Feeding a Picky 4 Year Old

One thing I did to help w/ my finicky eaters was to add Juice Plus+ to their diet... it's fruits & veggies that have been put into capsule form for adults & gummy or chewables for kids.... it's not a vitamin, but whole food so we are getting the nutrients from those veggies & fruits that we don't normally eat. It helped put my mind at ease that my picky eaters were getting good nutrients from Juice Plus+ at least. :) If you want to look into in more you can read more at jphealth.net/C. I did sign up as a rep. because I am so impressed! It has great research behind it. :) Hope you find other helps too.

Hi B.,
I too have a couple of very picky eaters. My oldest, who is 10, has been that way his entire life. Basically eats meat, with no sauce, would eat cheese if he wasn't allergic to dairy, all bread/cookie/pastry products, and occasionally apples and oranges. No vegetables whatsoever. My 9 year old used to eat everything, but when he got sick with celiac at age 5 he developed taste aversions to nearly everything. He eats very little, rarely eats meat and fruit and no vegetables. He eats mostly dairy products and wheat-free bread products.

If you can, how about smoothies? You can throw practically anything you want into it. I like the kind with spirolina, but there are many kinds with many flavors. I keep frozen bananas in my freezer all the time, throw them into the blender with a scoop of spiroteen or some other veggie/protein powder, milk or soy milk and then frozen fruit or sometimes chocolate syrup. My 9 year old will have that every day.

Unfortunately my 10 year old won't drink the smoothies, so I give him super green capsules, multi-vitamins, omega 3-6-9, nettles and acidophilus every day. Then I don't worry about what he eats. It's just not worth fighting over food, and it won't change what he will and won't eat. BTW, my pediatrician said the same thing, and he went three, yes three days without eating when he was about four years old!

On the flip side, my 7 year old will eat anything you put in front of him and loves all fruits and vegetables. Although he eats the most variety and usually healthy foods, he is overweight while the other two are just right for their age and height.
--H.
mom to 3 boys, and one on the way

Hi B.,
I just bought all these child rearing books from Love and Logic and they discuss the best way to handle this situation with love and logic using empathy which is the crux of "love and logic"
You are kind of in a power struggle with your child about eating which is one of the easiest area's for kids to try and control.
I know this doesn't answer your question right now but this whole parenting style is really working for me and maybe would for you as well.
Good luck

Hi B.,
Whew, what a challenge and stress for you! My son for many reasons wouldn't eat either and would rather starve. One way that I was able to get nutrition down him was to ensure lots of 'veggies' and 'fruits' were in his drinks. I found some that you can buy (Odwallas for example) that he liked also I had him help make smoothies in the blender. When he was involved and made them himself, he always wanted to try them. You can throw in yogurt, tofu all kinds of stuff that he won't even taste but add nutrition. Berries have so much good stuff in them and work well in smoothies. We've made lots with frozen bananas so they come out more like a slush. My son would eat crackers and banana bread, so for baked goods I always throw in a couple of tablespoons of ground flax seed ( you can buy it ground and keep it in the freezer) to add some added nutrition again that he won't notice if it's in a muffin or bread. You can do this with ready mixes or from scratch.
My son also likes to be in control of his food, with the help of a nutritionist, she suggested things like dips that he could try dipping fruits and veggies into himself. We also figured out that he didn't like touching his food, so we tried different fun utensils for him to 'try' out. We formed a group of kids with similar issues and together with these kind of activities they would do more eating than at home separately. Sometimes seeing someone their age eating and enjoying is motivating. A book I found helpful is called "Just Take A Bite" by Lori Ernsperger

Keep trying, you'll find something that will work!

N.

Hi B.,
Luckily my little girl is a pretty good eater. But, she does not like bananas. Well, she loves Dora and Boots and Boots loves bananas. I put them on her plate and when she refuses to eat them I just tell her "you know, Boot's loves bananas, when he eats them he says, yum yum yum delicioso." (things we thought we would never say!) In a few minutes they're gone.

I also make sure I eat EVERYTHING she eats, I make sure there are lots of colors on the plate, I let her help prepare the meals, I give her small portions and cut up things, (it seems to look more manageable to her) I only give her water at meal time, and I praise her continously.

Some foods to try...
1. Pot pies
2. kid cuisine
3. pasta salad
4. pancakes with fruit topping
5. raw veggies with dip
6. mashed sweet potatoes
7. magic muffins (just make basic muffins and put bananas, zuchini, apples, carrots whatever you want)
Good luck and I hope you find something that works

Hello B..
I have had good luck with the recipes in Annabel Karmel's cookbook, First Meals, and Rena Cole's Let's Eat Baby!. Karmel is a Cordon Bleu chef, and her recipes are quite tasty, even for big people. She provides ways to get the veggies in without them being so obvious. You can also try freeze dried veggies-- you can find them at organic food markets usually.

I wish you well and know your little one will be fine in such a concerned mother's care.
K.

Hi B.,
Sounds like you have some great advice already, but one thing I didn't see there is something that has been working for my 2 1/2 year old son. I put veggies into muffins. He likes muffins (and anything chocolate!... which I only started giving him recently in this recipe for the sake of getting veggies down him.:) I'll make vanilla muffins (vanilla or yellow cake mix just put into muffins tins) and add pureed peas to the mix. He loved them just like this for a while...I put quite a bit of peas in and they taste very good! I would eat them too. I put about a cup or cup and 1/2 in the mix - you have to add water in order to puree them in the blender and then you add a little less milk or liquid that it calls for. Just mess around with it the first few times. If you put too many peas in the first time, put less in next time so that he'll eat them. You also do the same thing with shredded (or finely shredded if you have to really disguise it) carrots...they both work very well.

