Constant requests for food

[mwro]

I know that a lot of mothers have toddlers/small children who won't eat but I have the opposite problem.

DD is 3 years old and has always been a good eater. I feed her (what I think is) a very healthy diet and she has lots of fresh fruit and vegetables etc everyday. We don't eat biscuits and cakes on a daily basis but if we're at a party etc then I let her. I give her three meals a day and a snack between each meal (fruit, cheese, yoghurt etc and always have ricecakes to hand). Plus milk in the morning and before bed.

The problem I have is that DD is obsessed with food and eating. Obviously I was concerned that she was hungry but I really don't think she can be hungry every single time she asks for food. She just seems so desperate to eat all the time and so into food (sometimes I've seen her try and eat food that has fallen from someone else's plate). She gobbles her food so quickly (I try to get her to eat more slowly). Even if she has just eaten a good meal, she is constantly asking for more (and often asks for more before she has eve finished what she is eating).

It's got to the point where it's really wearing me down. I try to distract her and when we're out it's easier but at home it's driving me crazy. She just whines and whines. I know all children are different, but her sister (just a little bit younger) has the same amount of food and is satisfied (she's also a good eater) so I don't think I'm starving her or anything.

Has anyone else experienced this and what did you do? Please don't tell me just to feed her whenever she wants as I don't think this is the solution. I'm trying to teach her that we don't eat all day long.

Sorry for the long post. I hope I won't be dismissed as a mother who simply isn't feeding her child enough.

If I were you I would think very hard about exactly what you are feeding your dd, and bear in mind that they do need a higher proportion of fat in the diet and plenty of energy giving foods at that age. So if she has an apple for snack time she may well be hungry very soon after! If I were you I would oontinue with the high fruit and veg content but also make sure your child has plenty of high cal foods that will satiate her longer.

It doesn´t matter if your other child eats less, each child is different, many as you say, tending to live on air rather than anything ; )

Have you spoken to a HCP about this?

Is your child´s weight approprioate for her height?

Thanks BornAgain. Her weight is very good for her height - she is 90th centile (is that the right word?!) for both height and weight. I have spoken to a paediatrician and also discussed her diet in detail and he says that there are just some children who are this way with food and that he seriously doubts she is hungry.

I make sure that she has some carbohydrate with every meal - cereals like porridge, all bran or weetabix in the morning, pasta, rice, potatoes etc with her lunch and dinner. Sometimes she has a huge banana for a snack (one that would even feel me up) and perhaps some cheese and still wants more. I don't know. I'm very confused. To me it seems more of a fixation with food. eg if i'm cooking and she wants to eat cake mixture before it's cooked and I explain she can't because it has raw egg then she goes crazy. If i mention we are going to a birthday party the only thing she cares about is the birthday cake and constantly asks about it until she has eaten it.

Given her height and weight are good you probably don´t have anything to worry about surely..

Mwro, I´m getting the impresion that you are very aware of food yourself.. could this have rubbed off on your dd? And dc are little devils, if she gets the feeling that this is an issue she may well play you at the game and demand food as a bit of a game, just like other children REFUSE to eat when they can feel how desperate the parent is to get them to eat.

Licking the bowl and being excited about birthday cake is quite common behaviour of small children I think, I wouldn´t worry about the raw egg at all personally ; )

Small children usually do eat all day long, so trying to train her into adult eating patterns is not realistic.

Her obsession with birthday cake sounds perfectly normal and age appropriate.

Stop trying to distract her, and feed her. She's probably become a little obsessed because she has been left hungry until you feels she needs food rather than when her body says she needs food.

If her younger sister is eating the same amount of food, you aren't feeding her enough.

Give her plenty of potatoes, plenty of protein (eggs, cheese, fish and meat), plenty of pasta and plenty of rice. Butter her bread, add milk to her mash. Feed her normal meals, as much as she likes, and as much fruit as she wants for snacks. She will not get fat but if you don't stop being weird about her diet now, she will not trust you to provide food when she is hungry and she will become even more obsessive.

