Feeding a 13month old - eeeek !!!

[Elixir]

Hi - I'm after any tips or ideas for my DD who is eating finger food only and isn't keen on taking anything from a spoon apart from fromage frais !!! She's long and very slim and really needs all the energy boosting foods she can take - but seems to have gone off pasta and rice and will only ocaisionally have wholemeal bread ?!

She doesn't have a particular sweet tooth - loves her veggies and her fruit - but they don't contain too many calories and I want to avoid giving her the 'bad' suagr / calorific food stuffs - Any ideas ??

I'm sure you will have tried this, but my ds was very fussy about what he would eat with a spoon - we found things like sweet potato and sweetcorn could be mixed with rice and chicken and that would give him the extra energy - like your dd he is still very slim. I think as long as your dd has plenty of energy and is getting a little of each food group, then you shouldn't worry.

Have you tried giving her a spoon, so you can feed her while she experiments with the spoon. We tried that with ds and it worked really well - particularly once he was on to finger foods - it just gave him that bit more independence. Although sometimes the only thing he would eat was fromage frais. He even went off stewed apple! But, he is 15 months now and will eat anything - he is totally non-fussy now. He eats some of his food himself (with a spoon) and lets us feed him sometimes. So there is light at the end of the tunnel!

sausages - veggie or meat depending on your thoughts? If you/she is a meat eater then bits of cooked chicken or lamb/beef burgers?

pitta bread? chips (oven ones without salt aren't that bad for you)? tortillas?

slices of spanish omlette?

My dd loves buckwheat pancakes, not eating wheat yet but if you're fine with that then regular pancakes.

sausages - veggie or meat depending on your thoughts? If you/she is a meat eater then bits of cooked chicken or lamb/beef burgers?

pitta bread? chips (oven ones without salt aren't that bad for you)? tortillas? with cheese?

slices of spanish omlette?

My dd loves buckwheat pancakes, not eating wheat yet but if you're fine with that then regular pancakes.

sausages - veggie or meat depending on your thoughts? If you/she is a meat eater then bits of cooked chicken or lamb/beef burgers?

pitta bread? chips (oven ones without salt aren't that bad for you)? tortillas? with cheese?

slices of spanish omlette?

My dd loves buckwheat pancakes, not eating wheat yet but if you're fine with that then regular pancakes.

oops!

Mine loved avacado at this age, either sliced or mushed with banana, sounds horrid I know, but thet loved it & it was a v. portable lunch! Neither will touch it now though at 4 and 2!!!?

batey - mine too - avocado with everything. mind you, she's off it now aged 2 yrs 3 mths.
potato skins with cheese or beans are lovely. just bake whole pots, cut in half and scoop out most but not all of middle (use for mash/fishcakes) and brush lightly with oil, back in oven for another 10/15 mins. also sticks of cheese or philadelphia & marmite on soldiers - anything squidgy

Bananas are supposed to be high energy fruit. Also jacket /mashed potatoes can be finger food. Roast potatoes - only need a light spriz with oil. Cubes of cheese. Raisins. Couscous.

Have you tried a variety of forms of pasta? My DS is very illogical and fickle about what form of pasta he will eat. Currently he thinks noodles (spaghetti/linguine/tagliatelle) are great fun to eat.

At about the age of your DD he was very amused at watching DH and I eat noodles.... Hmm better examine my table manners, methinks!

This isn't a long term solution but sometimes dd (12months) refuses the spoon but if I dip my finger into the goo, she will eat it off that! I also find that she often has to have something to play with at the table (a bottle of sunscreen is a favourite) or else she gets bored. Then she happily opens her mouth again for the food while she is engrossed in inspecting the 'toy'.

Elf snap with the finger feeding method! I found that DS would maybe be fed the first few mouthfuls from my finger and would then transfer to the spoon once the taste was established. Or his own fingers....

Elixir, when I was looking after my friend's little boy (from 11 months) he loved rice pudding (rice, raisins and milk only, no sugar, baked in the Aga very low for about 1 hour). He also liked rice with veg, you could try rice with butternut (a more filling and interesting version of pumpkin)and maybe grate some courgette into it. If you try the raisin version first and do it in the oven and then the veg version she might be more open to eating it.
Good luck!

We've had similar problem with dd and have found best solution to give her as much finger food as possible and shovel softer foods (mashed veg,flaky fish etc) in between. Chunks of lean meat such as roasted chicken, skinless sausage etc are easy for them to chew. She also loves the usual array of finger fruit and veg, and pasta and rice.

It is unlikely that your dd will deliberately starve herself so don't worry too much. This phase will pass but it is frustrating and messy in the meantime!!

LizS

LizS

When a similar age mine went through a phase of jamming her little mouth shut whenever a spoon was waved near it. I ended up doing things like making my own breads to give her as finger food - so I'd make lots of cheese bread, and add tomato puree, or spinach, or whatever I felt I could mix into the dough that would give her at least some nourishment. I made lots of raisin/dried apricot bread too, which she still loves now. They went down pretty well when cut into fingers. Other things - I mashed up an egg yolk with some butter, making a rich eggy spread and popped that on the finger food (again, trying to get protein into her somehow). Another thing that went down really well is tortilla wraps with a filling of cheese and ham - lightly melted in a pan, then cut into wieldable strips.

I found her clamped jaw phase did pass, anyway, and she's now (I think) a pretty healthy eater, so it's worth persevering with the 'no bad sugar' foods. Mine own dd's phase started to pass when I gave her dips like hummous/mashed avocado, and she enjoyed eating those, and then she very quickly ate with a spoon by herself (just wanted to be independent, I think). Good luck, anyway. If you're anything like me, it's terribly frustrating to have just prepared a lovely nourishing spoon meal for a child, only to have it soundly rejected in favour of a bit of bread! I just ended up trying to get the nourishment into the bread, really

Oh BTW, I did boil the egg first

Thank you soooo much for all your ideas !!! It's such a relief to find that my DD is not the only one with these funny ways !! The irony is of course that in 15 yrs time, we'll all be very pleased of them being healthy , long and slim won't we !!!! ????!

I'm off to make some of your food creations !!!