Sometimes I'll try to make the a bit different or he gets burnt out on them (and sometimes I'll not make them for a week or so, so that he'll want them again). to make them different I might add a few chocolate chips and all them chocolate muffins! He's all over that :)

Good luck and I hope this idea works as well for you as it has for me!

~T.

Hi B. -

Get him involved in creating his food - make it a game. Set some fruits, vegs, meats, cheeses - whatever you normally eat - out on a plate and then give him a plate and you get a plate. Using the foods, make funny faces or designs and let him do the same and then have him "erase" (eat) his picture so he can make another. No guarantees, but it ususally works.

Good luck,

M.

my 4 yr old daughter is the same! she used to eat everything, and loved even exotic foods - now it's like mac & cheese and mashed potatoes is her only suggestion. grrrrrr. I can't wait to see what others might suggest!!!!! I have had luck with fruit smoothies (lots of different frozen fruits with milk or yogurt and a dash of protein powder and a dash of honey or maple syrup to take the edge off the acidity sometimes) - she also loves to make them with me - I freeze bananas that are too old (peeled), they are perfect for smoothies. GOOD LUCK!! I KNOW I NEED SOME TOO!!!!!!!!

oooh- lots of attention for picky eaters. Give him what everyone else gets-minus heavy, hot flavors, etc.-he either eat or he doesn't. He can have as much water and juice as he wants. Your job is to present the options, then don't say a thing. If he tantrums and dumps it on the floor, he cleans it up, and gets nothing but water for the rest of the day. He should have certain healthy snacks on a schedule. It doesn't sound as if he is thin or fragile- if that is the case, he may need a physical exam. Milk and dates were the staff of life for the Arab peoples- they did very well, so he could just have found a combination that works for him. As long as he is healthy, don't worry, but you may wish to give him a vitamin a day to make sure that he isn't missing something important. No soft drinks allowed. No sarcasm allowed. Hope it helps- S.

Kids really will eat when they are hungry - the human body doesn't allow itself to starve if food is available. Force-feeding only leads to obesity and mental/physical eating disorders. Make sure you are offering plenty of water as well since dehydration makes for less of an appetite. Try using cookie cutters on things like cheese, toast, etc. to make it appealing and fun to eat (remember how much fun it was to bite the head off your animal crackers). I have some recipes that I have been sharing for fruit/veggie breads. Let me know if you would like me to forward a copy to you via email. Good luck.

Well, I baked potatoes for my children as soon as the pediatrician told me they could have them and they loooooved them. Baked potatoes have a different taste than the canned mashed potatoes. I started with sweet potatoes and then fed them sweet and white potatoes mixed and then added white potatoes alone. I put soy butter in the potatoes...NO SALT or dairy products. I thought, if I added yogurt or milk and they had a bad time with them, I wouldn't know which thing they were having a bad time with, the potatoes or the dairy.
Also, my children liked fruit so I'd mash apples, bananas, melon, blueberries, or mango in with their veggies. I added them one fruit a day, not all at once. Always add new foods one day and then skip 4 days before you add it again. DO NOT depend on seeing a rash, or cough if your child is sensitive to a food. It can affect their mood as well. Add, eggs, peaches, strawberries and meat after they are a year old and wild salmon (farm grown is full of a chemical called formaline...I don't think that is good for my babies...up to you) when they are eating all veggies and fruit. My children love poached fish but they've been eating it since they were children. They were raised in Japan and Japanese mothers feed their children table food as soon as they think they can chew it...although most is pretty soft. I didn't do that, but I did give them fish looooooong before meat. Meat is so full of anti-biotics, grow hormones and other chemicals I rarely eat it myself but I do like it sometimes, so that is how I feed it to my children. Lots of calcium in COOKED cabbage and in sesame butter and lots of protein in soy products and beans. My children, although they come from a family (on both sides) with lots of allergies, are rarely if ever sick. Making your own baby food is easy. There is even a paperback book, you might find on the internet called..."Making your own baby food." It has lots of good ideas and plenty of recipes. It is very thick.

I have a friend and her child was like that. Would only eat chicken fingers. So that is what she fed him. Just make sure he/her is taking a vitamin for his/her age. That will provide him/her with all the nutrients he/she needs. If he/she is eating fruit that is good. Give him/her that in place of sweets. When my kids were little they didn't get sweets unless it was around a holiday. That's when I did a lot of baking. I used to make gift baskets for friends and family. So for the most part my kids didn't eat sweets. They liked their fruit. One thing that I used to do was just take a lot of different foods and cut them up and put them on a dish. Stuff like ham, turkey, grapes, strawberrys, califlower, broccoli, cheese, radishes, celery, etc. Just mix up different stuff from all the food groups. It actually looks nice when its done and then i would put ranch dressing in the center of it. Take some food coloring and mix it in the dip. Let your child help you prepare it. See if he/she will go for something like that. That may help. Getting them involved preparing stuff may excite them enough that they will want to eat it. If there is one spacific food he/she likes then let he/she eat that. I really don't see what it will hurt to let them survive on whatever it is that he/she likes. Eventually they start eating everything. Try doing the one bite rule. I always did that with my kids. That's when they find out it was good after all. My kids are 14 and 17 and healthy. Good luck!!! Enjoy every moment with them because before you know it they are getting ready to start there own lives and you start wondering where did the time go. I will miss my children not being home when that time comes which is not that far away for me.