Ricecakes are not food, by the way. They are something for the mouth to do so that fat people don't get fatter. Your daughter isn't fat and if she's asking for food, it's not very sensible to give her something like rice cakes. They are nutritionally void.

There are no bad or good foods, I would probably relax more with cakes and biscuits as she rarely gets them she obsesses about them and may well lead to long term issues - Meals without tears is a good book tackles over eating too. If I were you I would give her as much as she wants, but ask her what she craves for even if its on your banned list.

If you read Meals without tears eating quickly and overeatingis a sympton that you are controlling her food too much, women with weight issues have daughters that overeat when they can and eat quickly.

My 3 year old sometimes has a week when she says she is hungry all the time and it precedes a growth spurt.

Colditz - maybe you didn't mean it that way but you come across as being a bit harsh (like saying I'm being weird) when i'm asking for advice because i'm genuinely very confused and would like some (friendly) help. I didn't know about ricecakes. I see a lot of people give their children ricecakes and my children really liked them when they tried them from friends. I'm not trying to put my child on a diet if that is what you are implying.

BornAgain - I don't think i have an issue with food. I do try to eat a healthy balanced diet though and i certainly wouldn't like to think that I was giving my child a food complex.

That said, I do understand what you are both saying. You should also know that I don't live in england (and have never raised children there) and I think attitudes to children's food are maybe different here. Maybe from now on I will give her something everytime she asks (even if it's every 5 minutes!!) and see how she is (I guess the worst that can happen is her being sick from eating too much!!)

How about having a fruit bowl which she can reach easily, and saying you can have anything in this bowl when ever you like.

That might take the pressure off you to come up with ideas, and it might let her feel more in control?

Just a thought.

And by the way - I have no weight issues! I have never dieted in my life. Just wanted to clear that up. I do have a very fast metabolism though so maybe she has inherited that from me.

The meals without tears book sounds interesting. I think that the controlling the fod bit could be right. When i had to wean her, i had no clue what to do and they gave me very strict guidelines here to follow. maybe this is a result of all that...

You know tomorrow, I'm going to just let her eat what she likes. Thank you all so much for the advice!

"If i mention we are going to a birthday party the only thing she cares about is the birthday cake and constantly asks about it until she has eaten it."

Both my oldest and middle child until recent years always used to be the last child sat eating the party food at parties. They would sit there until either everything was finsihed, or it was tidied away - regardless of what other fun stuff they could be doing . DS2 was definitely the worst for it - and he's ALWAYS asking for food at home.

And a few months back when I told DS2 that a good friend of mine was getting married next year and we would all be going his reply was

"oh - that's nice...........will there be food"

"If her younger sister is eating the same amount of food, you aren't feeding her enough."

I'm not sure that's strictly true - DS2 eats FAR more than DS1 - yet he is the one that always wants more food

Alwayslookingforanswers Thank you for making me laugh about all of this.

No-one here understands cos they all have children who don't eat anything!!

Rice cakes are like eating cardboard!
I think that it is a big mistake to label food good and bad. She may be picking up on the fact that you are very concerned about the type of food and so if she gets the chance to eat something 'bad'.

I would give her more control. At meal times serve up a portion, but put all veg in bowls to help herself, and have second helpings if she wants. (apologies if you already do this). You could have snacks in a bowl and explain that she can help herself, but not to ask because there won't be more until the next meal. Does she drink plenty of water?

If it carries on you could try getting her medically checked. I know that there is a medical condition where people don't physically have any feeling of fullness-but it is very rare.

Sorry-I didn't finish the sentence-I meant that if she gets the chance to eat something 'bad' she wolfs it down in case the opportunity doesn't crop up for some time.

Wow it amazes me that you guys are so anti ricecakes as my two love them!

the snack bowl seems like a good idea. i'll try that. Yes she drinks a lot of water (normally mixutre of juice and water). I do give her second helpings of food if she asks but third or fourth helpings seems a lot. at mealtimes we often do have the veg or potatoes in the middle so she can help herself.

