The slowest eater ever...ideas please!

[brachy]

How do you get a child to speed up their eating?
My 6yr old DD goes through phases of being slow to eat or super slow. This morning, in a super slow phase, it took 1 hour to eat a slice of toast of breakfast.
On the advice of the doctor, we now give her full control of her meals. Basically she can choose her breakfast, packed lunch and dinner. We just insist she eats at the 'normal' meal times.
We have tried a timer, we have tried ignoring the behaviour, we have tried chivvying, we have tried praising every mouthful, giving smaller portions, bigger portions, serving herself portions, helping with the cooking, meal planning etc etc, but she is still slow. She takes a packed lunch to school but most of it is left uneaten...this in turn sends her into hunger meltdowns and foul moods. Food is the main trigger for meltdowns and tantrums.
She is small for her age (16/17kgs) and has never been overly interested in food. Things improved when she gained control over what she ate (she has a very limited diet) but now the speed has reduced.
If she could live on air, she would. Even with added exercise her appetite remains poor and her speed slow.
We're now not sure what to do.
Any advice, please!

I was suggesting that you remove the food if it goes for too long, I have started doing that with DD1 (6). But she doesn't have any eating problems except for being very slow and can miss a meal or two.

Can you offer 5/6 small meals instead of 3 and pack them with high energy easy to eat food (no toast but flap jack for breakfast)?
Is it a problem with texture? problem with dry food?
may be smoothies with crushes biscuits, or old fashion bread soup would be better for breakfast? hearty soups for lunch that she can drink?

can you leave stuff within easy reach for her to graze on? flapjacks, nuts, dried fruit, savoury scones - leave them out on a plate in whichever room she spends the most time. doesn't help the slow eating thing, but might just squeeze in a few more calories and help avoid the hunger meltdowns.

my son used to be like this, i had to sit with him at every meal to ensure he actually ate something. He appeard to grow out of it, but changing from pack lunch to school dinners helped a lot, sitting with other children who were eating and wanting to get out to play, made him speed up.

Thanks for the advice!
We've tried the snacks and leaving food about but she just isn't interested, she gets preoccupied with whatever she is doing and forgets to eat. She is very very fussy with food, she will basically eat 2 or 3 different meals, plus her packed lunch at school....though school let her get away with eating the bare minimum.
I'm reluctant to take the food away after a set time as she just wouldnt eat anything then, which in turn leads to huge rages and meltdowns. Emotionally, she (and us) cant afford for her to miss a meal, it makes life unbearable.
Hopefully this is just another of her phases and she'll outgrow it.

The world just stands still in our house.... I have a now 9 year old boy who is an EXTREMELY slow eater. Thankfully he's not that fussy but he would forget to eat if I didn't remind him. And doing that each mouthful is highly frustrating. Now I try not to remind constantly during a meal, but once evryone else has finished I say something like "I will be clearing the plates up in 5 minutes" When the 5 minutes-ish is done I cear away without any comment on how much / little he's eaten. He is very skinny so I worry about the lack of calories but his energy levels seem to be OK. It did help to remind myself how little children actually do need to eat ie a small matchbox size piece of protein is enough. He has as much snack as he wants after school (cheese on toast, or a slice of ginger cake, or apple....) but now we eat slightly later (6pm). Sometimes I think this impacts his appetite at tea, but not always. Other than that if he says he's hungry at bed I remind him if he didn't eat much supper and the most he gets is a cup of warm milk and maybe a boring biscuit like a cracker or digestive.

Also I find that he has a run of about 4 days where he really doesn't eat much at all and then a day when he seems much more hungry so he tops-up then! He also has lunch at school and althogh sometime he comes out very tired (hungry?) it's better than when I was seeing how little packed lunch he'd eaten!

Sticking to regular mealtimes sounds good, and giving her a cerain amount of control ie helping herself to the right amunt of whatever is on the table. But I wouldn't let her dictate what meals you cook for example. Take a good snack for after school Cheese and apple, fruit and nut bar, flapjack etc that will keep her going to teatime.

She will probably always take a while to eat ( I was on the 'slow-eaters' table at school aged 10!, partly because I was too busy chatting...!) but 1 hour is too long, try 40 mins?

Good luck

When you say she eats the bare minimum at school, what do you mean?