extremely slow, picky, easily distracted 3yr old non-eater

[zeri]

Hello, I could really use some help with dinner times at our place! My 3 yr old DD has always been a picky eater, and she takes a REALLY long time to eat her dinner. (She is okay at breakfast, although she doesn’t eat much.)  Due to work schedules and our commute, we eat dinner every night at 6:15. I would prefer to do it earlier, but it just isn’t possible. Every night I offer her whatever it is that the family is eating, and I make sure that she has at least two things on her plate that I know she likes. The problem is getting her to settle down and eat it! She wants to hop out of her booster, dance, chase the cat, play with her fork, etc. It drives my husband crazy when she does this, and it concerns me because very little food ever makes it into her tummy. She is petite (only 30 lbs) and very slender already. We ask her if she is finished, she ignores us, and when we remove her plate she says “no, I want to eat my dinner!” So we say, ‘Alright then, hop up [into her chair] and eat.” Which she does for about 1 minute, and then she is off again. If I strap her into her booster, she finds other distractions to prevent her from eating. Then at bedtime (8pm) she is hungry and whining for crackers. We have just been offering her a glass of milk or water and telling her “If you are hungry, you should have eaten your dinner.” A side issue is getting her to keep her feet off the table. She knows she shouldn’t do it, and we try to push her chair in so she can’t, but she is so flexible that she can be two inches from the table and she just does the splits to get those little toes up on the edge. So, my questions are these:
-   How to get her to eat her dinner within a 45 minute time frame (the max I think I can allow her so she can play a bit before bed)?
-   At what point do I remove her plate?
-   How to handle it when she is hungry and crying at bedtime? (I *think* she just uses it as a means to prolong her awake time, since if when we refuse she normally moves on to a different reason why she can’t possibly go to sleep yet; potty, needs to play, etc)
Thanks in advance!

[Ryan&HollysMom]

first of all, big hugs. i know mealtime can be very frustrating.
my ds is very similar, he eats very little most of the time (once in a while he'll surprise us and eat a lot), he just turned 5 and weighs 35 pounds.
i really think you need to stick to your guns here. sit her down sometime when it's not time to eat and tell her that there are certain rules at the table (no bad language, no getting up unless she's got to go to the bathroom, no feet on the table, that sort of thing...) and that you expect her to live with those like everyone else does. tell her she gets one warning and if she does it again that tells you that she's done eating. tell her all this without being mad, just that's the way it is and so be it. then ENFORCE the rules! trust me when i say that if she's hungry she WILL eat! if she's playing, putting feet on the table, dancing around and getting up, then she's just not interested. give her the one warning, then take her food. i'd offer the milk/water before bed, but continue saying what you've been saying about her having her dinner earlier.  it might sound harsh, but you're not hurting her or damaging her in any way. you're also not withholding food, she does that herself, iykwim. ryan will still get up occasionally but generally he's pretty good now, and when he's done he's done. some days i'm amazed that he's still alive on the little food he puts in his mouth. you can also make sure that she's not having too big a snack in the afternoon or have a snack too late, as that will make dinnertime harder.
you're doing great, and all the right things. you just need to stick to your guns!
oh, about the 45 min timeframe, that's about what we do too. just tell her 5-10 min ahead of time that dinnertime is almost over, then remind her one more time then clear the table. remove her plate when she continues to ignore the rules of the table. and the last question, i think you answered that yourself, lol.
and also keep in mind something that dieticians have told me before. slow eating is actually good for her. it's how it should happen. shoving food down your throat in record time is how people overeat, so she's actually living healthy. now when i see ryan eat so slowly i picture him in france! :-)

[zeri]

thanks so much for this advice! We tried it tonight and it went okay- she left the table twice to pee (I can see where that is headed) and ended up eating only about 5 peas, but at least we weren't battling her over it the whole time.

[oe]

super hugs! We are in the same boat over hear. DS1 is 3 and only weighs 25lbs. He also does the feet on the table, leaves the table etc. I find it the worst at lunchtime. For dinner we usually tell him if he eats all of his dinner he can have dessert (yogurt tube or a tbsp. of ice cream). this seems to work most times, but occasionally I have taken his plate away and we have had a meltdown... good luck.