I didn't deliveratly come across as harsh, but I was deliberately blunt because I don't think you can see the damage you could do by having a weird attitude to her diet.

(And you do have a weird attitude to her diet. It's over controlling and although you say you have no weight or food issues, you post like someone who does.)

If she's on the 90th centile for her height, she NEEDS to eat more than other children her age. She will also need to eat more than older children who are her height, because she has more growing to do.

Rice cakes are good for babies just learning to eat as they dissolve in the mouth. Then they ask for them as they get bigger...

I give them to my toddler with peanut butter to make them a bit more nutritious..

mwro if you have a fast metabolism it is hardly surprising that your lo eats a lot! She could be burning the cals off before she has a chance to grow ; )

I have a nearly three-year-old who sounds very much like your daughter, OP.

She is obsessed with eating, loves all food, and will beg food off anyone she sees eating, even if she's just had a full meal. We've also had issues with teaching her to only eat food off her own plate, rather than swiping food off other people's plates (e.g. eating other children's food at nursery). We were recently at a wedding, as as the room hushed for the arrival of the bride, she shouted "but Mummy, where's the cake!".

I definitely worried about it for a while, but have realised that she's just having a full-on love affair with food, taste, and texture. She also loves cooking, helping prepare meals, and licking the cake-mixture bowl!

If I let her eat anything she wants and respond to every request for food between meals she does self-regulate - by eating much less at her main mealtimes. Our solution right now regular snacks, free access to the fruit bowl at home, and to always have healty snacks (another vote for rice cakes here!) to hand when we're out. However, I definitely still do the distraction thing if a meal-time is looming becuase I reckon she gets a much more balanced diet if she consumes a big chunk of her food through actual meals, and I think there's no harm in teaching her that it's good to be a little bit hungry when you sit down to enjoy a meal. Oh, and third helpings are frequent here too!

Try not to stress out about it too much, and she'll find her own level.

You could try ThingTwo's suggestion. If you move the stress it might take her mind off food and she probably will self regulate.

Are you me, mwro? my DD is 3.5 and both you and thingtwo are describing her exactly. She is over 90th centile for height and weight and she loves to eat,to try different foods, to cook for others (she has her own collection of cookbooks).

Overeating is something which I have given alot of thought to and I have worried about. I have been guilty of giving her too much fruit and then wondering why she is still hungry etc. I would say that Colditz and ThingTwo are spot on given what I have been through with my DD which has ranged from feeling uncomfortably controlling to a snackbox idea (that didn't work, she just asked for more) to giving her so much fruit that she got diarrohea because I hadn't given her anything to actually satisfy her hunger. In the end, I was giving her less and less calorific foods to compensate for that fact that she wanted to eat so much and then she would want to eat more IYSWIM. I got into a viscious circle. Colditz is right, it is a weird attitude to food and it is more about me than her, I didn't want her to be fat and to turn out to be one of those great big wobbly children because that would make me a bad parent. I'm very lucky to have realised this was an issue for me, not her, before it became a battle. I was completely blind to the fact that DD is the size of someone a year older than her and that DH is 6'3 and my DB is 6'7 and her red book calculations said she was likely to be 6' herself.

I now do exactly what thingtwo describes, and so I let her eat, but I try to distract her abit just before a meal, usually by getting her involved in the cooking and this usually means she will pick at the ingrediants as I make it (which makes no odds to me, its all part of the main meal). Nowadays she does indeed self regulate. I find making sure that her snacks have carbs or protein with them helps so if she has fruit she often has a small yogurt at the same time. She also eats cake and chocolate at times, I'm aiming for a much more varied and balanced diet now.

More protein at every meal and for snacks too. Offer cheese, nuts and yogurt in addition to fruit for snacks. Cut out the juice and just serve water or milk. There's quite a lot of sugar in fruit juices, and it can have the result of making you feel hungry.

And how about letting her serve herself dinner? If you set out the food in serving dishes and provide utensils she could keep on going back for seconds or thirds or more if she felt like it, cut out the middle woman (you), and take control of her intake.