almost 4 - food and control issues

[momtonb&ab]

OK, can someone give me some insight here please?

DS has always been an excellent eater - slow, but a great eater.  he has a good appetite, enjoys his veggies and fruit as much as the protein and grain (and a sweet thing here and there  albeit not too often).  we drink primarily water and he has milk - no juice or other drinks.  he has always been a slow eater - likes to socialize over his meal (and even as an infant he was slow - 40 mins for an 8 oz bottle sometimes  )  i don't mind giving him time to eat, but here is what our days have been like lately - at most meals.

dinner time (beef, potatoes, steamed carrots/peas/brocolli). all things he LOVES.  moderate portion as we don't snack between meals here.  1/2 cup milk.  DS sits to table at 5pm.  i sit with them.  DD and i eat, he picks.  by 6pm DD is long gone from the table (she finished with little encouragement, had fruit as 'dessert' and a few peanuts and is off to play after 35mins at the table).  i have finished, after DD gets down from table i get up and do dishes and make coffee.  sit back down.  despite encouragement DS still has only had about 5 bites. 

at 6pm i take plate away and remind him his veggies and meat are important to grow so he will have to eat it in the morning.  he doesn't cry, just gets down and on with the evening.

after an unsettled night on his part (unusual) he wakes up early (6am instead of 7) and is miserable and cranky until we put breakfast in front of him.  i serve last night's dinner - he doesn't complain, just goofs around and picks at it again.   he eventually finishes on the realization that if he doesn't eat he isn't allowed to go to preschool with an empty belly (this is not a threat, just something my children understand all the time - they can't go somewhere hungry because they will be unhappy and spoil it for other kids). 

come home for lunch.  i ask what they want and he wants a ham sandwich with cheese and mayo/mustard mix on rye bread.  all again things i know he loves.  serve it and 45 mins later he has eaten less than 1/3 of the sandwich.  so i take it away and remind him he will need to eat it for dinner.   he is fine with that.  gets down from table and within 2 hours is asking if it is dinner time and cranking. 

i KNOW he is hungry.  i KNOW from experience with him that he NEEDS to eat this food to get to the next meal time.   if i put a pb&Honey sandwich in front of him it is gone in minutes if he is motivated, but the same sandwich can go unfinished if he feels like putting me off too.  but then he is always hungry following. he is not holding out for sweets - we don't keep them in the house or even have them often at all.  he is not holding out for milk as i have only ever served water between meals.

i *think* it is control related, but i don't know.  i spoke with my therapist about it (because i have a fear of creating food issues for him where i have such an awful relationship with eating) and she suggested just giving him a long time (the  hour at dinner being a good example) and then taking it away.  she said he will eventually learn to associate the hunger with the need to eat. 

help!!  i don't know if i can keep having him hungry - but i can't force him either! 

[Lolly]

My DS is a lot like this - takes an absolute age to eat a few mouthfuls. I think there are some days that he just isn't hungry even though I am convinced that he should be. He was/is a refluxer though and we had to put him back on meds just before christmas and since then his appetite has been good, he is eating properly at meals and is hungry enough to ask for snacks in between. I hate the fact that at 4 he still needs meds but the difference in his eating is huge.

I do wonder though if bringing food back out again is the best way to encourage him to eat, I understand why you are doing it and even though he doesn't make a fuss could it feel like a punishment for him? . When a meal is done for us it's done, we try not to comment on what/ how much they are eating unless it's positive. If you feel it's a control issue maybe the way to go would be to ignore the behaviours you don't want but lots of fuss/ praise even rewards for what does get eaten (depending on how you feel about rewards etc), give him a plenty of time to eat and then just remove what isn't eaten.

Have you tried small snacks between meals to see if that effects his appetite? Is he getting too hungry to eat - that sounds really daft but I know if I go too long without eating I get so hungry it gives me bad stomach pains then I can't eat which is what I really need to do .

Don't know if anything there helps!

Laura

[Mama2boys]

so similar stuff DS1 is  a slow eater but normally its to get my attention or the attention from whoever is looking after him and make them read to him so he eats....i have some thoughts ideas will be back later  its bloody pianful!

[clazzat]

I went through this with dd1 - some really ridiculously long mealtimes, which were sometimes down to her not being hungry enough, sometimes because she just wasn't very interested and sometimes because she wasn't keen enough on what she was being offered.  However, there were plenty of occasions where I was pretty sure that none of these was the problem and she just took over an hour to eat.

