Reply to So sick of my child’s picky eating

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

Reply to "So sick of my child’s picky eating"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I spend hours each week planning, shopping, cooking, and preparing 90% of our family’s meals and my six year old is driving me up the wall. He refuses, unless coerced (“three bites of all new foods” “clean plate club or no screens after dinner” etc), to try any new foods. We spent years playing it cool, putting it on his plate and telling him he didn’t have to try it if he didn’t want to, etc and it did absolutely nothing. Everything he tastes he says he doesn’t like, and 50% of the time he gags when he is coerced into trying it. He will not try basic things—even sweet things, like cake or toast with jam or a different flavor of muffin! Foods he does like are rejected if they are cut in a different shape. He will not eat ANY convenience foods—yogurt, pizza, mac n cheese, quesadillas, chicken nuggets, nothing. I am just so frustrated by the unwillingness to TRY and the immediate rejection of everything after tasting it, without even thinking of whether or not it could potentially taste good. 
I’m not very sure if I’m looking for advice, I just need to rant. Most resources for picky eating are for toddlers, and playing little games or cutting things into fun shapes is not going to convince a six year old.[/quote]

I posted earlier but meant to say, think about what he is learning when you force him to eat something and he gags? It’s re-enforcing the idea that trying new food is disgusting and scary. I promise you that level of pressure is backfiring - it’s why he’s scared to try even things that should be very easy like cake. If you really want to work on this you should talk to a professional and come up with a plan that works for your specific kid who is really struggling with this. Otherwise take the pressure off of both of you (unless he’s severely under weight) for a little and reassess. Forcing kids like this really backfires.

For my child we started with different brands of favorite foods. Like can we find a couple vanilla yogurts you like? Let’s do a yogurt tasting and see if we can even tell them apart! That sort of thing. And note in a positive way anything they try that is slightly different, even like oh I over cooked this and you still ate it great job![/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics