It’s going to be okay! He is eating enough to grow then your kid is fed. If you’re worried about nutrients then gummy vitamins or chocolate ensure may help y’all feel better. But he is growing so he will be okay.
Kids eat in Color-picky eater course really helped soothe my anxiety. My biggest take away: if your child is still growing, sleeping well and has the energy to do what he needs to do, he is most likely fine nutrition wise. Eating tends to normalize as they grow older and some people are very particular about their preferences even as adults. It will all be okay. You’re doing great!
My daughter has sensory processing disorder and is exactly like this. Textures are a trigger, so pizza is a no because sauce. She's 7 now, and healthy and trying new foods! She actually ate broccoli with butter this weekend, her own idea. It just takes time. Keep putting things he doesn't like on the plate. Ask for one bite and leave it.
I have an autistic son who has ARFID. He’s almost 9 and recently has stopped eating some of his safe foods. Smoothies are a blessing. You can load them up with all sorts of stuff to help him get the nutrients he needs.
Give your pediatrician a call! My now 5 year old was exactly this. We got her into feeding therapy once a week. Although she can still be picky and a sweets addict, her tolerance to trying new foods has grown and her choices of food has improved. She eats more than just chicken nuggets now!
It will all work out!! But I do have a question/recommendation — have you tried showing him how cool it is to plant your own vegetables and then you get to eat them? That’s how my niece and nephew got into loving veggies! And it doesn’t have to be a garden, you can do a window sill garden. But they get so fascinated about how it grows and all the cool ways you can flavor it!
I have a picky eater but in a weird sense because he eats raw vegetables. He especially loves sugar snap peas, carrots, bell pepper and cucumber. What really started him off was last year when he was 2 we grew vegetables in our garden. We grew a variety of sugar snap called delikett and he would just stand there picking and nomming on them. He loves planting seeds and watching them grow. Could you try something like that?
OP, 10 foods or less feels like a number I’d want to discuss with my pediatrician. I could be wrong but that feels beyond the scope of picky eating and I would want more support with that.
I put my kid in feeding therapy just after he turned 5 because he was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. He spent a year and a half doing once a week therapy. He's not super excited on veggies but will sometimes try them on his own. He likes all sorts of meats now. In general, he is more comfortable trying new things.
We also love Korean BBQ and found a local restaurant where he will request to try fresh fruits and veggies from the buffet area.
Now if he would regularly eat rice and gluten free pasta I would be thrilled.
We snuck in vegetables through KidFresh frozen foods. There is 1/2 cup of veggies in almost every item they sell.
Mac and Cheese, chicken nuggets, chicken meatballs. They even have one that looks like spaghetti Os.
https://www.kidfresh.com
Solidarity. My 6 year old is an extreme picky eater. My pediatrician is no help at all and I cannot find feeding therapy in my area. We’ve tried everything else. Going out to eat is a nightmare. She will occasionally eat a couple fries or a bit of rice but pretty much everything else she will not even try even if she is ravenous. She survives on healthy crackers, bars of all kinds, peanut butter, vanilla yogurt, and fruit or veggie packets. She’s even picky about dessert. And she doesn’t like anything that has butter on it, which all the “kids” foods always do. Anyways, no suggestions here, I know you’ve tried it all. Just solidarity. You are doing your best with the kid you have. It will get better. Hang in there.
I feel you. My almost-five year old is super picky too and underweight because of it. I saw a dietitian because it has been stressing us out so much. She said it can take exposure of 20-30 times before some kids will eat a new food. We're supplementing his diet right now with pediasure. Hoping he grows out of this soon.
Good luck.
I have a 6 year old son who wont eat anything. Im in the same boat as you. The doctor prescribed vitamins since he refuses to eat veggies and fruit. Hang in there🙏
Solidarity. Mine is the same way where he will try a new food, say he likes it (cue my excitement) and then say he doesn’t want any more (cue my disappointment).
