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Picking your battles with picky eaters

Posted Jan 5, 2010 by Beth Gaddis

Updated Jan 5, 2010 at 10:54 AM

As a parent, you want to do everything right.  In our case, we didn’t even introduce cookies to our oldest boy until he was 2 1/2.  He would eat strawberries and blueberries and grapes for snacks and dessert, and loved them.  We congratulated ourselves on our ability to avoid giving him sugary snacks that would rot his baby teeth.

He’d eat half a grilled cheese sandwich or a hot dog without the bun, and I thought that was normal.  He’d drink water and milk, but little juice and never any soda.  Breakfast was always his best meal of the day.  He’d eat five mini pancakes and a banana, and we’d send him off to day care confident that he had the nutrients he needed to thrive at school.

Now, at 4-years-old, he’s only 30 pounds, which is less than 95 percent of kids his age.  He’s tiny.  And I’m so afraid that he’ll always be a super-scrawny kid who will be the last to get picked for sports or will be beat up by the bullies.  And as we’ve started having more playdates that last through dinnertime, I’ve become painfully aware that he doesn’t eat as much as other kids his age.  My younger son is just 18-months-old, and even he out-eats his brother pretty much every meal every day.

We took the kids to the pediatrician’s office the week after Christmas for their wellness visits.  All the way along, our pediatrician has been laid back about Jay’s weight.  After all, my husband and I are both super-thin and so it made sense that Jay wouldn’t be a big kid.  But after seeing our 24-pound toddler standing next to his big brother, the doctor agreed: it was time to do something different.

Now we’re writing down every morsel of food that goes into Jay’s mouth.  We’re counting calories and making an appointment to take him to a nutritionist.  We’re getting lots of support from friends and family who tell us stories about what they fed their kids when they refused to eat – and how their children turned out okay despite eating only peanut and butter sandwiches with twinkies for days on end. 

I’m collecting cookbooks with all sorts of tips on getting picky eaters to gobble up more.  I have to admit, I’m pretty intimidated by the thought of pureeing veggies and adding zucchini juice to tomato sauce. 

And I’m mad at myself for not realizing this was a bigger problem earlier on.