Help with 4 yr old dd's eating needed please!!

[Foxy800]

Hi there, my lo is 4 and teatime is a nightmare and getting worse!!!
Breakfast and lunch are very limited as to what she will eat but at least she is eating. Teatimes are a nightmare.
As a baby she would eat anything then she choked a couple of times and that is when the trouble began.
We have always had a rule that if she trys tea she can have pudding( depends how much she eats as to what she has) and she can have a snack at bedtime. If she refused to touch it then no puddign but she could have snack at bedtime.
Normally she nibbles on it so gets pudding but am trying to encourage a better diet as it not great with what she will eat. Over the last 3 nights we have had 2 nights of screaming and refusing to touch it so no pudding and no snack at bedtime apart from glass of milk.

We often get tears before we have even made tea and the other day after refusing tea she woke up the next day and complained about being tired and refused her milk and brekkie, an hour later she was slightly sick then was fine and suddenly had her appetite back and ate loads. Im sure it was a coincidence and not related to not eating tea the night before.

Im a bit of a worrier though and am concerned she has some sort of food phobia and dont know how to help her.

I have spoken to hvs before and been told to just keep trying!!! We are currently writing food diaries ( on week 2 tomorrow) and am doing a meal planner just for tea times. Am thinking about trying to get hv or doctor to refer us to a dietitican but dont know if that is the right move or not.

Thank you for reading if you got this far and any advice greatfully recieved.

Just back from seeing my friend. She will send me some activities when she is back at work - but that won't be for a couple of weeks. It is mainly around messy play with food, as said before.

What is the best way to contact you? Are you on FB with anyone from MN? I wonder if we can trace each other that way. Or can you CAT me your email address?

I personally feel you need to avoid any sort of negotiating around food for a while as that can cause the stress and power games.

We did both feel that if your dd is eating fruit quite readily as well as chicken nuggets and potato, that she probably has a fairly good variety of nutrients and is getting a pretty good diet. It is just a case of broadening the range and taking away the anxiety - hers and yours.

Picnics are often good. Just like a previous poster suggested, when they can help themselves it often takes the pressure off and gives them some control. You don't have to actually go for a picnic you could just put a few different dishes of things on the table and dig in e.g. chips, cucumber, nuggets, apple, bread sticks, houmus.

Glad the GP is trying to help.

Meals without Tears is a book I would recommend.

I would in your position abandon eating at the table for a week. Eat outside on a picnic rug, in a park or garden or on the floor when raining. This is to break her from the pattern.

I would also for a week just give her only the food she will eat - this will take the pressure off all of you then slowly introduce new foods.

Inviting other children round to eat as part of a play session(although never worked with DD) - but eat informaly.

Hi there, thank you for all your help DaftApeth. I am on facebook but not with anyone from here. Will happily send you a pm with my email address though.

We often have picnics both at home and out and about.

Am making a roast dinner with sausages for her at the moment for tea which usually goes down well, she told me how much of everything she wanted but might try it as a picnic style, see how we go.

Gp has phoned back and said she is going to write a letter to peads, see what they say.If not them see if they can advice someone to help.

Will message you email address now.

Thank you fiddledee, will have a look for book, we dont always sit at table but will try to eat outside more.

Sorry DaftApeth unable to pass on email address through here so nto sure of best way for us to stay in touch.

Stop engaging.

Don't have pudding as an option, don't bribe, don't control, just say "Dinner's ready" and let her decide whether she eats it or not.

Pudding is not an everyday thing here, sometimes it turns up, sometimes it doesn't, eating dinner is neither here nor there because DS doesn't know whether there will be pudding or not.

If he doesn't eat his dinner and says he is hungry later I say: "Well that is a shame, perhaps you will eat your dinner tomorrow so you are not hungry at bedtime?".

Missing a couple of meals here and there won't hurt most kids.

Thanks, only sticking with the pudding as it is what hv has said to do. Before it was not allowed if she didnt try it.

I'll let you know when I get anything and we can work out some way of getting it to you. I'm away for a week next week, so it will probably be when I get back.

Hope the next few days go well.

Hi, I have three DDs and two of them are very picky.
The things I have found to help are:
Not giving any other options.
Giving small portions.
Praising any food eaten but in a quiet way.

However the best thing I did was to leave them to eat on their own. I didn't get stressed and they didn't get the attention. This may not work for you with just the one though.

Someone on here told me about 'supertasters'. people with over-sensitive taste buds who don't like strong flavoured foods. Might be worth considering.

