Meal ideas for a non-eating one year old! Help!

[Anonymous]

I cannot possibly list the many foods I have tried with my picky eating one year old. Dinner usually consists of a YoBaby yogurt with maybe (ona really good night) a Ritz cracker with cream cheese. Yikes - not enough to keep a bird alive! In the 5th percentile now and I am trying to stop him getting skinny and bony by giving him Pediasure - anyone any ideas for tempting his palate?

[Anonymous]

Hey, I was just thinking of writing a post titled "Can a one-year-old survive on nothing but yogurt and fruit??"

So I don't have the best suggestions, but last night was a banner meal with a few tablespoons of chicken and rice going down the hatch.

My other success involves giving her what I'm eating... from my plate, from my fork. She doesn't want her own dish, oh no. It has to be MY food.

[Anonymous]

Don't know what you've tried, but our DD was on a bit of a hunger strike and I found that giving her things she could eat more by herself, closer to what we had, was helpful. I started giving her whole sandwiches or other bigger items she could pick up and bit off of, and bowls of yogurt or applesauce mixed with pureed veg and she has been eating it.

good luck!

[Anonymous]

When my son stopped eating around 10 months it was because he did not want to be fed anymore. We found that if we cut it into bite-sized pieces, he would eat chicken nuggets, gardenburger (original version), and cheese. Over time, he has slowly begun to add more food into his diet, but he is still really picky (no bread, for example). And to make it worse, he refused to drink Pediasure. Hang in there and be patient. It gets better.

[Anonymous]

In the words of my nutritionist when faced with your problem: Don't feed him cheerios - they displace food with more fat.

Also, now is NOT the time to ween from formula (if you are using any). Formula is a more balanced meal than cows milk, and with a kid like yours, all calories are important.

The other thing that worked for us was garlic bread. My kid mostly ate the garlic, but at least garlic is very healthy.

[Anonymous]

What about a smoothie? Frozen fruit with banana and avocado and peanut butter blended with milk or soymilk. You can even hide greens in there. Blend spinach or chard (de-stemmed) in the milk first before adding the frozen fruit. Blueberries cover up the green color well. Tell him it's ice cream.

[Anonymous]

Don't feed him cheerios - they displace food with more fat.

Cheerios are bad and have fat in them? I don't have a box in front of me, but this seems surprising. They have lots of fiber in them and i thought seemed like a good breakfast option (w/ yogurt).

[Anonymous]

PP here - disregard the post re: confusion on Cheerios! I just got what the other poster was trying to say! sorry!

[Anonymous]

While you may be concerned, I would urge you not to turn feeding into a battle which you cannot control.

We have friends who have done this with their DD, and now she's 3 and it's a HUGE power struggle. When she's mad at them, she tries to force-feed them. It's really sad, because eating isn't enjoyable anymore.

Easy for me to say, since I haven't dealt with this, but I would give him a large selection of foods and let him decide what and when. Children won't let themselves starve.

[Anonymous]

Have you tried laying out puffs, cheerios, pieces of cheese (or whatever) around the house - like on the coffee table? It may start a bad habit of grazing, but at least it gets a little bit of nutrition/calories into the little guy.

Not sure if this is true, but I heard if you add molasses or jelly to an item it not only tastes better, but adds a lot more calories (and probably a lot of sugar!) to an item. Just a thought.