The Perils of Parenting: Getting Your Kids To Eat
I recently read a post about the difficulties of getting a child to break free of the baby bottle , and it made me think of my own experiences as a stay at home dad.
My son, the youngest of my 2 kids, was never an issue when it came to eating, as he seemed ready to chow down at birth. He was off the bottle and onto solid food at the earliest opportunity. The same could not be said for my daughter. While she was easy to wean from the bottle, her reluctance to eat on a regular schedule became a real concern.
There would be days where she would chow down voraciously, followed by stretches of days where the only things she would eat were her 3 favorite things: Cheerios, black olives, and McDonalds fries. I'll admit that there was more than one occasion when I made an emergency ride to Mickey D's to pick up fries for a child who I believed was starving herself to death.
It wasn't until I spoke to the family doctor that I realized I wasn't a horrible parent. She told me that my daughter was developing at a perfectly normal rate, and that her little eating peccadilloes were not that uncommon among little ones. She told me to get any food that I could into her, and that my little one would let me know when it wasn't enough. Sure enough, she broke out of the behavior pretty soon thereafter, although she still, at the age of 16, has a real affinity for black olives.
Image Credit » http://pixabay.com/en/autumn-fall-baby-boy-child-cute-165184/
Comments
zombiecupcake wrote on January 4, 2015, 6:44 PM
The ending to this post is cute! My sixteen month is incredibly picky beyond belief right now. It has been really concerning - and I admit to being the McDonald's type the dear god just please eat type. I haven't given him McDonald's, though. Just saying that I have given in to his favorites.
MsTina wrote on January 4, 2015, 9:31 PM
My second daughter was really into macaroni and cheese for a while. That was the only thing she would eat. Since I had to feed her something, I made her mac & cheese for dinner every night but also added other things to her plate. Sometimes she would try something else and I would be pleased with myself. She's almost 17 now and she eats lots of different foods. She works at McDonalds so she doesn't eat food from there.
AliCanary wrote on January 5, 2015, 10:23 AM
This is no doubt going to be comforting for parents to know, though I like the green olives meself.
paigea wrote on January 5, 2015, 12:29 PM
I had a lot of the same difficulty with one of mine. The doctor did tell me she had to eat more though and did start to get concerned. So I get the emergency trip to McD's.
OreoBrownies123 wrote on January 5, 2015, 12:29 PM
My daughter and I had the same problem with her son and my grandson, James. All he would eat was cereal. He wouldn't eat food and if we put a plate in front of him and asked him to eat one bite of everything he would just sit there until the cows came home.