Staying with family with 13 month old, who is right?

[spicysausages]

Debating this with a family member.

ILs invite you to stay for a week with 13 month old. 13 month old has a huge appetite and has slight delay with gross motor skills and the medical advice is to make sure the 13 month old eats well (amongst other things). Parent of 13 month old says to ILs that she is happy to cook for 13 month old as she knows what they like and it is important that they eat well.

Problem 1: ILs think that children of guests should be fed by hosts, that it is rude to dictate what your 13 month old eats and rude to not just eat whatever hosts provide and they are quite cross about the idea of adult guest eating with them, happily, but cooking separately for dc. Use of kitchen is not a problem, it is a question of principle not practicalities

Problem 2: ILs have bought spicy sausages and 13 month old has not yet ever eaten chilli or paprika, ILs think that spicy sausages are appropriate, parent does not

Problem 3: Parent of 13 month old tends to cook up stews and then liquidise and to feed this to 13 month old along with finger food. ILs think that any spoon feeding at all at 13months is tantamount to emotional abuse because it is treating the 13 month as younger developmentally than they are, and that the bit about slow gross motor skills is nonsense, a 13 month old will feed themselves enough with finger food

Who do you think is right for each of the problems?!

I would often feed my 1 year old different meals when staying with family. Different meal times and then finger foods when sitting with family for food later. I'm not sure why anyone would be offended by this.

If my children had children I would be so delighted that they were visiting I would do absolutely bloody anything for them.

If that meant getting out of the kitchen while they prepared food for the baby then that's what I would do.

Incidentally, what is your husbands view? Where does he stand?

Are the swallowing issues a safety concern? If yes, then that needs to be priority. (for those who don't deal with this problem, some medical conditions in children will cause them to aspirate food if it's not the correct texture). Loss of weight is not good in growing children, so if that's a concern, I would say that also takes priority. I think a reasonable compromise is to say, well I'm willing to try feeding him/her the food you serve but if I decide it's not working, then will you allow me to use the kitchen to cook for him/her? If they say no, then you can't go. The End.

Sometimes people who can eat a normal diet just don't understand that there can be medical issues around food. You can be understanding and non-judgmental about their lack of understanding. But, your child needs to eat a diet appropriate for them, just as much as does any other person. If people are unwilling to allow your child to eat sufficient food that is of the right kind to feed him/her, then you simply can't visit.

I don’t care who is right, absolutely NO away would I stay in that house with my child. Misery all around.

@spicysausages

This is about a past trip. I think the problem was dc's motor skills and physical energy really were poor, a paediatrician had shown a fair bit of concern about floppy muscles, and dc's appetite was huge, they are very tall for age and lose weight quickly, and they just wouldn't have been able to cope without sufficient food.

With enough food dc are lovely and energetic and hardly cry, without sufficient food a lot of crying and difficulties with sleep. Keeping with what was known and working seemed the most sensible thing and I couldn't really understand why it would be such an issue for hosts after all this had been explained.

Does that affect answers? Just curious really.

Not really. Just let them eat what they can of the hosts food and as others have said you can fill them up with pouches or jars or milk/ youghurt.

No wonder the poor kid’s hungry, sounds like he just lives on soup & liquid meals!

How is he meant to learn to eat what everyone else eats if all he has are his liquified meals?

I highly doubt the whole meal was just some chilli paprika sausages. There will have been sides & things. I love chilli & Aussie, but serving just sausages on their own with no sides would be a pretty lame event.

If you insist that he can’t be offered the same food as everyone else, then just make his soups beforehand & bring them with you.

No need to make a performance out of it by prepping his soup in the kitchen from scratch during a family get together

It sounds like you’re holding your son back IMO

"slight delay" and "make sure they eat well" are hardly evidence that the child needs a rigourous feeding schedule and specialist food.

Exactly. I'd have let my toddler join everyone at mealtimes, and eat what he was prepared to eat, from what was offered. If he didn't eat much, I'd top up with a pouch/banana/whatever else could be offered without making a fuss.