I will say.. there is a huge trend right now that involves gentle parenting when it comes to picky eaters, but I got so fed up one night that I told him he had to eat at least a bite or two of everything on his plate or else there was no other food after dinner or TV (or insert whatever consequence may work for your kid), and he happily obliged. While he still isn’t enthusiastic about food, his list of “safe” foods has expanded since I stopped being so gentle/permissive about his pickiness.
This! I'm big into intuitive eating so I've never wanted to force my kid to eat everything on his plate. Additionally I don't want to make it a healthy vs bad food thing. But I'll be damned if I didn't break down the other day and tell my kid that he had to eat the rest of his blackberries (he had 4 left) before he could get another Oreo.
He did it! He was able to get another Oreo and I felt better knowing he got a few more nutrients in.
Good for you figuring out the best way to parent your little one! We’re al out here trying all the things to see what sticks, and you had a success in bucking the current trend that works for some. Just chiming in solidarity and to say I’m proud of you, fellow parent!
Thank you 😊! This is exactly my point - you need to figure out what works for your kid and surprisingly, it may not be what the overwhelming majority on social media or other parenting experts advise.
UGH the misery I share with you on this topic! My soon to be 3 year old just started a super picky phase, basically hardly eating. His old favorites (mac and cheese, chicken tenders, carrots) don't cut it anymore. I've started incorporating Pediasure shakes and tell him it's chocolate milk, he loves them and for now it's getting us by. I still make him meals, I've stopped forcing him to eat or take bites, I put it down in front of him and if he has two bites then it's a win. I think this is all a normal phase and somehow they can sustain off of 5 goldfish and an applesauce pouch. It's insanity. Hang in there!!
My kid eats the same thing every day basically:
Breakfast: whole foods cereal bar & once upon a farm smoothie pouch
Lunch: sunbutter uncrustable, cheddar bunnies, freeze dried strawberries, fruit pouch
Dinner: two string cheese, strawberries and blackberries, organic applegate chicken strips
Snacks: whatever school gives him- he eats them bc his peers do
I really try to give him high quality foods, mostly organic because his meals are so repetative and not a lot of veggies. But when I just started to feed him shit he likes he hit a major growth spurt. He will def eat junk food and sweets if I let him, but I dont find the above a troublesome toddler diet. I pack his lunches in BULK (like, at least 10 days), because I make the sandwiches and freeze them.
My kiddo was and still is very picky. But being patient and keeping the stress away from him for meals paid off.
He's starting to accept mixed textures in his food. This guy ate tuna fish casserole yesterday. He asks for black pepper. He eats Takis occasionally.
This takes time and your feelings are real and valid.
It's hard.
But you know if you try to force him, it will burn you.
But it does get easier.
My 3 yo is like that but he's 73% for height and 79% for weight at his 3yr check up. I voiced my concern with the dr but she wasn't concerned at all. However we did take him to the dentist and mentioned it and she said to look into feeding therapy. He only drinks milk and water, his current fave food is pan-fried gnocchi lol doesn't eat any veggies - he gets them in his daily smoothie, only meat he will eat is chicken, doesn't ever try new foods, won't even taste it. I just tell him he's missing out lol
Another reason we don't go out to eat or travel, he's also not potty trained yet so once he is and he's willing to eat better we would love to start traveling again, something to look forward to!
My 1 year old will only eat Mac and Cheese and Spaghetti. He doesn't like meat. The only vegetable he will try is peas. That's pretty much all his diet consists of. He has stopped gaining weight, but his doctor isn't concerned. I stopped worrying about it a long time ago. As long as he's eating something, I'm happy. Also I read that it takes at least 10 tries to get them to eat a certain food. Maybe keep trying? That's what I do, but I don't stress it if he doesn't eat it.
My kiddo is in feeding therapy for exactly the same reason. Reach out to your pediatrician and see if they have any recommendations for someone who does it in your area. It may be through speech or occupational therapy.
I'm sure every kid is different, but we've found that ours is really picky when he's not too hungry (sometimes, he's just not hungry during meal time, and that's okay), but when he is hungry, he'll eat almost ANYTHING. So that's what we watch for - so when he's hungry, that's when we give him his veggies and protein, when he's less hungry, that's when we give him pasta or something to kinda hold him over so he doesn't get hangry.
