Rylee the Picky Eater

      Ever since Rylee first started eating table foods, she has been a picky eater. When we introduced baby foods, we never had a problem. She would eat all her fruits and veggies and anything that was offered to her. We introduced table foods slowly, just giving her bites here and there at first. She would try anything. Then she slowly began to turn down more and more foods. Foods that she had eaten and seemed to enjoy several times before, like green beans, were suddenly "Yucky!" It just kept getting worse.

       We tried to keep encouraging her to eat a variety of foods, but she just became more and more adamant that she was not going to eat anything she didn't want to. When her growth started to suffer, we decided we would feed her whatever she would eat just to keep her growing strong, and we'd stop trying to force her to eat normally for a while. The foods she would eat were micro mini ravioli (they had to be micro mini and not just mini or she wouldn't eat them), biscuits, garlic Texas toast, tomato soup, grilled cheese, fries, baby food sweet potatoes or squash, apple sauce, yogurt, chocolate pop tarts, and a variety of snacks such as teddy grahams, goldfish, or animal crackers. That's it. She wouldn't even try anything else. We fed her what she liked to keep her growing strong until she turned 2.

     Around the age of 2, every child's growth slows. They just don't grow as quickly as they did as infants. Therefore, their caloric needs decline. This led us to believe that now is the right time to start being hard on Rylee about eating. We put a new policy in place shortly after her 2nd birthday. If we are at home at night, we have a family dinner and we all eat the same thing. Rylee is offered what we are eating and if she doesn't want to eat it, that's fine. We don't make a fuss over it. We let her down from the table without trying to force feed her, but she is not given any other options. I place her dinner on her small table where she can eat if she changes her mind. The progress hasn't been miraculous or anything, she is still picky, but she has not gone to bed hungry yet. We have tried this same strategy before when she was younger and she would literally starve herself. I think it is working better this time because she can communicate with us better and she understands what is going on. I don't know if she will always be a picky eater, but at least now her diet is becoming slightly more well-rounded. :)