Newbie not eating...anyone else?

[Lou]

The newbie I mentioned in the "#2 in underwear" thread is a very picky eater. Mom warned me about this and agrees with me that she gets what she is served and if she eats it great! If she doesn't, oh well. I hate the fact that I know she must be hungry but I also don't have the time nor energy to be a short order cook for everyones likes and dislikes. Well, newbie's stubborness is exactly how her Mom described and she's not eating! It's only day #2, do you think it will improve? Do you/have you had kids who literally eat one bite the entire day?
Today's menu was this:
AM Snack: Grapes and Cheese <---NOT ONE BITE!
Lunch: Cut up chicken dog, sweet potato fries and corn <--- NOT ONE BITE!
PM Snack: Graham Crackers and Blacckberries <--- Ate 1/2 a graham cracker

1/2 a graham craker for the whole day! and yesterday wasn't much better!

[Lou]

Excuse the grammar errors, oops!

[Play and Learn]

I have a picky eater, and I do NOT serve just for them. They get what everyone else is served. This is NOT a restaurant! The little guy is hit and miss - found out he usually likes food that has a lot of colour to it - ie PIZZA~

What I've been told from another parents (whose 1st daughter was very picky) is that as long as they're getting lots of liquids in them, to not worry. If they're hungry, they'll eat!

Good luck!

[Inspired by Reggio]

I agree I am not a restaurant ... I just graduated out one who was like that for THREE YEARS - she had severe control issues over food and a SWEET TOOTH and she would hold out for the poor carb options and refuse to eat anything else ... so with your sample menu she would only have eaten the graham cracker too cause she did not like meat and the fries were not McDonald style and ORANGE

Use to drive me nuts cause when she was new and I could not figure out why she would not CAVE and just eat like other kids cause her mom claimed they followed through at home and did not 'restaurant' feed her either she ate what was being served for meals or she went hungry ... she barely ate anything for the mother or me, suffered from constipation from the lack of fruit and veggies in her diet cause she would eat any 'bread / pasta / potatoes/ pizza / cookie / muffin' type things just not REAL unprocessed food? Once she learned to talk and I would say 'hon you should try something you are going to be hungry' and she would outright say 'I do not need to eat this cause daddy will give me a cookie at home and I wont be hungry' so I think all along daddy was CAVING when she did not eat meals and worried she was hungry and feeding her the thing she WANTED so she held out for it!

Eventually DADDY got a talking to from both the mother and the doctor and it was HARD to get her to change her eating habits but we had to literally LIMIT her carb options .... so when something she 'liked' was being served she got a normal serving of everything else being served and an 1/8 of a serving size of the thing she LIKED and in order to get MORE of t hat thing she had to take 5 bits of something on her plate and than she would get another tiny portion and eventually you would get her whole plate of healthy stuff into her - at least MOST days someday she would just do the outright refusal of eating although those were days she tended to be 'backed up' in the poop department

I just enrolled another self confessed picky eater - however it has been a month and she is TASTING everything on her plate at least to see if her taste buds are 'bigger yet' .

[Mamma_Mia]

ughh I have one and it's driving me bonkers!!

Mom did warn me in the begining that she is "stubborn" and only eats a few items. She sent me an email with her 'menu':

For breakfast I usually give her Quaker instant oatmeal, but she also really like pancakes and waffles. Lunch; her fav's are grilled cheese, peanut butter and jelly, salami sandwiches. Dinner; she loves Kraft dinner, thats honestly what she eats most of the time. Drinks; her favorite is chocolate milk. She's ok with water and juice too, usually in that order.

Well child must be getting tired of eating the same things over and over & she's testing me to no-end....she wont eat in the last two weeks without a serious battle. I mean today 1.5hrs for her "favorite" sandwich that she asks for e.v.e.r.y lunch. PB&J.....I was at my witts-end and didn't want to give up and let her starve but I can't do this anymore. She pretends to eat the food - she stuffs the food in her cheeks and chews air, you THINK she's eating but her mouth is still full of the first bite! also unless you're constantly telling her to chew, eat, not in your cheeks, chew, eat, swallow etc. she won't take another bite without being told either.