It's a bit precious to take over the kitchen to make him his own stew or something. He's not going to go hungry if he starts off with the family meal and then a top up of fruit/yoghurt/a savoury pouch.

Having had children of our own, I still ask what our grandchildren would like to eat. Because their mum and dad know them and their tastes best.

Seriously, anyone getting huffy about this is being daft.

I never understand how wound up some people get about stuff that has fxck all to do with them.

I wouldn't listen nor entertain their views on my child.

I wouldn't be staying with them again.

They sound complete PITA's that should mind their own business.

I would visit less frequently but I never got into that type of discussion with anyone.

I was never even vaguely interested in discussing my choices re my kids.

One day you will be the IL with your child bringing their child to visit you. By then there may be different advice to what is common now. How would you then feel if you are being told by someone a lot younger than you with less experience in parenting that the way you did things was wrong?
Somebody is going to be fun to have as a mil. Hopefully when/if the time comes you remember it’s not actually your baby and you need to defer to the parents, who are standing right there telling you how they parent their child.

@timeisnotaline too right.👏

I hope if I am lucky enough to be a MIL I will have the cop on to STFU and not persecute my children, or their partners, with my unasked for opinion.

My in laws were kind enough never to offer an opinion one way or the other and were nothing but supportive.

Things change.
I did things my way and was happy with my choices.

I think it would be supremely vain and arrogant to imagine that somehow MY way is the way for others.

I remember once a woman in my company judging the parenting of another mother and asked me what I thought.

I told her that I was far too busy trying to do a good job of rearing my own children to be concerned with what others were doing, and judging them.

It shut her up and I have repeated it a few times over the years.

Nothing as tedious as someone with an opinion on someone else's parenting.

@ladycarlotta yes I have, I’d imagine it’s even more important to give the child resistant foods to help build up his eating skills. Babies can be given things like mango pits, steak and chicken drumsticks from when they able to sit up in a high chair. Chewing foods like these are really important developmentally.

Liquefying difficult to eat foods is only going to lead to a fussy child who hasn’t developed the skills to eat a variety of foods.

ILs sound batshit crazy and rather hyacinth bucket about this hosting business to say ita their own son and not thd pope.

As a good host they should have ensured all guests (even those of the miniature variety) were appropriately catered for, either by making the appropriate food themselves or letting son or DIL. The fact they think they know more about the dietary of a small child than its parents is ludicrous.

Thanks so much to all the helpful posters, and thank you to those who posted about their own experiences

@elbea and to others who have said how important it is developmentally for dc to be eating resistant foods - dc eats finger foods, as I said in my opening post and a subsequent post, so they did already eat resistance foods. The mashed up or liquidised food was in addition. It doesn't mean the child will not eat well later or be fussy, it really depends, and this is the stressful part of gross motor skills, the issue is flagged up as a potential problem, it isn't certain at all what you are dealing with at 13 months. I am not worried about dc being a fussy eater at all, seeing how they have always enjoyed eating, the issue is getting enough food into them while they are this age especially in light of the question mark over GMS issues and muscle strength.

Posters referring to "minor" - might be minor to you on the outside, and also comparatively minor, but if it is your child with issues flagged by paediatricians you are likely to want to do everything you can.

Posters talking about filling up with yoghurt and fruit, this isn't going to be enough for some dc. GMS aside, some children will need more food than others to maintain normal weight and energy levels.

@spicysausages eating resistant foods will help with muscle strength. Resistant foods aren’t all finger foods, they are things like tough meat, the pit from a mango. Things that babies can’t really eat very well.

I’d honestly really recommend having a look at Solid Starts, they are some of the leading paediatricians in the world specialising in the physiology of eating.

Honestly?

I pick my battles with my family; in this case, I would be saying what a drag it is that the doctor has recently advised you to do this. Such a pain. You only wish you didn't have to, but you do. Because the doctor says so.

