My Toddler Is So Picky, What Do I Feed Him?

Hi -- I just saw this request. My 14 month old daughter is also transitioning to real food. She mostly likes crackers, but she also likes to "chip-n-dip", so I make a dip-like healthy food, and at least she'll get some when she dips and eats it with her cracker. If you haven't already tried it, see if he'll at least go for a "dip"...

I offer my toddlers a portion of everything (that's child-friendly) we eat. Last night we had roast chicken, pasta in some type of cheese sauce, and steamed broccoli, carrots and zucchini. All three kids gobbled the chicken, pasta and carrots; one also gobbled broccoli and one gobbled zucchini.

For lunch today, I made macaroni and cheese with frozen peas, corn and carrots mixed in. We also go through a LOT of canned and fresh fruits: bananas are a big one. Mandarin oranges, canned mixed fruit, and canned pears are HUGE hits.

A popular breakfast is that instant oatmeal. Peaches and Apple are the current top favorite flavors.

My kids frequently go through this picky phase, even with all time favorites. Unfortunatly you jsut have to ride it out. Keep offering stuff all the time. My kids are not veggie kids in the normal sense. They will not eat cooked veggies. Only fresh. It started a few years back with beans of the vine from the garden and spiraled from there. Hey they are healthier like that right!!! It makes things pricey in the winter but you do what you have to do.
A great book for hiding veggies is Deceptivly Delicious by Jessica Sienfeld. There is another out there with the same idea but different author. For me it has helped with the no cooked veggie wars. Just last night they scarfed down Mac and Cheese with cauliflower hidden inside, unbeknownest to them LOL!
Try different sauses with the pasta. None of my kids liked cheese sauces on pastas when they were first transitioning, so I tried Pesto and they all loved it right away. They now will do cheese but pesto is a favorite for them still.
Once my kids hit 2 I also came up with the "No thank you bite" rule. They must at least try a bit of what is in front of them before deciding they don't like it. Alot of the time they end up eating whatever the "unliked" food was. I never make them something different than what we are all eating. I make sure at least one thing on thier plate is a liked item and from there it is up to them.
Good luck and try not to worry.

My all most three year old does this about every three months!! Lately it has been pizza..thats all he will eat ill try and sit him in front of something healthy and he just stirs it around his plate and then says i am done.. I am so sick of pizza!! I started cutting his sandwiches in the shape of pizzas and telling him that the pizza sauce is hiding..it will work for a bit then he will figure me out and the new phase will start. You just need to be creative with the meals. make the food magical. Thats what worked for me...he is a little young for story telling meals..thats where i make up a story of where the food has come from and then he wants to gobble it up...i only use that tactic during desperate times!! Good luck!

Hi there. Here's a list of things for you to try. Hopefully some of them will work for you:

FUN FINGER FOOD IDEAS! (for when babies want to feed themselves)

* DAIRY
any cheese—shredded, cubes, or cut into “sticks” string cheese
* FRUITS
melon chunks banana chunks or whole kiwi, chunks berries (chunked or halved, then whole) avocado chunks grapes—peeled and quartered or halved apple “sticks” whole apples, peels removed soft pear chunks frozen berry mix (from Trader Joes)
* VEGGIES
cherry tomatoes sliced tomatoes asparagus broccoli (chopped or “trees”) cauliflower, cooked squash cubes sweet potato fries from Trader Joe's cooked carrot/potato/other root veggie chunks
* LEGUMES
edamame cooked peas cannellini beans green beans (canned cut or fresh cooked) garbanzos black-eyed peas
* PASTA/RICE
radiatore fusilli long noodles cut up farfalle macaroni pennette tortellini ravioli farfalle sticky rice
* MEAT/POULTRY/FISH/EGGS/OTHER PROTEIN
deli ham or turkey slices ripped into quarters chicken nuggets, cut up or whole (try frozen for teething) scrambled egg (or egg yolk) hardboiled egg (or egg yolk) frittata tofu cubes or “sticks” (soft, firm, baked) rotisserie chicken, cut across the grain salmon, cooked, flaked, or chunked
* BREADS/CEREALS
pancakes toast (cut into quarters)pancakes croissant toasted Eggo waffles crusty bread bagels/mini-bagels (frozen for teething) Cheerios Rice Crispies Rice cakes small graham crackers zwieback sweet/savory bread pudding biscotti
* COMBINED ITEMS
quesadillas (bean and cheese, salmon and hot pepper cheese, veggie) · pizza with ricotta, mozzarella, tomato sauce; cut · zucchini pancakes · Eggos (with cottage cheese, cream cheese, cinnamon and sugar, or jam) · bread, bagel, or pita with hummus · bread or bagel with avocado · grilled cheese sandwiches (remove crusts if desired and cut into chunks) · tuna or egg salad on bread (remove crusts if desired and cut into chunks) · soft cheese spread on bread chunks

