Hellobee Boards

Is there such thing as a beef allergy? Just based on the examples you gave. Throwing up is so extreme!

My 2.5 year old has become picky in the last few months and the ped says to not cater to it. Definitely hard to stick to when they wake early hungry though. Good luck!

If she won't eat what is on her plate, I give her a choice of two boring options, usually porridge or toast. She gets as much of those as she wants so won't go to bed hungry, but I don't have to cook. DH sometimes offers her an omelette instead, but I tend to stick to toast.

We don't have the throw up problem but N will gag a LOT when he doesn't want to eat something. We still have him what we eat but just small portions. Sometimes if he eats his portion with little to no fighting I will give him a snack right before bed. I keep my snacks to fresh fruit so at least its healthy. Since throwing up seems to be going on with O I would call the doctor and ask to see an allergist or GI. I don't think its normal.

@sorrycharlie: my daughter does that too!! She will gag and act like it's the worst thing on earth. sometimes we find she takes bites that are too big so I end up cutting her food into minuscule bites. That sometimes helps. I also tell her she can drink her milk while eating to help get it down. If she doesn't eat what we're eating, no dessert and no more food till morning.

I don't give her anything else, unless dinner turned out super spicey or something (this has literally happened twice). Usually I make stuff that I know she'd tolerate based on the spices/tastes, not necessarily something we've had before. like last night it was fish in a coconut curry sauce with carrots and red pepper. She likes all of those things, and it was kind of sweet from the coconut milk. But she only ate a few bites.
I also always give her milk, which I figure gives her something in her belly.

When she's going through picky phases like that I do tend to cook things I know she likes more often- mostly because I just can't find with her all damn day. And we have some staples that are healthy- like she will always eat frozen peas or mixed vegetables- so what's the harm in always offering them? I think she's a pretty decent eater and I have enough battles to fight. She has to try everything on her plate but if she says she doesn't like it I offer something boring sometimes. But if it's something she likes and just won't eat that night I assume she just isn't hungry enough.

@sorrycharlie: N did this for a hot second. I made it clear that it wasn't acceptable behavior and he would be hungry otherwise. He hasn't done it in recent memory. In fact he is scared of throwing up since he got sick. I do try to make our food more appealing by using sauces and getting him involved in dinner choices and prep.

We don't offer any alternatives to dinner, but we also make sure there is always one thing (and generally two things) that we expect to be appealing to the kids. And it's up to them what they want to try, what they want to eat, and how much. The only limitation is that they can't eat so much of one thing that there is not enough for everyone else. There have been dinners where LO1 eats a scoop of sour cream and nothing else or only the starch. But he's generally an adventurous eater, so our approach isn't too difficult to enact.

When he was younger, there was a stretch where we wasn't eating a lot at dinner--it seemed like he just wasn't hungry at the right time--and was waking up early. We weren't sure if there was a connection, but we decided to offer a later snack. We tried to offer the snack as long as possible after dinner, to try to avoid him skipping dinner on purpose. And we offered the same snack every night (for us, it was nuts and raisins.)

I offer my kid stuff I know he won't find offensive plus a new thing here and there and he still won't eat a lot of times. I've stopped trying to offer her different things unless I know he's feeling under the weather and/or I need him to eat something so I can get some medicine into him. But lots of times he will just eat plain rice and I have it warm in the rice cooker at all times, so I will try that. And he can have some fresh fruit sometime after dinner.