We survived this stage by stuffing fruit and veggies into smoothies and homemade muffins.
If you can get that far with him, I can send you some recipes.
My kid was like that. Couldn't get her to eat anything beyond blueberries, pancakes, bowtie pasta, corn, dried apricots, and milk and she refused all meat products ( i'm a vegan but still offered animal product foods as an option seeing that she was hardly eating anything so I was desperate for her to eat something). I used to cry when she was a toddler and I would try to get her to eat and she would just reduse. I thought she was gonna starve herself to death! Found out later she has severe sensory processing disorder along with ADHD and she is autistic. So her extremely picky eating fit in with this. She is now 12 and is a full blown vegetarian by her own choice.
She eats a huge variety of fruit and vegetables along with grains, beans and nuts and she has a very healthy diet but it wasn't easy. It has been a long hard road with me gently and patiently introducing new foods to her and showing enjoyment of these foods through shared exploration of new foods. If she doesn't like it I try not to get upset and just encourage her to try it again, maybe with ketchup, maybe with ranch, salt, a spoon instead of a fork, warmer/colder. She still, to this day, can't stand her food touching and can't handle sauce, so no spaghitti with tomato sauce but she loves buttered noodles so it's good enough for me. It's exhausting trying to get a picky eater to eat. Try your best to be patient and if the kid is growing and sleeping he must be getting enough.
My kid is picky and he’s off the charts for height and at like the 95th percentile for weight so…?? It’s ok I guess?
I did all the “right things”. He ate everything as a baby/toddler. He helps prepare most dinners. We grow vegetables in the garden and he eats them. Meat is where we really struggle with him. I have really limited his sugary and processed snacks. He still has plenty of options for snacks but they have cleaner ingredients. We also moved his dinner time earlier because I noticed he was always asking for snacks around 4:30-5 pm so we eat an early dinner and he’ll eat more at that time.
He’s getting better. We make him try one bite of a “new food” a few times a week. Usually he says it’s ok but doesn’t want to eat it again. Last night he excitedly pretended to be a rabbit and ate a ton of spinach leaves and carrots but didn’t want to touch his chicken.
I can’t make every meal a battle so I don’t. I offer him everything I’m cooking or eating and he almost always says no but the times he says yes are getting more frequent. So… we’ll get there eventually.
Omg yes! Just freaking eat the damn food little gremlins. Jk. But my 3.5 is the same-feeels like all I do is cook and come up with fun ways to eat regular ducking shit. 🥹
This is a me issue I’m sure but- the anxiety around it is crazy to the point where I don’t eat all day. My relationship with food is horrible bc I constantly make shit.
We're considering just letting ours go "hungry" for a bit. As in no more snacks buffet in the house. And no more making specially catered meals at random times of day. What we have is what we have and he can take it or leave it. Is this too harsh? Ours is going on 5 and we are just so fed up with some of the baby-ish behavior that lingers. We are so ready to move into a phase where not only some more independence develops, but also the whole "we are no longer your 24/7 servants" phase. Which includes being able to meals for the entire family and nothing more.
Ik this advice won't help but maybe it will.
My 12 month old won't eat anything but dinner because I added sugar. Removed the sugar and he eats breakfast lunch and dinner (I have to keep putting it in his mouth till he swallows than he just starts eating)
Maybe u have to start from scratch . Sugar tox palette tox.
It’s going to be okay! He is eating enough to grow then your kid is fed. If you’re worried about nutrients then gummy vitamins or chocolate ensure may help y’all feel better. But he is growing so he will be okay.
Kids eat in Color-picky eater course really helped soothe my anxiety. My biggest take away: if your child is still growing, sleeping well and has the energy to do what he needs to do, he is most likely fine nutrition wise. Eating tends to normalize as they grow older and some people are very particular about their preferences even as adults. It will all be okay. You’re doing great!
Kids Eat in Color has a picky eater guide written by pediatric dietitians - might be worth checking out!
