behavioural psychologist recommendation

[valentine]

My DD is 20 months and a v bad eater, for example refusing to eat in the high chair, sometimes refusing to even eat food she likes etc. Can anyone recommend a behavioural psychologist in London who might be able to advise on this...thanks v much!

have you tried a little table and chair as my kids hated the highchair and from 12 mths sat a a table.i also put my mindee at the table at 18 mths.make her feel a grown up girl.i find if i make an issue of food my dd still does not eat !!.

I have tried the little table/chair thing but she just gets out of the chair and picks it up and runs around with it - or she jumps on it! v annoying!

personally i would put her in her high chair (or where YOU want her to eat!)

give her her food (that YOU wat her to eat) and let her get on with it...

she can EAT or go hungry.... in which case she can wait until the next meal... )when the above is repeated...)

she will NOT starve herself and it wont take long for her to realise that she gets the food she is given where she is given it.

My DD is 18 months and a very bad eater since she was 7 months. My peaditrician told me that my daghter's eating problem was emotional. She is now 18 months and I realised that She was not hungry, She hated the highchair (right from the start), never force her to eat, offer food at mealtimes only and most importantly DON'T GET STRESSED OUT OVER IT AS CHILDREN picks it up and TAKE THIS TIME OF THE DAY TO DRAW ATTENTION. Mine eats a little better since I got a booster seat, stopped offering snacks and wait until the next meal. She will soon get the message that if she doesn't eat at the time FOOD is given then she'll have to wait. I also want my child to eat what I give her not what she wants. I also tried going to a Psychologist but my peaditrician told me that all I needed was to TEACH HER TO EAT and that I have to be more FIRM about it.

I agree with mexicanmum. I have a 6 year old who used to be a terrible food-refuser (see thread entitled "I've had enough" or something like this. After years of attention-seeking and stress on all sides, we started to ignore the food issue as much as possible and asked the extended family to do the same.

This has been the only thing that has helped and it really has helped.

You should be able to get input from your local NHS psychologist through the Child Development Centre (if you have one in your area). I would ask GP first. I know there are special clinics for real problem eating but you'd probably have to do this first. I don't know about finding someone specialising privately but it must be possible.

My son never had an appetite at all until 7. I spent years ensuring that he drank enough milk, told stories about 'this piece of potato really wants to be with its brother potato, wait for me brother, please eat me....' as I fed him almost every meal. I once tried leaving him to get hungry, he remained happy for 2 days and ate nothing.

All this suddenly changed when I gave him fish oils to help his dyslexia, his reading didn't really improve but after 3 days he started to eat - he went from being the shortest in the class to tallest in one year.

Many children with dyslexia or development delay have immature nervous systems, my son just wasn't receiving hunger signals. There was nothing emotional about it at all.

Your daughter is still very young, if you see a psychologist make sure eating and food doesn't become a bigger worry to her.

I would ensure that she gets enough milk, that what she does eat is full of vitamins and protein, tell her stories about the food to get it down her, have the patience of a saint, and I'm sure this will all right itself with time.

Its worrying, hard work and frustrating, I did it for 7 years, but sometimes we just have to wait for children to mature.

Helen

helenins that's really interesting, I had never heard that before.

Do you have any idea how someone would know if their child's nervous system might be immature, particularly if they are not of reading age yet (ie don't know if they are dyslexic or not)?

Hi Helen- that is really interesting, particularly is my child is v short (2nd percentile for height and weight)which does concern me. While me and DH aren't exactly tall (i am 5.5 and DH is 5.8), DD is clearly much smaller...do you think the fish oils actually helped with physical growth, or made your kid eat more and therefore grow taller?