[zeri]

We tried promising dessert as well, but it very quickly devolved into two bites of potatoes and then repeated demands for dessert, so now we don't even mention it unless she does really well all on her own. Tonight at bedtime she was hungry (no surprise there!) and when I offered her milk or water she replied "juice!". Sigh. At least she is predictable! She eventually took the milk and then sipped it SOOOOOO slowly, looking over the rim of the glass at me all the time, trying to push the limits as far as she can. I have a book called "Setting Limits For You Strong Willed Child" that really helps in day-to-day things (logical consequences, giving them the repercussions immediately and always following through, ie "You may bring your umbrella in the car, but if you open it I will have to take it away for the rest of the day and you will have to use your raincoat hood". It calls these kinds of kids "aggressive researchers"; a term I like because it reminds me that she is learning and just needs to gather a LOT of data on what is going to happen when she misbehaves before she decides it isn't worth it. It's worked wonders in a lot of areas but I always felt guilty applying it to mealtimes because I am afraid she will get undernourished.

you're also not withholding food, she does that herself

- that really helped, thank you Ryan&HollysMom!

[Ryan&HollysMom]

whenever we have dieticians at playgroup or other programs, they always urge to not depend dessert on "dinner eating performance". as in, don't make them eat x amount in order to eat candy/chocolate/icecream... they always suggest to incorporate dessert into the actual meal, in form of fruit or yogurt and such and we do that sometimes. they also said to just give "junk" once or twice a week as a special treat. what we've done, and i really quite like it, is we picked dessert days (ryan picked sun, tue and fri) where he gets a small treat after dinner no matter how much he ate (but we're talking small!), and other days he doesn't even have to ask. i found that before we did this, every bite, ever meal, was painstaking and took forever and constantly he would ask "can i have dessert now?" and i never knew how to react and it was different every time which also upped his frustration cause he didn't know the "rules" (neither did i). now he knows and looks forward to it, lol. still, if we're out and about and he was really good he might get a treat, or if it's a gorgeous evening and we're going for a walk and friends join us and we all walk toward the icecream store, well, i'm not gonna hold him back, lol. funny, i always grew up with no real restrictions. i got my easter baskets of chocolate and eat it all in one sitting and then have to watch my sister eat hers a little at a time for days on end. or i'd have icecream when we felt like it.... very self regulated. in the long term, that's the way to do it, i guess, as we can't always hold their hands for everything.
sorry, i started rambling... just wanted to share the thing about what the dietician said. :-)

[lainy]

dear mums

im in the same position here - and its sooo frustrating. my 2yr old is just under 22lb and she is the worst eater ever. she simple doesnt eat. anything. at all. i even got nutella the other day and she behaved as if it a poison!!! grrrrr. it is sooo hard to stay composed and calm as it hurts me to see her behaving as she does when we are eating. i have given her a break for few months now as i felt i wasn't going anywhere with being firm with her (nor being understanding), but now that she has turned two i need to install some rules. i agree with Ryan and Holly's mum and i have tried to speak with her calmly on how we NOT behave at the table. I do let her watch telly in the background (one step at the time) as long as she sits with us. i dont force her anymore and i do give her a selection of stuff to try out - but she never ever eats anything more than 1/2 of a cheese stick. i am ignoring her usually and not making a big deal if she considers to try food - but still no change! i just dont know what to do. she likes her milk though and will cry for a bottle. that is her main source of nurisment. i need to break the bottle habbit but it is not an easy one. she doesnt accept milk from a glass, nor anything else...but i need to be persistant. if you have any advice on that please let me know - and any other advice on how i can get her to touch the food and try something!

many thanks

[zeri]

((hugs)) She sounds like quite an eating challenge! The thing I keep in the forefront of my mind all the time now is that no child has ever starved herself to death. We have just made a rule that she gets what we eat, and we make sure that there is a couple things on her plate that she likes. We limit her to two small glasses of milk - one partway through the meal and one 3/4's of the way through. Other than that, she can have water, which she doesn't really like and so she doesn't fill up on it.
I would work on one thing at a time and be persistent with it. She won't like and she'll cry, but she won't starve either.