We set a time limit, much like you are doing, and gave her plenty of warning that if she wasn't going to eat it then it would be taken away.  It was also clear that she wasn't going to get anything different, and if we got to the end of her time limit then she wasn't going to get her yoghurt/fruit either.  We did have snacks some of the time, but I really don't think that she was holding out for them as they were not predictable.  As with so many of these phases, it just passed - I don't think that anything we did or didn't do made any difference.

I agree with pp, though - I never brought back the food that was taken away, and I wonder if perhaps he is interpreting it as a punishment even if it is not intended that way?

[Shiv52]

{{{hugs Cherie}}}

at 6pm i take plate away and remind him his veggies and meat are important to grow so he will have to eat it in the morning.

I wonder if this is contributing to the problem and adding to the controlling element of it.  So he is being controlling by taking ages to eat and not eating but in turn your rules are controlling in that you are saying 'well you will eat it at the next meal'.  KWIM?

TBH if someone set a dinner in front of me first thing in the morning I would feel sick and there is no way I'd eat it. 

Would you feel comfortable with starting every meal with a clean slate? Your kids obviously have an amazing diet and its not like he's holding out for junk food.  If he doesn't eat say 'sandwich' for lunch fair enough but I wouldn't offer anything else to eat until dinner and just start again with whatever the rest of you guys are having. 

TBH I would worry that reproducing meals isn't helping the issue and that he thinks its a punishment of sorts.   It would be hard to get excited about meal times if you know you are getting your dinner again for breakfast.  I would already be put off eating before I even started.  I totally understand your reasoning by the way so please don't think i am being critical x


I don't offer choices at dinner.  Dinner is just dinner here but i do offer a choice of two things for breakfast and lunch and that helps with appetite and M wanting to eat things more readily.  Would that help?  

I'd also have a think about the length of time he is at the table.  I think an hour is so long to be picking over a meal.  I would add 5 minutes to however long it takes DD and let that be the end of the meal.  That could be adding to the controlling element of it given that 3 meals a day x 45/60 minutes sitting at a table is a long time to be sitting there thinking about not wanting to eat your food.  


{{{hugs}}}

[Edesanja]

I think the others have made some good points.

DD is also ridiculously slow. Even though she's perfectly happy to sit there, it's just like her brain is too busy thinking (and talking: too eat. We still end up forking quite a few mouthfuls to her just to keep her going which I'd rather we didn't do. She's also tiny and not a big eater in the first place.

If she's just not eating and taking forever we remind her that she won't want to be hungry when she's in bed because it will be a long time till breakfast and then offer to keep her dinner in the fridge till a bit later. She will always ask to eat it before bed and is usually much quicker. Not sure why :-/

[speechie]

good points!
I also want to share that I put Nick in control of in between snacks by having child ready healthy snacks in the fridge. So, if he is hungry right before dinner, I don't mind if he grabs the pre-made carrot sticks, grapes, green beans, etc etc. That way he's not whining or getting unhealthy quick processed junk instead of dinner. hopefully he's getting a fruit/veggie serving or two, then what ever he takes for dinner is just a bonus.

[squeakersmum]

DS has the opposite prob and will inhale his food...but *I* did this as a child. I was an only child so there wasn't so much of an issue with my mum splitting her time but I would take the whole of the lunch hour at school to eat a sandwich and a piece of fruit and would sit for an hour at dinner time picking at my dinner. (when it got cold I would gag on it but that's another story. No solutions just wantedto let you know that I did grow out of it pretty quickly - it was definitely just a phase with me.

[momtonb&ab]

thanks for your input everyone. 

shiv, i never take it as criticism here - i love so much that all you great moms are willing to share and troubleshoot, so thanks for that. 

i don't know about him - tonight he finished his lunch first, then ate a whole serving of Deceptively Delicious Mac 'n Cheese with cauliflour in it and veg on the side.  when he was done with that he ate popcorn (with nutritional yeast which is a protein and is something we eat here a lot and is crazy healthy).  he went to be beautifully and with a nice full belly so we will start tomorrow off fresh and see where we go.

i agree that he may be seeing the leftovers at next meal as a punishement but we have only done that these last few days after having the mealtime issues for a week.  i will try not doing that tomorrow to see if it helps for sure!  i was more thinking that i wanted him to understand that refusing one meal didnt' mean he got something better the next time but it hadn't occured to me that he would see it as a punishement.

i dont' know about the time frame.   dd has always been finished first - he typically takes 40 mins for breakfast and lunch, an hour for dinner.  i don't mind allowing him the time IF he is eating yk?  it's when an hour only produces 10 bites that i get crazy and worry if we are going to have food issues. 

back tomorrow to give this all som more thought. 

