Hellobee Boards

Just keep offering!

Sometimes novelty helps, have you tried doing a snack tray? I think there are some blog posts about it. Maybe try putting one out at a time when he normally eats instead of putting him in a high chair and see what happens. Just do one or two bites of several things, some familiar and loved and others that you are working on.

@rahlyrah: When R first started with solids, she did better when we weren't sitting right in front of her eating. I would move her chair closer to the living room and sit in the chair and play on my phone next to her, but wasn't watching her every bite. Or bring the chair in the kitchen and unload the dishwasher while she eats.

I would try to cut down on the snacks and keep offering the real food. We had to do it last year!

@rahlyrah: Is he walking?

There is a biological/evolutionary theory that kids get really picky right around the time they start to walk. This mostly presents as them only eating carbs and really familiar, "safe" foods. The idea is that once a kid starts to walk, they have at their fingertips a whole new world of potentially dangerous/poisonous foods and so they only eat what they *know* is safe.

At the same time she started walking, DD went from eating anything I would give her (spicy Thai duck curry? no problem!) to eating exactly three things: Cheerios, animal crackers, and scrambled eggs. I just kept offering additional foods at every meal and gradually, one by one, she added things back into her diet. She still - at 16 mo - is much pickier than she was before 13 mo, but every week I see improvement.

@septca: Hmm, my LO must be an evolutionary anomaly. She eats dirt, grass, spiders (!), paper, and pretty much any other random thing she finds. It got WORSE when she started walking. As far as real food goes, she likes veggies and is "meh" about fruit. She hasn't had any carbs, really.

@septca: Too funny, this has been true for us! G started walking about a month ago and ever since her appetite has skyrocketed but the # of foods she will accept has dwindled considerably. She went from being completely obsessed with fish to spitting it back out at me. Sigh. Good to know it's not just my LO!

My LO went through this phase. Sometimes they're just too busy to stop and eat a full meal. Leave out food that can be left out for a while - sandwich cut up into small pieces, crackers & hummus, pieces of veggies and fruit, And let him munch on them. No pressure to "clean the plate". My LO eventually started asking for "mamma" which is Korean for food and that's when I knew the snacking phase was over. But I didn't want to have a food battle so I left out "healthier snacks" on her kiddie table and let her graze on it. After a few hours, I'd clean it up and then put out another snack. I'd always ask when I ate if she wanted whatever I was having, but if she said no I didn't force the issue.