i am exhausted- does anybody elses child eat this much or am i just moaning

[bambam30]

right first of all i know i should be grateful that ds has a 'healthy' appetite as my we have to more or less bribe ss 8 to eat but my ds is 2.2 and is eating us out of house and home and i am exhausted. today he woke at 7.30 and had 4 digestive biscuits ,croissant and 2 beakers of milk,and then later acheese and marmite sarnie and grapes i had a doctors app at 11 and so he had a choc [kinder egg] and when we got home a salami sandwich and juice 30 minutes later he came and asked me for some cheese and so icut up some chunks and gave him some with strawberries not even an hour later he came back and said eat soup and so he had 2 helpings of cualiflower and cheese soup with achunk of crusty bread had an afternoon nap and woke asking to eat he had a tea of new potatoes steak in a pepper sauce, peas mushrooms,parsnips and a yorkshire pudding and a cup of milk anhour later he came asking to eat ahain and so we baked choc chip cookies of which he ate 2 he then had some grapes and i sat down to watch news ,he had a bath and again asked to eat this time he had strawberries and cheerios with yoghurt he asked for more and ate that and now not even an hour later i have just given him a multigrain ryvita with marmite and cheese and yet another glass of milk is this normal i mean he eats everything and he isn't bored he is a very active little boy and i am happy that he eats but i feel like i am forever feeding him by the way he doesn't have any spare fat on him

does he eat like that every day?

I only ask, as if he's very active, he needs to eat regularly. my ds is 2.3 and sometimes eats loads everyday for a week or two, and then we find he's had a growth spurt and grown another cm or 2.

more or less we3kings he only have odd days when he does'nt and i mean odd days!

blimey my 7 yo DS doesnt eat that much in 3 days let alone 1.

No wonder you are exhausted.

ok, dont really know what to suggest. DB has 3 kids who eat all the time and are like beanpoles too.

will he eat most things? if so, you could try starting with porridge for breakfast (made with milk), oats are a super food, they contain a lot of protein and are slow release energy. make it appealing with a little maple/golden syrup on top. tbh, biscuits/croissant will not fill him up for long and he will crave more food with a sugar crash a little while later.

bread sandwiches will have a similar sugar crash effect at lunchtime, how about a pasta,cous cous or jacket potato, to help the slow release of energy throughout the afternoon.

It does seem like a lot of food, but he's not overweight, so he needs his energy. maybe trying feeding him some different foods might help his overall consumption.

i forgot to say, i think (i could be wrong) that its normal for them to snack between meals too, ds often has fruit snacks or raisins and stuff between meals.

yes he will eat anything and actually does eat all of the things you've mentioned so maybe he does just like his food tbh i am glad but it is tiring when you feeling ill and rubbish yourself [rubs her head in selfpitying way] lol he just a food monster!!!!

both mine ar elike that although first one has limited diet but eats soooo much and my dd used to eat constantly and even now she cant go long without food and she`s 6 yrs old now!!

No advice but sympathy - mine eat like this too. They're skinny and have endless energy.

I slosh olive oil over everything to add calories - they'll just love visiting Turkey one day, it'll be a home from home for them.....

Any minute now, someone with picky eaters is going to come on this thread and tell us we don't know we're born!

lol welliemum i know i been watching with baited breath i know we are lucky as i said we more or less have to bribe my ss 8 to eat and he really fussy

How do you afford all that food, I am said mum with picky eaters but don't think I could begin to provide that much food. You must feel like a waitress more than a mum sometimes, you do have my sympathy, somewhere half wy would be nice though.

It is all about feeding them the right foods, not the quantity. Biscuits for breakfast won't set him up for the morning but porridge is great for slow energy release.

He may think he is hungry when he is thirsty and he also may be eating when he is bored.

Give him porridge or scrambled eggs for breakfast, and whole grain bread only (it is actually higher in calories, and a lot more filling) with lots of cheese or thick cut meat, or tuna mayo and sweetcorn. for snacks, how about cold sausages, scotch eggs, fruit like bananas and avacados, chunks of chicken etc?

Then I'd give whatever he normally has for dinner, and 2 weetabix for supper. That should work.

Bigger, more nutritious breakfast and replace sugary snacks with more filling, nutritious ones.

My son (2.10 yrs) goes through days where he is like this, too (although because he has traditionally been a very picky eater, I love seeing him plough his way through big meals!)

Yesterday for instance he had:

Breakfast: Huge bowl of shreddies & cheerios with milk, 1 banana, 1 slice wholemeal toast w/jam, 1 innocent smoothie

Morning: Cheddar cheese slices and wholewheat crackers, 1 apple, 1 satsuma, another banana, raisins, 1 glass of milk

Lunch: Veggie sausages, mashed potato & peas; 1 strawberry yoghurt, 1 fruit puree pot, glass of water

Afternoon: 1 slice whiolemeal bread & cream cheese, 1 pear, 1 'Goodie' cereal bar, 1 glass milk

Dinner: Meatballs, pasta, sweetcorn, greek yoghurt w/ blueberries, glass of water

Bedtime: wholemeal muffin, cup of milk

I couldn't eat as much in a day!