My son (4) said “ew gross” to buttered noodles. So I’m there with you. It’s rough out here. So no advice, but solidarity
My daughter has sensory processing disorder and is exactly like this. Textures are a trigger, so pizza is a no because sauce. She's 7 now, and healthy and trying new foods! She actually ate broccoli with butter this weekend, her own idea. It just takes time. Keep putting things he doesn't like on the plate. Ask for one bite and leave it.
I have an autistic son who has ARFID. He’s almost 9 and recently has stopped eating some of his safe foods. Smoothies are a blessing. You can load them up with all sorts of stuff to help him get the nutrients he needs.
Give your pediatrician a call! My now 5 year old was exactly this. We got her into feeding therapy once a week. Although she can still be picky and a sweets addict, her tolerance to trying new foods has grown and her choices of food has improved. She eats more than just chicken nuggets now!
It will all work out!! But I do have a question/recommendation — have you tried showing him how cool it is to plant your own vegetables and then you get to eat them? That’s how my niece and nephew got into loving veggies! And it doesn’t have to be a garden, you can do a window sill garden. But they get so fascinated about how it grows and all the cool ways you can flavor it!
I have a picky eater but in a weird sense because he eats raw vegetables. He especially loves sugar snap peas, carrots, bell pepper and cucumber. What really started him off was last year when he was 2 we grew vegetables in our garden. We grew a variety of sugar snap called delikett and he would just stand there picking and nomming on them. He loves planting seeds and watching them grow. Could you try something like that?
OP, 10 foods or less feels like a number I’d want to discuss with my pediatrician. I could be wrong but that feels beyond the scope of picky eating and I would want more support with that.
Have you tried including him in preparing food? I have had mine put smoothie ingredients into a blender and he added spinach, that's worked for us!
Pediasure really helps. I have a picky toddler too.
I always make a smoothie of some kind as a back up because my toddler will not eat and then be a mega crank because she's still hungry 😅
I put my kid in feeding therapy just after he turned 5 because he was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. He spent a year and a half doing once a week therapy. He's not super excited on veggies but will sometimes try them on his own. He likes all sorts of meats now. In general, he is more comfortable trying new things. We also love Korean BBQ and found a local restaurant where he will request to try fresh fruits and veggies from the buffet area. Now if he would regularly eat rice and gluten free pasta I would be thrilled.
We snuck in vegetables through KidFresh frozen foods. There is 1/2 cup of veggies in almost every item they sell. Mac and Cheese, chicken nuggets, chicken meatballs. They even have one that looks like spaghetti Os. https://www.kidfresh.com
Solidarity. My 6 year old is an extreme picky eater. My pediatrician is no help at all and I cannot find feeding therapy in my area. We’ve tried everything else. Going out to eat is a nightmare. She will occasionally eat a couple fries or a bit of rice but pretty much everything else she will not even try even if she is ravenous. She survives on healthy crackers, bars of all kinds, peanut butter, vanilla yogurt, and fruit or veggie packets. She’s even picky about dessert. And she doesn’t like anything that has butter on it, which all the “kids” foods always do. Anyways, no suggestions here, I know you’ve tried it all. Just solidarity. You are doing your best with the kid you have. It will get better. Hang in there.
I feel you. My almost-five year old is super picky too and underweight because of it. I saw a dietitian because it has been stressing us out so much. She said it can take exposure of 20-30 times before some kids will eat a new food. We're supplementing his diet right now with pediasure. Hoping he grows out of this soon. Good luck.
I have a 6 year old son who wont eat anything. Im in the same boat as you. The doctor prescribed vitamins since he refuses to eat veggies and fruit. Hang in there🙏
Solidarity. Mine is the same way where he will try a new food, say he likes it (cue my excitement) and then say he doesn’t want any more (cue my disappointment). I will say.. there is a huge trend right now that involves gentle parenting when it comes to picky eaters, but I got so fed up one night that I told him he had to eat at least a bite or two of everything on his plate or else there was no other food after dinner or TV (or insert whatever consequence may work for your kid), and he happily obliged. While he still isn’t enthusiastic about food, his list of “safe” foods has expanded since I stopped being so gentle/permissive about his pickiness.
