Picky eater help! 12 months!?

It is actually very common for toddlers to go through some very odd eating phases as well as being picky. One of the things to consider is that after 12 months, a child's rate of growth slows considerably. From birth to 12 months, a baby's rate of gain is huge. Just compare what a newborn looks like to what a 12 month old looks like. In the stage where babies are quickly growing, frequent eating is required to maintain adequate calorie intake. Sometime around 12 months a baby's rate of growth slows down. Evidence of this is to consider what a 12 month old looks like compared to a 24 month old. Very little in the way of height and weight gain compared to birth to 12 months. It is very normal for parents to become a little worried when their child isn't eating very much or even anything at all. I have been a mom for 30 years. I have 4 kids. I am also grandma to a 2 1/2 year old grandson plus I have been a licensed child care provider in my home for 22 years. It has taken a lot of trial and error over the years, but I have found a way of feeding children that has been very successful. The first thing that is helpful is to re-focus your goals. It is normal to be focused on getting kids to eat something so we become short-order cooks, making foods we know our kids have eaten in the past. What inadvertently happens is we create our own little picky eaters when we serve a meal/snack than when they won't eat it, we begin offering other food choices until we find the one thing they will eat. This teaches the child that "I don't have to eat the first thing put in front of me because if I hold out long enough, mom/dad will bring out the good stuff." What works well is to make it your job to plan, prepare, and serve a wide variety of healthy food choices. As soon as the food is served, though, your responsibility to it is over. At that point in time it becomes your daughter's responsibility to eat what and how much she wants. If that happens to be nothing at all, than you respect that. Say something like, "I see you aren't hungry right now. I'll put this away and you can have something later." Than, you get her down, put away the food, and wait at least an hour before offering her something else. Toddlers have very tiny tummies and offering them a meal or snack about every 2-3 hours throughout their waking hours is a good goal. At nearly 13 months she can easily feed herself even if it is still always with her fingers. When you put her food in front of her, give her a spoon and fork, too. She may or may not use them at first, but eventually she will with practice. Children who are in the 1-3 year old age range only require about 16 ounces of fluid milk per day. Depending on a toddler's activity level they are going to require about 1000 - 1400 calories per day. If your daughter is receiving around 30 ounces of whole milk per day than about 1/2 of her daily calories are coming from that source. The easiest thing to do is still offer her milk during her usual times, but cut back the amount. Aim for 4 ounces at each meal/snack, but at first you may have to just cut back an ounce or 2 at a time. 4 ounces of juice is an excellent amount per day for anyone. You can stretch if further by using 1/4 juice to 3/4 water instead of 1/2 and 1/2. Use a web site like this a href="http://kidshealth.org/parent/food/genera…" rel="nofollow"http://kidshealth.org/parent/food/genera…/a to help guide you as to what to serve your daughter each day. Most children, beginning in toddlerhood and often lasting well in to the teen years, will go through phases where they will seemingly eat nothing or be adamant about only eating one food. There is no need to worry about this. You can serve your daugher her favorite foods, but add a variety of other food choices to the plate, too. She may go days or even weeks never touching another food, but at least she is familiar with other foods and one day she will eat something else. There are many dilemas along the way with raising our kids and food issues often top the list of problems we face. It is helpful to have specific meal and snack times planned out. It's easy just to hand a child a graham cracker and a sippy cup of milk and they wander around the house with it. Instead, aim for planned sit down meals and snacks and only water in a sippy cup to walk around with. It's easy to lose track of how many actual crackers and sippy cups of milk/juice are being consumed between meals so it's best to elimate offering these on the run snacks. The fact that she eats only a bite here or there isn't of concern as that is not unusual. Too much milk, though, is probably cutting in to her ability to listen to her hunger cues. Cut back on milk, offer more healthy choices and don't offer her alternatives if she doesn't eat. Be consistent and you'll probably find meal time is a lot less stressful for everyone.