I tried the patient & drill-sargent....I think now I'm just going to try the cut off time limit. 45min should be enough time to eat lunch. If not then nothing else. A big cup of chocolate milk (she has a medicaly-required high calorie diet) and thats it!

At p/u I tell mom that she didn't eat, maybe one bite and mom says "ughh she is so stubborn..." - I know mom also has a hard time with her eating.....I'M LOST FOR IDEAS!

[mom-in-alberta]

I really used to struggle with this also. But what can you do, force feed them?
And feeding the foods that they "want" but are nutritionally empty anyway, is only going to continue the cycle.
In my house, I make it and I serve it. Your choice from that point on. I will encourage, and praise someone trying new foods. For toddlers and up, I begin to enforce the "finish your plate and you can have more XXXX". For babies, I am less strict on that rule. I try to remember that kids often go through a phase in which they seemingly exist on nothing at all!! And then, usually a few weeks or so later, you cannot fill them up.
I think what happens is we all get sooooo stressed about this food thing, which the kids sense, and it just compounds.
And I would actually say the opposite about liquids... too much milk, juice, etc can fill a small tummy up and therefore they won't eat. I agree that you can never have too much water to drink, though.

[michellesmunchkins]

Here we don't stress over it either. I have some very picky eaters and others that would literally eat me out of house and home. I do tend to 'cave' some afternoons though and offer a little something before snack for those who refused to eat any lunch (only healthy choices though) and only because I would hate to think someone was going hungry. Our dr. has always told us, kids eat when they are hungry and to never make food/eating a battle as it only leads to major eating issues later in life. I had one Mom who said her child would only eat hot dogs and that I was to serve it everyday or else he wouldn't eat. Well...I DON'T serve hot dogs ever to my daycare kiddos so her child quickly learned to at least try new foods or go hungry (he was 4 when he came to me). She was shocked at all the 'new' foods he WOULD eat and ask for seconds of. Sometimes I think its the parents always giving in because they don't want to battle with their child after not seeing them all day/week etc.

I also don't force anyone to eat anything. They are encouraged to try but if they outright refuse then the issue is dropped. We have a time limit also. We don't sit at the table for hours waiting for little "D" to finish their meal. When everyone else is finished lunch/snack time is over. I stay away from most processed foods and usually give larger portions of the fruits and veggies. I only have one at the moment who would sit there for hours with her mouth clamped shut lol.

One trick I found with a little guy I used to have was to make meal time 'fun' per se. We had lots of picnics (lunch outside is always the best, or we would make a picnic in the playroom) He would eat way more when he wasn't confined to the chair at the table. I also use cutters to make the food shaped like things too and he would eat more that way too. If his sandwich was shaped like an airplane he would eat the whole thing. If it was just cut up wouldn't touch it.

[Lou]

Thanks ladies!!! I think the most aggravating part is watching a plate full of yummy food go to waste!

[Inspired by Reggio]

Thanks ladies!!! I think the most aggravating part is watching a plate full of yummy food go to waste!

Yup - admittedly I start out with VERY tiny portion of food for the first serving with newbie children so that if they do not eat it is literally 1 bite of meat, 1 bite of grain, 1 bite of veggie and 1 bite of fruit getting tossed

As I learn more about their eating habits I can than guage serving sizes to eqaute to that - however whenever I serve something NEW to any child I always just put a 'bite' on their plate for them to try to see if their taste buds are big enough for more ... every kid yearns to be BIG so that technique works wonders with getting them to eat and want more

[sunnydays]

I've been pretty lucky so far in that all my dck's eat my food. Some don't like certain parts of the meal and fill up on other things (ie. one won't eat fish, but will eat the vegetable and grain). I serve what I serve and they eat what they want. I don't stress over it one bit. I don't even "encourage" or coax in any way...I put it in front of them and they choose whether to pick it up and try it or not. However, that said, I have started them all as babies with me, so it is much easier to get them used to my food. I think it may be more difficult to start a 3 year old who is used to eating junk food as I don't serve any! My own 3 year old is picky...I serve him what we are having and he eats or doesn't eat. One thing I do with him is that if he doesn't eat at dinner time, I will put his plate in the fridge for when he inevitably will ask for something else a couple of hours later