My 26 month old still eats baby food

[lilmama27]

My 26 month old boy will not eat any food with texture, chunks, or if he has to chew it. He will not use his teeth. It has to be blended/ mashed and fed with a spoon. He finally started feeding himself with a spoon a couple weeks ago. If I try to feed him more textured food he gags and sometimes pukes it out and gets very upset. He is still not giving up the bottle either. He refuses to use sippy cups since he was 7 months old. Does anyone else out there have this same problem or have or know of the same situation? I have no idea what to do, thanks.

[Shiv52]

Some LOs have a hard time making the switch so try not to worry but he's still young enough to change small things to encourage him to eat more textured foods! 

How long have you been trying textured foods for?  Sometimes if LOs eat pureed food for long periods of time they find it hard to make the switch. 

Does he eat any finger foods at all (toast/fruit/crisps/biscuits) ??

Have you mentioned this to the doctor or health visitor and have they ever assessed to make sure he has no oral motor issues that could be affecting his chewing etc??

[rachelann]

Don't remember exactly when my DS began eating something other than baby food, but I know it was way later than I wanted.  I would be so jealous when I would see other babies of similar age eating chunks of lasagne, etc., while I was still spooning pureed bananas.  Although cheerios and veggiepuffs were always a big hit, probably because he didn't have to chew them. 

At the same time, we had late language development (still had NO words by 15 months) and so we were suggested to see early intervention and he qualified.  Turns out he had low muscle tone in his mouth (made sense why he never learned to BF properly - we like to say he was a lazy little sucker!).  With the help of the developmental specialist (who came out to the house for free once a week, so nice!) and a little bit of the speech therapist, we now have a healthy 4 year old who won't stop talking, and eats OK.  He takes forever to eat, especially things that take a long time to chew, like chicken or pork, and really could take or leave food, but eats ok.  I would call him a picky eater, and a slow eater, but I consider him to be still a pretty normal eater now.

How is your LO's language development?  Also, when we met with the speech therapist (who helped us with the eating thing, not the speech thing), we found out about some babies having texture issues and such, and that there are things you can do, if you find the right kind of help.  Ours wasn't a texture issue, but a tone issue, and got help for that.  C

Could be just that your LO is just taking longer than some to come around to different textures, but might be worth asking your pediatrician if there is anyone who can look at him to see if there is something more going on.  It all ends well, though, so while it can be frustrating and a bit scary to think there is something wrong with your LO, it will be okay, whatever it is.  And actually, when our LO didn't qualify for services anymore at 3 yrs old, we were sad to lose that relationship with our developmental specialist.  We learned a lot of other parenting skills from her that we otherwise wouldn't have known. 

Good luck and keep us posted!

Rachel

[suzannemoore]

My 26 month old boy will not eat any food with texture, chunks, or if he has to chew it. He will not use his teeth. It has to be blended/ mashed and fed with a spoon. He finally started feeding himself with a spoon a couple weeks ago. If I try to feed him more textured food he gags and sometimes pukes it out and gets very upset. He is still not giving up the bottle either. He refuses to use sippy cups since he was 7 months old. Does anyone else out there have this same problem or have or know of the same situation? I have no idea what to do, thanks.

This got me thinking as my lo has had the exact same issues.  We have had minor luck with the feeding because I just offered small amounts of things he liked and added very small amounts of texture to it.  Example-he loves yogurt, so I would add one small curd of cottage cheese to his serving.  It took a long time to get him to eat that one bite, but eventually we moved to mashed fruits in his yogurt.  He still has issues feeding himself with certain things.  He also had a problem with breastfeeding.  He would not suck, and when we switched to the bottle it took him a long time to finish it.  I understand where you are coming from, he ate babyfood until about a month ago and he is 21 months old now.  It is the most frustrating thing to deal with.  I hate going out to dinner with friends because their babies younger than Hayden would eat anything!! Reading this thread has made me do a lot of thinking as well, as my lo has not started using any words either.  I am going to double check with his dr. just to make sure there is no other issues going on.  Trust your gut, if you feel there is something wrong check with your doc.  Let us know how you are doing with this, and I will try to help you in anyway possible.