn’t going to put anywhere near her mouth.
The first meal she first made a change too was her lunch, E had always loved bread with Philadelphia on but she started rejecting it, we kept offering it but she wouldn’t touch it. We first put it down to the fact that she had it all the time because she loved it. E wouldn’t eat sandwiches either so lunch became a more continental affair of chopped up cheese and ham with some grapes, blueberries and crisps. One thing E has never been fussy about is fruit, she would quite happily eat fruit all the time, for that we are very lucky.
Evening meals were the next thing to take a battering, the wonderful vegetables E used to eat turned into the I’m not going to touch them, we still kept offering them but to no avail. Even now the only vegetables she will eat are carrots and sweetcorn.
She stopped eating omelette, chicken breasts in sauces, cauliflower and broccoli became something she wouldn’t eat either. As it was a gradual change it wasn’t obviously noticeable.
I was trying so hard not to worry about E’s eating habits, and feigning nonchalance every time I scraped a carefully prepared meal into the bin, that I hadn’t realised how much of an issue it had actually become. We were experiencing the battles at the dinner table, telling her to eat up and even getting stressed.
Meal times became more about what she wasn’t eating instead of what she was. A visit to the doctors when E had a bad cough gave the perfect opportunity to mention her not eating much. We were advised not to worry about what E eats in one day, or if she doesn’t eat everything in a single meal. It’s more important to think about what they eat over a week. So for a week I kept a diary and true enough I was surprised what she actually consumed. It might not have been a varied diet but she was eating enough and not loosing weight.
After speaking to the doctor I came to realise that E’s pickiness was part of growing up. Many toddlers go through a picky phase, where they become very specific about what they like to eat. This is (usually) normal: toddlers like to assert their independence, and one way to do that is to choose the foods they will eat! Knowing that it’s normal doesn’t make it easier, however. Many think about how, just a few months or weeks earlier, their child would eat anything! Some advice I was given that has worked well for us is simply ignore it!
Mainstream advice classes picky eaters as:-
- Have at least 20 foods in their diet.
- Eats at least a few fruits/vegetables, carbs, and proteins.
- Can be coaxed to occasionally try new foods.
- Usually will eat foods similar to preferred foods. For example, will eat a variety of chicken nuggets or pizza, they will typically not reject different brands or styles.
- Sometimes eats foods different from the rest of the family.
- Will suddenly refuse a food they have preferred, but will eat it again in the future.
E definitely falls into that category. The pickiness has been going on for best part of a year, much to our frustration. I have started to notice E trying some new foods recently so hopefully things are getting better. Until then its time to try to help the situation improve, it has been too easy to give E what we know she will eat for her evening meal. The other meals during the day are not really a concern us as they are healthy, but could do with being more varied.
I now know the times of day E is getting hungry, so I have decided I need to prepare her meals for those times so that she is more likely to try something new. Or even offer a different finger food snack. One thing E does seem to like is helping herself to food so I am going to try setting food out so she can put what she likes on her plate from a choice of different foods, almost like being at a party.
For Christmas I received a cookbook for fussy toddlers, its time for me to try making more things from that and hopefully with some encouragement from us E will start to try more foods and there will be light at the end of the tunnel? I hope… I will share with you the journey we are encountering. I’m hoping turning three is going to show some positive developments with food.