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Have you tried small snacks between meals to see if that effects his appetite? Is he getting too hungry to eat - that sounds really daft but I know if I go too long without eating I get so hungry it gives me bad stomach pains then I can't eat which is what I really need to do .

This is me too! I find if I go for too long without eating that it is hard to stomach any food at all. Not sure why!

[skatty]

You could have written about Leorah, I just can't imagine why it takes her so long to eat  If she is picking I just presume she is not very hungry though, it is very rare she finishes a meal, she always sleeps ok I just think she regulates what she eats over the day and having grown up with a mum who was constantly dieting I really try and make food a non issue. I think Leorah is a grazer though, she does have snacks but they are healthy things like a frozen peas and carrots or carrot sticks, sometimes nuts but that is only after a meal or she would fill herself up on them.

[Shiv52]

i dont' know about the time frame.   dd has always been finished first - he typically takes 40 mins for breakfast and lunch, an hour for dinner.  i don't mind allowing him the time IF he is eating yk?  it's when an hour only produces 10 bites that i get crazy and worry if we are going to have food issues.

I agree actually that if he's eating but just slowly that its best not to impose a time limit as you don't want him to think he has to shovel the food in quickly. 

So hard to get a good balance with these kiddos where food is.  I am so conscious of trying not to create issues.  We've had dinner pickiness for a few weeks now and it drives me mad. 

i was more thinking that i wanted him to understand that refusing one meal didnt' mean he got something better

I don;t think he would see it as something better as you are just providing what you would normally provide for the next meal.  Be different if he was not eating dinner and then getting biscuits and chocolate!  I love the idea of that popcorn!

[momtonb&ab]

I love the idea of that popcorn!

it's nutritional yeast - we get it at the healthfood store in the fridge section.  it is a ton of B-vitamins (why it needs to be refrigerated, to preserve them) and protein.  DH used to be vegetarian and for a few years i was with him.   the nutritional yeast is a protein substitute.  we use it like parmesan cheese (it's a really mild flavour, a bit like a light dried parmesan cheese if that makes sense) so we put it on popcorn with a bit of butter (insanely delicious) and on pasta, veggies with soy sauce.  DH and the kids even eat it in their oatmeal (although i don't particularly like it in oatmeal). we eat it on poached eggs on toast with soy sauce added....it's just something we always always always have in the fridge, and it is guaranteed protein for the kids if we don't get much meat eating.  

so this morning (after that great dinner last night and a really good 12 hour night's sleep) he had about 1cup of muesli with yogourt and milk, then asked for oatmal (what DH and DD were having) and ate 2 cups of that with yeast, raisins and a 1/4 tsp of maple syrup.   drank 1 cup regular milk and 1 cup soy milk.  and all in 25 minutes!  

i am so confused ..............i don't get this kid and his eating sometimes.  he doesn't even really like oatmeal much, but he devoured it.  

[clazzat]

I have found that M's eating is sometimes really random when she is coming up to a GS, and then afterwards she just eats everything!

I know it's easier said than done, but I would just try to roll with it.

[my3girlsjde]

We've been going through some of the same here. We have the 'hard to sit still' kids and the food struggles on top of it.

I bought an egg timer and set it for 5 minutes. They have to sit in their seats and they're allowed to ask to be excused when it rings. I've also started serving D an empty plate with her fork. I put her food on my plate and I put small portions on it and she normally gobbles it up. I think sometimes she's overwhelmed with a lot in front of her even though we don't force them to finish. J is a little better and eats more but D really uses it to control and then wakes through the night complaining that she's hungry.

Also giving snacks every 1.5 hrs to 2 hrs as annoying as it is is helping. I think this is her new way of dealing with a gs. Not srue if the same is going on there for you.

{{{HUGS}}}}