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The eating battle with toddlers
Filed under: Toddlers Preschoolers, Nutrition: Health
According to Professor David Benton of the University of Wales Swansea, one of the reasons toddlers become such picky eaters between the ages of 18 and 24 months is neophobia. This built-in safety mechanism helps to protect them from accidentally ingesting poisonous foods. Professor Benton theorizes that although fussy eating is worrisome and tiring for parents, we need not worry. With time, our bird like eaters will revert to eating anything and everything in sight. Furthermore, he cautions against withholding favorite foods or giving the more preferred foods as rewards. He states that, "Offering desserts as a reward for eating greens, or some other 'distasteful' food, makes the reward food more desirable to your child and the food you are trying to encourage them to eat, less desirable. This makes encouraging your child to eat a healthy balanced diet even more difficult".Good thing. Silly me, I thought my toddler was just trying to make my life a living hell as he refuses to eat most anything other than vanilla yogurt, vanilla soy milk or pureed bananas. It turns out he is actually protecting himself from the evils and poisons the he is sure must lurk in our vegetable drawer. I guess we'll just have to keep buying quart after quart of vanilla yogurt....
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
6-08-2006 @ 3:14PM
thordora said...My youngest is missing this gene then. She'll eat ANYTHING, and I seriously think she's looked at my legs a few times and thought "Hmmmm, wonder how THAT would taste."
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6-08-2006 @ 3:19PM
daisy said...My 16 month old ate three bananas this morning. The first two with mommy, the third with daddy.
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6-08-2006 @ 3:52PM
Jill said...I think their long term memory is part of it. Mine ate well their first solid food winter and their first solid food summer, but when I returned to the seasonal foods they'd once eaten, the foods weren't familiar anymore and both kids quit eating a lot of dishes. Hearty soups in the summer anyone?
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6-08-2006 @ 4:07PM
Jen said...I'm with you - I believe my son is difficult just to be difficult :) He goes through stages...first all he would eat were carrots...he actually turned orange. Then he would eat everything but meat...now he is on a banana-grape-and-yogurt diet....terribly frustrating for mom :) Who knows...maybe my son knows more than me....he surely has twice the energy and spunk!!
Jen
http://www.youngparentsmagazine.com
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6-08-2006 @ 4:16PM
Joey's Mom said...I'm glad I'm not the only one. My son is on the yogurt-waffle-peaches diet. Up until yesterday there were also oranges in his diet, but he gave them up. I started giving him a polyvisol vitamin just as a back up.
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6-08-2006 @ 4:18PM
Joey's Mom said...Oh yeah, and he drink silk enhanced soy milk by the 1/2 gallon. At least that has a nutritional value!
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6-08-2006 @ 4:33PM
Amy said...My two year old son must be the worst eater in the world-it's awful. There is hardly anything he eats and if he will, it is about two bites. Rarely any fruit and only broccoli in broccoli-cheddar soup. He mainly lives on bread, cheese, Cheerios, Nutragrain bars and chicken! And tons of milk. Of course, he likes junk food-so I try to keep it far away. Ugh. I am in a constant state of anxiety and give him vitamins as back-up. I pray that someday he will start truly eating-someday soon!
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6-08-2006 @ 8:12PM
mckenna said...If this is true, I wonder why my son (18 mos) will put anything green in his mouth he finds outside, but almost gags if I hand him a spinach leaf. He must think I'm out to get him:)
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6-08-2006 @ 9:40PM
paul said...Jen, I don't want to inhibit your free expression but I can never see past the use of "spunk" (by US and Australians and perhaps others) as in the UK it means "semen". I don't think that's what you meant.
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6-09-2006 @ 12:51AM
jj said...my 3 year old will eat nothing green...except seaweed salad when we go for sushi. wtf??? the only other vegetable i can get him to readily eat is crispy eggplant from the chinese place. eggplant and seaweed?! where did that come from?
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6-09-2006 @ 4:21AM
mikimoo said...My three year old is a majorly picky eater! The only thing green that passes his lips (knowingly) is seaweed and kelp in miso soup! We live in Japan so eats rice (which I try to mix with brown rice for a little more nutritional value), chicken (sometimes),
apples or bananas (goes through phases), bread, cheese, yogurt--and that is about it. If I chop up vegetables to unrecognizable size and mix them in with a curry he MIGHT eat it. I've stopped stressing about his meal making and figure he'll eat when he is hungry. It would drive me crazy if I did worry too much about it.
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6-09-2006 @ 10:26AM
Heather said...It is such a relief to know that there are other moms out there who are tearing out there hair over their toddlers' diets. Thanks for sharing!
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6-09-2006 @ 12:57PM
mckenna said...For anyone who's interested, my son eats no veggies, so I started buying carrot and fruit juice blends. He loves those, and I figure I at least got some vitamin A in him. Since he eats bread, I also made a french toast type thing with a couple kinds of blended soups (store bought carrot/ginger or sweet potato: I'm lazy) and melted cheese on top. Higher sodium, but he eats it, I figure it's a change of pace once in awhile, and very easy.
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6-09-2006 @ 3:01PM
MamaChristy said...Heather - I've been thinking of you often as my 22 month old boy was the same way until just about two weeks ago. It must be mashed and fed to him. Then one day he just decided to eat the chicken I offered him on a fork. Now he chews and eats what we eat for dinner (mostly). I hope the same happens for you soon!
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6-16-2006 @ 10:04AM
Michele Kalthoff said...My daughter is almost 14 months old and will not eat anything with a texture. It has to be pureed baby food. I've trind everything from Cheerios to cheese to mashed fruits and veggies. When I sttept to give her anything with a texture she'll either gag all the way through her feeding or literally throw up. I've been trying to research this and come up empty-handed. My doctor doesn't seem concerned. He says to just keep trying but its making me anxious. Anyone experience this with their babies?
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6-25-2006 @ 8:00PM
sommer said...my son, 22mos, is seriously texture-adverse. i find myself feeding him baby food because i know that he's getting a well-rounded diet, but my husband and i feel that feeding baby food to a 2-yr-old is kinda, well, weird. anyone have any suggestions about how to transition to solid foods? or what to do when he refuses all solids except PB&J? :)
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