I do give puddings but only if an agreed amount of main meal has been eaten and am VERY firm on this.

DD3 seems to be coming out of the worst of this 'phase' [god I hope it is] now and will regularly surprise me by eating a whole meal and asking for seconds. Maybe she is growing [3.11 years]

THank you for the reply.

Aren't you just going to end up with a kid who eats puddings for dinner?

Stop talking about food. It's a basic life support thing, not a hot topic of conversation.

Stop providing any puddings AT ALL regardless of what she chooses to do with all the other food at her mealtimes.

Provide healthy calorific meals with at least one item you know she has enjoyed before, breakfast, lunch and tea. Give one piece of fruit with a drink of full fat milk, mid morning and mid afternoon. Give one drink of full fat milk before bed - no food. Give nothing else and don't discuss it.

Meals that are left after 30 minutes of being on the table go in the bin. They do not get discussed, forced, cajoled, bribed for or researved an hour later. She waits until her next snack or meal.

We dont talk about food apart from her asking when tea is etc. We have only continued with the puddings on recommendation of gp and hv.

We are trying to provide healthy meals, breakfast and lunch are fine it is just tea.
We have in the past put one thing on she will eat but then she wont touch anything else.

She has milk in the morning and before bed. And she often has a fruit for snack morning and evening, will only have milk morning and evening though. ( Trying to get dp to give more fruit though when I am not here).

If she doesnt get touch the meal she doesnt get anything else.

That is what I am worried about Morloth too but have a meeting with hv on Friday mornign so will discuss it with her then.

How is it going Foxy?

Hi there,

We she has had one night of something different and then one night of something she likes but no improvement. Hv coming tomorrow for a chat so we will see.

The the HV visit is useful.

My son has had numerous problems (cancer twice, bone marrow transplant, Graft vs. Host disease etc.) which resulting in him having a feeding tube inserted for over 12 months. When that came out we were under immense stress to get him to eat but found that the minute we stopped stressing and let him regain control he started to make small amounts of progress. He went from over 12 months of not eating (being fed via his tube) to eating a spoonful of yoghurt, small crumb of bread etc. and slowly it has improved.

His diet is far from normal, he eats porridge, weetabix, rice krispies, breadsticks, jam sandwiches, yoghurts and thats it. He goes crazy if we ever try to get him to have a 'proper' cooked meal (even if it's just beans on toast) so we are just leaving him to his own devices. One day he'll realise.

Good luck to anyone going through food anxiety with their little ones. It is very stressful. Even after all our son has been through, the cancer etc., the food problem has been a nightmare.

xxx

AT, did you have support from your slt with your ds' feeding once the ng tube was removed?

DaftApeth, 'slt' not sure what this is? We didn't really get any support at all to be honest, we just knew that if we didn't remove the tube then our son would just become more attached to it (mentally), we took a big gamble and one afternoon I just pulled it out. Scary time but it was very much a waiting game and trying to show him that he hadn't lost control. I was an emotional wreck. We had previously had a weekend where he had vomited it up and we decided to leave it out but in the end it went back in but for this final time I was adamant that it wasn't going back in.

The hospital and Oncology clinic he attends told us that 'time would tell' and 'time would sort it out' but that's all very well for them to say while he's still sat there with a tube in being fed overnight and relying on it. We had to take some drastic action otherwise I fear he would still have the tube in today.

xx

Sorry to hear about your son's cancer, glad to hear he is getting better.

Hv came today and we have an action plan as it were in place and she is going to refer to a child pschligist that they have visiting their team once a month. so was all very positive.

Good luck with the Phycologist, the one at the hospital for our son wasn't up to much. To be honest we had written an 'Eating Action Plan' and she looked at it, agreed with it and then sent us a letter with our original plan attached saying that was what she wanted us to do. Needless to say we didn't bother seeing her again.

Foxy, an appointment with the psychologsit sounds good. If she can't help, ask her to find out someone who has experience in behavioural feeding difficulties. Your other option, if neither gp nor HV/Psychologist can help is to phone your local slt department and ask if they can help. Obviously, it's not often their area but in some areas (like my old department), they do have some experience.

AT, sorry that neither the slt nor the psychologist were helpful. After all you and your ds went through, I'm sure you could have done with some support. For your ds, an slt could be very helpful as I would say that he needs to build up tolerance of different textures after not experiencing food for a year. How old is ds?

Thank you very much for both your replies, sorry daftapeth what is an slt, I think I know but dont want to get it wrong, Lol!!!

I'm still not sure what an SLT is either? Sorry xx

No worries, thanks.x