I would start keeping a good variety of healthy snacks (you got some great ideas for those already in the previous answer!) available. I believe that children will eat when they're hungry. I would also personally stop giving him crackers and chicken nuggets on any sort of regular basis.

With our daughters, we have always expected them to eat whatever we eat and they usually do. When they don't, they usually eat more the next day or week. Children don't grow as much during their second year as they do during their first so sometimes it seems as though they aren't eating much of anything even though they're getting enough. What they need most, IMO, is to have healthy options available for meals and snacks.

My mom would always make my younger siblings special meals because they were picky and now my teenage brother eats mostly Spaghetti-Os. I am very wary of going down that route...

~B.

My daughter went through a similar phase a couple times. She only wanted grham crackers an cheese and nothing else. So what we did was try a couple bite of new food everyday, in case she found something out there she wouldlike, and we gave her pediasure (sometimes they are just picky). We knew she could not be getting a lot of nutrition from crackers and cheese so we would give her the pediasure until she started eating more foods again. So she didn't get too attached to the sweet taste of the ps we cut it with milk. After a while she started trying more foods again. But she still does this every once in a while. Sometimes it is crackers, other times it is fruit and sometimes pasta. I think it is normal for them to go through these kinds of phases and you just wait it out and do the best you can in the meantime. I would also get some vitamins if he can chew them, if not you could grind them up?

Here's an angle that may not have come up: allergies. Often kids "know" what they are allergic to. It has been found that a child who won't eat a particular food later tests as being allergic to it. Something to check into.
Another angle which I did see briefly addressed: "this is the meal. Eat it or don't." I took this a step farther with my middle child and said "eat it now, or eat it later" and would save it for him for the next scheduled snack or meal ... and the next ... and the next. Until he is hungry enough to eat it. I have done this when I know he "can" eat the food (he's not allergic to it, he has liked it in the past), but refuses to do so. He is now 8 years old and have had to do this only a couple of times. Also, I make sure the food does taste good before I give it to him each time, "doctoring" it as needed with more ketchup, sugar, whatever works. :) I understand tastes change over time, so I try to be reasonable and compromise on amounts required to be eaten. But when he tries for a power play ("NO! I WON'T EAT THIS!")... he just set the rules. (He'll be eating that or nothing!)
Hope you don't need to use this method as it is not easy on mom. But who said parenting was easy! Good luck!

What I finally had to do when all my son wanted to eat was chicken nuggets and crackers was first, I stopped buying chicken nuggets period. And I limited crackers to snack time. During a meal, I gave my son the exact same thing we were eating and told him that was what was being served and there was nothing else to eat...and then stuck to it! A child will not starve itself. He will eat when he is hungary. For a while I think my son ate cherios for breakfast, crackers at snack and nothing else, but it didn't last long. Sometimes he still chooses not to eat dinner, but it is his choice and he eats enough other food now that I don't worry about it. It was hard at first to watch him choose not to eat, but it worked in the end. Another thing you can do is reward him when he does eat the food you give him( same thing as you are eating) with lots of praise and a cookie or small piece of candy (just don't use it as a bribe). Good luck!

I am going through some similar stuff with my 20 month old. I let him have crackers for snacks and I put out what he is going to have for a meal and he either eats it or doesn't. What makes me feel good is that we start every day with an Herbalife kid's shake so I know that he is getting proper nutrition. I also only give him whole wheat crackers (Goldfish even have whole grain now and he doesn't know the difference). I do not let him have any white bread or crackers or sweets. I offer him veggies every night but he doesn't touch them. All I can do is hope that if I keep offering them, he will start to eat them. Also, he gets a kid's multivitamin. I also have a son who is seven. For breakfast, lunches and snacks I give him healthy choices but he gets to choose what he has out of those choices. For dinner, he will get dessert if he eats all of his food. A lot of our desserts are healthy and some are not but at least I know that the rest of the day he ate healthy.