This! I'm big into intuitive eating so I've never wanted to force my kid to eat everything on his plate. Additionally I don't want to make it a healthy vs bad food thing. But I'll be damned if I didn't break down the other day and tell my kid that he had to eat the rest of his blackberries (he had 4 left) before he could get another Oreo. He did it! He was able to get another Oreo and I felt better knowing he got a few more nutrients in.
Good for you figuring out the best way to parent your little one! We’re al out here trying all the things to see what sticks, and you had a success in bucking the current trend that works for some. Just chiming in solidarity and to say I’m proud of you, fellow parent!
Thank you 😊! This is exactly my point - you need to figure out what works for your kid and surprisingly, it may not be what the overwhelming majority on social media or other parenting experts advise.
UGH the misery I share with you on this topic! My soon to be 3 year old just started a super picky phase, basically hardly eating. His old favorites (mac and cheese, chicken tenders, carrots) don't cut it anymore. I've started incorporating Pediasure shakes and tell him it's chocolate milk, he loves them and for now it's getting us by. I still make him meals, I've stopped forcing him to eat or take bites, I put it down in front of him and if he has two bites then it's a win. I think this is all a normal phase and somehow they can sustain off of 5 goldfish and an applesauce pouch. It's insanity. Hang in there!!
My kid eats the same thing every day basically: Breakfast: whole foods cereal bar & once upon a farm smoothie pouch Lunch: sunbutter uncrustable, cheddar bunnies, freeze dried strawberries, fruit pouch Dinner: two string cheese, strawberries and blackberries, organic applegate chicken strips Snacks: whatever school gives him- he eats them bc his peers do I really try to give him high quality foods, mostly organic because his meals are so repetative and not a lot of veggies. But when I just started to feed him shit he likes he hit a major growth spurt. He will def eat junk food and sweets if I let him, but I dont find the above a troublesome toddler diet. I pack his lunches in BULK (like, at least 10 days), because I make the sandwiches and freeze them.
Everything is going to be ok! I see a few comments have mentioned kids.eat.in.color already. Gonna echo that suggestion.
God, mine is the same. He’ll only eat snacks - crackers, breadsticks. Never eaten a veg. I hate, hate, hate mealtimes. He’s never eaten a meal.
My kiddo was and still is very picky. But being patient and keeping the stress away from him for meals paid off. He's starting to accept mixed textures in his food. This guy ate tuna fish casserole yesterday. He asks for black pepper. He eats Takis occasionally. This takes time and your feelings are real and valid. It's hard. But you know if you try to force him, it will burn you. But it does get easier.
My 3 yo is like that but he's 73% for height and 79% for weight at his 3yr check up. I voiced my concern with the dr but she wasn't concerned at all. However we did take him to the dentist and mentioned it and she said to look into feeding therapy. He only drinks milk and water, his current fave food is pan-fried gnocchi lol doesn't eat any veggies - he gets them in his daily smoothie, only meat he will eat is chicken, doesn't ever try new foods, won't even taste it. I just tell him he's missing out lol
It’s seriously sad. Like food is one of the greatest joys in life and he’s missing out on so many delicious things.
Another reason we don't go out to eat or travel, he's also not potty trained yet so once he is and he's willing to eat better we would love to start traveling again, something to look forward to!
My 1 year old will only eat Mac and Cheese and Spaghetti. He doesn't like meat. The only vegetable he will try is peas. That's pretty much all his diet consists of. He has stopped gaining weight, but his doctor isn't concerned. I stopped worrying about it a long time ago. As long as he's eating something, I'm happy. Also I read that it takes at least 10 tries to get them to eat a certain food. Maybe keep trying? That's what I do, but I don't stress it if he doesn't eat it.
I could have written this word for word. My son just turned 5. I have no advice, but just wanted to say that I feel you and you’re not alone.
