picky eaters - what went wrong?

[vivie]

My ds and his little friends are 10-11 months and they all seem to be eating pretty well but I can't believe that all of them are going to be enjoying 3 balanced meals a day by the time they're 3. Some of them are going to be refusing veg / only eating jam sarnies / toothpaste - what happens? Nobody starts weaning thinking 'great - bring on the chicken nugget' but plenty of kids will eat nothing else - how do you get there? I don't want to start some kind of guilt-fest, but I would genuinely love to hear from other mums and learn from other's mistakes.

you can feed them all you like but they will go all stupid at any old age - fear of sauces " contamination" etc - or they will always eat everything.

It amazing what children eat as toddlers in retrospect that they wont eat now

vivie ... my DS ate anything and everything from weaning at 4 months until he was about 18 months (except for cheese sauces and rice pudding). At 18 months he suddenly became picky and although I wasn't worried as he has always like veggies and fruit we were down to 2 or 3 favourites and that was it. If I tried anything new on him he wouldn't even taste it and he behaved as if I was about to poison him ... Of course he has always liked crisps and biscuits and nuggets and chips ....!
He is now nearly 4 and seems to be coming out of this stage ... he will taste new things and will genuinely tell me if he likes it or doesn't ... in recent months he has widened his 'eatable' meals to about 8.
(When I say meals I mean proper hot, cooked, healthy meals)
So, I think all children and toddlers go through a 'picky' stage ... some stay picky forever (I did) but some improve (like my DS) ... I think that I read somewhere that it is another 'control' thing ... the toddler's way of controlling the situation ...
I think forcing toddlers to eat is a like fighting a losing battle ... as they get older it does get easier IMO!!

I think if there's something you really don't want them to eat, then don't buy it. Then they can't!

I agree with Ghosty. My ds1 became quite picky around the 2-3 age. He got better as he got older and recently (he turned 5 in August) is happy to try anything and this has meant a huge increase in the amount of different foods he will eat, especially fruit and veg which was terribly limited for a long while - grapes and apple only for fruit and broccoli only for veg until he was about 4. My 2 year old is a nightmare at the moment - only fruit he will eat is apple, and the only veg he will eat is a baked bean, if that counts.
But I am much less stressed about it this time round as I know it should get better as he gets older.

agree with codswallop and aloha - all you can do is continue to offer a variety of healthy balanced food. some kids are just picky and that's that.

Our DD aged 3.6 has only just started to eat a variety of vegetables (she has always eaten meat and dairy products). We have always offered her them but she refused point blank to eat any of it. The turning point has been her starting at nursery school, I think something just clicked and off we went.

I wonder what it is that makes a child 'go picky' at a certain age. Do you think our attitudes as parents affects our kids' eating habits? When I was growing up my family usually ate a healthy cooked dinner together, and my siblings and I all eat well as adults. This isn't always possible for modern families with working families - do you think this makes a difference?

ooh, i like this thread! vivie your comment about the chicken nuggets rung home to me! (wish she'd never tasted the darn things in the first place). My dd like Ghosty's used to eat anything! Now she is SO picky it's unreal. When she was just under 2(i think) she was very sick one night and she'd had spag bol....my dp says that it's that that has put her off somewhere in her little head! Now she won't eat anything wet! (though she's just started eating pasta shapes.....out of a tin NOT mine!)....she will eat meat.....friut juice......dairy......but i have a right time with fruit and veg...........just have to go with the flow i think!!

My dd is just getting to the picky stage (at 16months) and just refuses to let me put some things in her mouth.

When this happens I find that if I give her a spoon, leave the food in front of her and (pretend to) busy myself doing something else nearby she will quite often eat it (or at least try it). She loves to stir, so after a while of stirring I sometimes say "put it in your mouth" and the spoon will be in her mouth before she's even thought about it.

Though I'm sure we're going to get to the "I only want to eat purple triangular things" stage soon enough.

I suspect it's a whole load of different factors...their taste buds changing as they grow (they do experience tastes differently from the way we do)and I think there was a thread recently about how toddlers evolved to be picky, particularly about fruit and veg as they could have eaten poisonous plants and berries in our hunter-gatherer ancestry. I think imagination plays a big part: I can remember as a kid textures and smells would bring up all sorts of associations, often quite fantastical. This time last year, DS was a satsuma-based life form. Now won't eat a single segment.

salt thats what i do too, if i pretend to ignore her she will sometimes TRY something but usually informs me its "incusatard!".(disgusting!!!!!!!!!!)

the problem i have is.when i cook a lovely meal that she just will not eat.( and i make her a plate of what we eat-always with her in mind every night), what do other mums do? offer her an alternative?....have to admit i usually end up doing that as i don't want her to go hungry!

As I kid I ate no veg and genuinely thought peas were part of an adult conspiracy against children. I reasoned that they were SO disgusting that nobody could genuinely like them, so adults must be pretending in order to torture us kids I like them now though, and so does DS (2 and a bit). He had tomatoey mashed potato with mixed veg for lunch, followed by homemade flapjack, so feel v superior today (boast boast!).

LOL aloha....i love veg too but dd thinks they're awful...at least she eats SOME good things though!

And yes, I do give an alternative if ds genuinely doesn't fancy his dinner. Usually bread and butter and a cup of milk or something equally simple and plain. After all there are times when I really fancy something and times when I simply couldn't face it - fish for example.

DS was born in February and his first two summers he would eat any fruit going. But when I offered him the same seasonal fruits the next summer he couldn't remember them so wouldn't try them. Anything he hasn't had for a while he is wary of so keep offering a variety of foods. Am going to attempt to reintroduce satsumas this week.

He is actually not all that bad - will eat peas, brocolli, cauliflower, turnip, sweetcorn etc and sometimes others if he is hungry and they are in a casserole or something. We seem to have come through the "broken" stage as well about things being cut up.

Dd ate anything until 14 months old, then she could walk and didn't want to sit and eat. Like a fool, I offered her alternatives because I didn't want her to go to bed hungry, and so wake up in the night. I also think that all the hype surrounding babies and how much milk they should have, and when to wean them, and what first foods to give them increases mums' worries over children's food intake. Dd will now eat salad, fruit and some veg, plus the usual rubbish such as nuggets, fish fingers, but will not eat pasta, rice or potatoes. It drives me insane, but have two choices - serve food which she likes, or serve food that I wish she would eat!! I tend to go between the two, but I think she often goes hungry at nursery!!

Apparently, picky eating is all in their genes ! Not much comfort, though, when you've lovingly prepared something for them and they reject it.

oh that means ds gets it from me!!!

LOL!

Aloha LOL re. peas ... I was EXACTLY the same ... still don't like them much ... but DS loves them.
I do believe that the pickiness is a 'stage' of control ... like I said in the previous post ... refusing food is a perfect way for a toddler to have control over his or her parents ...
I didn't bother with alternatives when DS was very picky ... from the age of 18 months to 3 I only gave him things I KNEW he would eat ... every so often tried something else but didn't get my knickers in a twist ...
Now he is older I still don't give alternatives but am much more adventurous - I will try something new with him but also put something on the plate that he does like so he has to try the new thing ... if he won't eat it after he has had a couple of mouthfuls then he can eat the stuff he does like (eg baked beans, carrots ... )
If he refuses the whole lot then that's it ... nothing else ... (Mean Mummy brigade!)