Have I really turned my DD into a fussy eater and damaged her speech development?

[littleduck]

DD is nearly 1. She is a very good eater in that she will eat a wide range of foods but she will pretty much only eat smooth or mashed foods. Will accept veg mashed but won't have meat unless very whizzed very fine - she would refuse a shepherd's pie for example because of the texture of the mince. She will however eat the Organix snacks and will pick up toast slices and bite on them although I don't think much goes in.

I am aware that she needs to be eating lumpy foods and have been trying to introduce unsuccessfully for a couple of months now. However I whilst trawling on the internet I have found articles saying that if she won't eat lumps by now this will have had a negative impact on her speech development and she is more likely to be a fussy eater as a result. I haven't pushed it too much previously as she is a good eater generally and became very upset when lumpy food was offered. It looks as if she is chewing what is in her mouth but occasionally she clearly hasn't chewed a lump enough and then she will either gag and cry and refuse to eat any more or will gag and then vomit.

DD has also been under the weather since Jan with a series of episodes of bronchiolitis which has resulted in 4 admissions to hospital with viral wheeze. As a result her weight has dropped from a consistent 50th centile before Jan to 25th. I am a bit worried by this and would like her to put some weight on.

I need to get some food into her so part of me thinks to continue with smoothish foodsbut am really concerned that I will harm her development if I don't manage to get her to accept lumpy foods fairly soon, if I haven't actually damaged her development anyway. I thought I was doing the best thing for my daughter by leaving lumpy foods until she no longer found them upsetting but what I have read recently says she should have been having lumpy textures from 7 months.

She is a very happy little girl who loves people and is very smiley. She commando crawls and is now trying to pull herself up to stand, she can get up with a little bit of help and will stand alone for a second or two once she is up. She babbles and chatters away, making 'b', 'd', 'm' sounds and I have also heard her making 'p' and 'f' sounds. She says dada and baba (we think I am 'baba')and understands the word 'no' and has now started to shake her head when I say 'ah-ah' to stop her doing something.

I don't think she seems particularly behind although most of the babies in my antenatal group have been standing for ages and will eat anything so this makes me worry a bit.

Just looking for some advice really, I don't want to turn food into a battleground but at the same time I don't want to damage her development.

Many thanks

um, my mother tells me I wouldn't eat lumps until I was 18 months old - I am a bit fussy about food, but since I started talking have rarely shut up
I was a very late developer (talked late, crawled and walked late, teethed late), but now have a PhD, so clearly in my case it wasn't a long term problem! hopefully someone will come along with more than anecdotal evidence for you soon!

Understand your prob as you want her to get her weight back on but also want her speech etc to develope.

Would she eat an apple (not cut up) as this is very good for exersing the muscles needed for speech.

Other exercises for the speech are blowing sucking through a straw help between the lips. Making faces/animal noises. So might be worth giving these ago to take the attention away from what she want eat.

My dd went through illness at this age and for awhile was fussy and I was so worried about her weight it is now 2 years later she is eatting me out of house and home and I'm worried she's getting too big!

DD didn't regularly eat lumpy foods until about 15-18 months but it did change and she eats a better variety now. Still quite fussy like me but eats 'normal' foods. She was always a bit funny about texture - for ages she wouldn't eat jelly, liked the flavour but didn't like the texture. She loves it now!

Speech wise she was distinctly average and didn't have any clear 'words' at that age either, then moved to just Daddy and hello for ages. She has just turned 3 and now comes out with amazing sentences like 'Er, sweetheart, I think I need to do a wee on the potty, probably'

DS is 16m, babbles lots but his only words are Gone and Dinner So sounds fine to me TBH, I would keep offering a mix of stuff you know she will eat, along side the stuff you would like her to be eating. 25th centile is still well in the normal range and they often slim down a bit at this age IME.

The walking sounds fine, I think as long as they have some way of moving themselves about, that is normal too. Mine both walked too bloody early and the youngest is a climber so enjoy it while you can

Dd1 would not eat lumps until she was 2 (she would gag on any lumps), she was talking at 10 months and has not shut up since .

Thanks for your thoughts guys - she has been through a lot over the last 3 months and in some ways if she is a bit behind then it doesn't surprise me too much. I think I might try the foods I know she likes after offering finger foods etc for her to try.

I tried her on a piece of raw pear and she gagged and vomited so am rather nervous about trying raw fruit again.

Tried her on a piece of toast and jam at lunchtime and she seemed to quite like it - well kept putting it in her mouth to try and gnaw bits off so it's a start.

Gave her slighly lumpy food for lunch before the bread and jam - she ate a few spoons and then started crying and shaking her head when offered. At least she didn't gag and vom on it today. She then cried when she saw a matching food bowl come out until she realised there was some mashed fruit in it - she managed the fruit OK though.

Any more thoughts in addition to the kind help above would be warmly appreciated

Her language sounds absolutely fine for her age - so the lack of lumpy food is obviously not affecting her. I really don't think you need to worry at all about that.

So the question is what to do about her refusing lumpy food. You don't really say, but I get the impression that you are trying to 'feed' her, rather than letting her try things herself. With the smoother food, I would really encourage her to feed herself. You can start by loading up the spoon, and leaving it for her to pick up when she's ready. I found porridge really great for this - it sticks to the spoon fairly well. But she should be able to feed herself yoghurts or pureed foods. Yes, loads will go in her ears/hair/on the floor, but I found my dd got on well by being able to control the food herself.

Then you need to have 'finger foods'. As children this age seem to put anything and everything in their mouths, all you need to do is put tasty things in front of her and let her pick and choose. Toast, pizza (especially with a bit of crust to hold onto), fruit, carrot sticks, garlic bread, bread and jam and sweetcorn on the cob are all great. It will probably take several attempts before she's actually eating things this way - things may or may not get picked up and then sniffed or nibbled to start with. So try over a few days/weeks and let her take her time. You can also let her take anything that interests her from your own plate. You can do finger foods as well as other foods or before or after or at snack time. But try not to spend ages preparing stuff just for her - it gets annoying to have half of it on the floor.

And 'proper' puddings like apple crumble and custard can also be great.

I hope this is some help to you.

I would try breadsticks as after the initial bite they go mushy fairly quickly so might be a good introduction to lumps/chewing

I found the really tiny baby pasta was useful when trying to introduce lumpy food.
I did find that my DD used to regress after being ill, and we had to build up to more lumpy food all over again.

You have my sympathies - my ds has had a run of broncholitis and a hospital admission and I know how the finer points of weaning (or anything for that matter) get lost..

One theory is that moving from pureed foods to lumpy ones sort of causes gagging, because the baby interprets lumps (rather than defined chunks for example) as puree and tries to swallow them in the same way, hence gagging. If your dd is interested in toast, you could try mashing up eg avocado, steamed veg on it and give it to her, and go from there.

And, no, of course you haven't damanged her language development and she doesn't sound particularly fussy,

HTH.