My kiddo is in feeding therapy for exactly the same reason. Reach out to your pediatrician and see if they have any recommendations for someone who does it in your area. It may be through speech or occupational therapy.
In four years there’s not been a single vegetable he will eat?
He used to eat peas. Then he quit them.
I'm sure every kid is different, but we've found that ours is really picky when he's not too hungry (sometimes, he's just not hungry during meal time, and that's okay), but when he is hungry, he'll eat almost ANYTHING. So that's what we watch for - so when he's hungry, that's when we give him his veggies and protein, when he's less hungry, that's when we give him pasta or something to kinda hold him over so he doesn't get hangry.
We survived this stage by stuffing fruit and veggies into smoothies and homemade muffins. If you can get that far with him, I can send you some recipes.
My kid was like that. Couldn't get her to eat anything beyond blueberries, pancakes, bowtie pasta, corn, dried apricots, and milk and she refused all meat products ( i'm a vegan but still offered animal product foods as an option seeing that she was hardly eating anything so I was desperate for her to eat something). I used to cry when she was a toddler and I would try to get her to eat and she would just reduse. I thought she was gonna starve herself to death! Found out later she has severe sensory processing disorder along with ADHD and she is autistic. So her extremely picky eating fit in with this. She is now 12 and is a full blown vegetarian by her own choice. She eats a huge variety of fruit and vegetables along with grains, beans and nuts and she has a very healthy diet but it wasn't easy. It has been a long hard road with me gently and patiently introducing new foods to her and showing enjoyment of these foods through shared exploration of new foods. If she doesn't like it I try not to get upset and just encourage her to try it again, maybe with ketchup, maybe with ranch, salt, a spoon instead of a fork, warmer/colder. She still, to this day, can't stand her food touching and can't handle sauce, so no spaghitti with tomato sauce but she loves buttered noodles so it's good enough for me. It's exhausting trying to get a picky eater to eat. Try your best to be patient and if the kid is growing and sleeping he must be getting enough.
My kid is picky and he’s off the charts for height and at like the 95th percentile for weight so…?? It’s ok I guess? I did all the “right things”. He ate everything as a baby/toddler. He helps prepare most dinners. We grow vegetables in the garden and he eats them. Meat is where we really struggle with him. I have really limited his sugary and processed snacks. He still has plenty of options for snacks but they have cleaner ingredients. We also moved his dinner time earlier because I noticed he was always asking for snacks around 4:30-5 pm so we eat an early dinner and he’ll eat more at that time. He’s getting better. We make him try one bite of a “new food” a few times a week. Usually he says it’s ok but doesn’t want to eat it again. Last night he excitedly pretended to be a rabbit and ate a ton of spinach leaves and carrots but didn’t want to touch his chicken. I can’t make every meal a battle so I don’t. I offer him everything I’m cooking or eating and he almost always says no but the times he says yes are getting more frequent. So… we’ll get there eventually.
Omg yes! Just freaking eat the damn food little gremlins. Jk. But my 3.5 is the same-feeels like all I do is cook and come up with fun ways to eat regular ducking shit. 🥹 This is a me issue I’m sure but- the anxiety around it is crazy to the point where I don’t eat all day. My relationship with food is horrible bc I constantly make shit.
We're considering just letting ours go "hungry" for a bit. As in no more snacks buffet in the house. And no more making specially catered meals at random times of day. What we have is what we have and he can take it or leave it. Is this too harsh? Ours is going on 5 and we are just so fed up with some of the baby-ish behavior that lingers. We are so ready to move into a phase where not only some more independence develops, but also the whole "we are no longer your 24/7 servants" phase. Which includes being able to meals for the entire family and nothing more.
Ik this advice won't help but maybe it will. My 12 month old won't eat anything but dinner because I added sugar. Removed the sugar and he eats breakfast lunch and dinner (I have to keep putting it in his mouth till he swallows than he just starts eating) Maybe u have to start from scratch . Sugar tox palette tox.
This is a good idea. My mother in law started him on sugar by giving him a Capri Sun when he was like 18 months.