Btw, he is very tall and quite skinny!

i would try, like the others have said, to fill him better in the mornings with a proper breakfast. and try different carbs.

His diet is very very full of saturated fats and non-complex carbs. With the food you are giving him, his blood sugar levels will be all over the place. A better balanced diet would help with that.

I think you need to increase the amount of fruit and veg substantially, which will fill him up and make the carbs he eats slow release ones. Much more lean protein than diary would help reduce the saturated fats too.

LAG's food as described above is better balanced, why don't you take some tips from that? I'd still do the porridge and wholemeal toast for breakfast as someone suggested above.

With the food you are giving him, his blood sugar levels will be all over the place. A better balanced diet would help with that.

Oops sorry -I've repeated myself at the end!

You lot don't know you're born (that was just to please welliemum)

Seriously tho' I'd love to see dd3 eat even a fraction of that. She's 2.9 & barely eats - cereal for breakfast which she'll either take or leave, a cheese sandwich for lunch (she will only eat cheese on a sandwich & it has to be mushy, worthless whitebread - will not touch wholemeal/granary) & at least 5 days a week has no dinner as she won't even look at what I've put down to her. I know of only 1 cooked meal she is guaranteed to eat - boiled rice, sweet & sour sauce & prawn crackers from our local Chinese takeaway. She won't eat any meat, fish, potatoes unless chips, gravy, veg or pasta. She used to eat pizza or tomato pasta but won't touch them now. So she lives on cereal, sandwiches, fruit, breadsticks, rice cakes & yogurts. It worries me sick but I know there's no point in turning it into a battle so I put the same down for her as everyone else & just take the untouched plate away again when it gets cold.

13 month old ds otoh is a total troughmonster & will eat anything that doesn't actually get up & run away - I love watching him at mealtimes

My dd is like this- and she's only 22 mo!
Some days I do not stop feeding her- when we eat out, she has a child's portion which is supposed to be for a child up to 11 yrs! She can genuinely eat more than me in a day.
DH was the same though- he always had tea and dinner in a day rofl- a full cooked tea around 5 and a full dinner around 8:30.
He has always been super skinny, and she is reasonably lean for a toddler, certainly no 'elastic band' wrists, and tummy only sticks out after she's eaten.
I'm afraid its just their metabolism.
I have to say I experienced it too when dd was tiny and I'd jus started bfing- I was ravenous the whole time. I think it is horrible to live like that, though thankfully now I've stopped bfing, my appetite has returned to normal pre-baby state.

She does not eat any biscuits, sweets, chocolate etc. Eats LOTS of fruit and veg, porridge, wmbread etc. She just genuinely needs a lot of fuel. She isn't particularly active either crawled and walked really late, and prefers to sit and think or 'read' rather than run around.
DH uses most energy when he's thinking though (mathematician)- his head goes all hot!

No, you don't know you're born!

dd is 2.10 and barely eats enough to keep a fly alive... but I would echo what everyone else has said in giving your ds more in the way of complex carbs and less non-complex sugary stuff (cheerios, despite being advertised as wholegrain, are actually full of sugar). Protein and fat also help with saiety levels (ie the 'full' feeling) - have you tried giving him buttery scrambled eggs for brekky, or maybe a cheese omelette?

Despite my green-eyed envy, I can see that it must be absolutely exhausting for you (I just dream of the day that dd sits down for a 'proper' cooked meal with us!) - hope you find a solution

I only give him Cheerios and Shreddies because he is fussy about cereal and won't eat many of them. Occasionally he will have shredded wheat, but never porridge or anything really nutritious . To those on the thread who have Los who barely eat, I know how you feel. My son was like this for a long time, which is probably why I am so deliriously happy when he wolfs down a bowl of sugary cereal!

wow yes I absolutely do agree that you should by rights be on your knees with exhaustion!!!! I agree completely on the low sugar snacks and to give more nutritional high calorie foods.

Just an e.g. but the porridge my LO has every morning is made up of porridge oats mixed with dessicated coconut with raisins, dried cranberrys & dried apricots and made up with full fat milk - it makes it much more palatable and there's no need to add sugar then because the coconut is quite sweet naturally.

You could make some meusli bars for snacks, bananas are always good and wholemeal bread rather than white and brown rice instead of white too.

santaswhiskers and lovecattle

Our porridge Top Tip is to grate apple or pear in straightaway while it's very hot. The fruit cooks slightly and sweetens the porridge nicely.

It also cools the porridge down which is good, because while you're doing all this, dd1 is jumping around shouting "I WANT my porridge NOW" and dd2 is hanging onto your clothes shouting "PODGE! PODGE!"

dd2 at 18 months, already eats an adult sized portion.

And she's still breastfeeding at all hours so I'm permanently ravenous, and I can never get enough food because no matter what I try to snack on, they climb on my lap and take it away and eat it.

[violins]