I would not be talking about what the child 'likes'. Because that obviously muddies the waters and makes it sound as if you're snubbing your in-laws food.

Bit late now, mind.

I've got to admit that, were it not for the developmental issues, I would get the in-laws' point; I think it's weirdly intrusive to invite yourself into someone else's kitchen to cook.

@elbea your advice is off the mark, dc was eating the foods shown on your link, I wouldn't give them chicken wings, personally, because of risk of small bones fracturing, but they were eating other meats at the time, as well as food offered by ILs. Other dc with GMS problems may not be able to eat foods because of swallowingor other issues as others have explained. If you have no knowledge of GMS problems it might be worth looking it up and finding out more about it before giving somewhat patronising advice.

I think your in laws are a bit odd. But I can't see how a spicy sausage is an issue.

@elbea eating resistant foods will help with muscle strength I was more concerned about leg and other body muscles, not mouth muscle strength, by the way.

@MeredithGreyishblue I think that is fair comment about spicy sausage, I think I had lost the will to live over the food discussions by that point!

@spicysausages my bad, I meant chicken drumsticks.

You are incorrect though and you are making a lot of assumptions about me and my child. There is plenty of research on this topic including pretty good studies into children with delays and the importance of solid foods.

@InTheLabyrinth

I'd let the child pick at inlaw produced food at adult meal times (including the paprika and chilli sausage), and then produce (frozen and brought with you so only needs heating??) food you know the child will eat to top up to full required amounts.

I think both groups are being unreasonable in parts.

agree with this. start with the IL food, and then top up.

Ignore the comments and smile sweetly, and change the subject.

One thing you could do it chose to give dc foods which are naturally soft eg scrambled eggs, so there isn't a debate around pureeing.

@elbea I am picking up on this as I would like to understand what you are saying better. As I see it, you had assumed wrongly that my dc wasn't eating the foods which help develop mouth muscles, and I explained this was a wrong assumption, and that my concern was that dc ate enough, as they were tall for their age and burnt off food quickly, I wasn't limiting foods or methods of eating, but supplementing them. I apologise for saying you were being patronising but do you now see that the advice wasn't needed, because dc was already doing it? Or am I missing something still?

In relation to being incorrect about your advice generally, as another poster has pointed out, some medical conditions in children will cause them to aspirate food if it's not the correct texture and therefore your advice would not have been appropriate for them, does that make sense? It was correct for your dc but wouldn't necessarily be correct for other dc.

One of the problems with my ILs, I think, was that they did not accept that the paediatrician's advice, they thought it was unnecessarily fussing, they also said that a cousin's severe allergies were also a nonsense, and that allergies couldn't be life threatening and again it was just fussing unnecessarily. So they weren't following up to date medical advice with their advice.

You know your child's situation. It's not for us to make any judgement on that. You didn't ask us that anyway!
Your ILs are odd. Mine would have bent over backwards to accommodate anything their baby grandchildren needed without question.
I did chuckle at the spicy sausage reply!

You know best. Ignore the Internet GPs on here!

I think you need to ignore some of the people on this thread who obviously don't understand that failure to maintain weight is a significant medical issue in a small child. From now on, just treat it as such: the doctor said DC needs to eat ABC. I'm happy to feed him/her the finger food you prepared, but I will also be topping up him/her with pureed food, as instructed by the doctor.

I think bringing frozen pureed food with you that you made at home, is a good idea. This would allow you to top up without having to use the in-laws kitchen. This could be tricky, however, if you are staying for an entire week, as it is hard to pre-make sufficient food for an entire week of nutrition. If that's the case, you'll have to fall back on "I may need to use the kitchen and if that's not acceptable to you, then sorry, we won't be able to come."

I understand that many find it strange that guests would want to use the host's kitchen. But this is family. If it weren't, you wouldn't be under all this pressure to stay for a week in the home of people who are unfriendly to your child's medical needs. Surely, for family, you would expect that if using the kitchen would make it possible to have a nice long visit, that family would permit that.