Thank you so much for your knowledge and insight. I purchased your book no bad kids recently and read it in a weekend. It made so much sense. I’ve also just purchased your elevating childcare book and so far have picked out the chapters that I need help with.

Something that I haven’t come across in your books or website yet is this.

My Son is just over 2.5 years old and has become extremely picky with food. I am afraid that we have done all the wrong things when it comes to him eating his meals.
We have tried to force him to eat it. We’ve played games telling him ” oh no don’t you eat that” just to get him to eat it. We tried to restrict processed sugar in his diet completely to the point when we are out and around sugary foods he will gorge himself on it. I’ve restricted his intake on too much fruit when that’s all he wanted to eat. I’ve gotten angry at him for not eating and I’m positive he can feel my anxiety around mealtimes. I fear that we’ve done alot of damage and more often than not he won’t touch his vegetables on his plate. He seems to be sensitive to textures etc too. I don’t know how to turn this around. Are you able to help at all?

Little one won’t mind even if I take away the food to offer later. Main problem is she will find many other things to curb her hunger. Not possible to hide everything and she even knows snack cupboards now.

The girls throw food and play with it about 50% of the time, and eat the other 50%. More than half of the time, if I take their food because they haven’t stopped throwing it, they’ll go off and play and won’t care about the lost food. If I give it back later on, it’s almost always the exact same story. This might go on the whole day.

We initially had them in high chairs but they would sign “all done” immediately just to get out of the chair; again, they would choose to not eat just to not be stuck in the high chair. We’ve moved them to a small table and chairs, which has helped a tiny bit with the “all done” aspect, but they still drop and throw and play with food as they did before. Food just isn’t a priority for them, which is making it hard to discourage their crazy mealtime behaviors.

10 months is more than old enough. I babysit a 11 month old, and at 8 months, if he wasn’t interested in food, or was trying to grab the spoon, I’d tell him that he wasn’t allowed to play with the spoon while it was messy. If he continued to play, I’d put up the food for an hour or so (or switch to a bottle). Then when he let me know he was hungry again, we’d go back to food. She’s not going to starve if you wait an hour or so before trying again.

At what age would you start this? I understand the idea that kids understand more than we give them credit for, but I feel pretty confident my 10 month old does not fully understand these kind of directions yet and I’m reluctant to take away food when she might still be hungry, just because she doesn’t know what I’m saying. However, the throwing food on the floor makes me crazy and I’m really struggling to not let it overtake mealtimes.

I know you advise to explain once (and prevent the hand from throwing if possible), give another chance, and then when it happens again, follow through and remove from the meal. (With little/no emotion). But I am pretty sure she understands what she is doing is unacceptable behavior; she just does it to be unacceptable, if that makes sense. Is the objective to teach her the consequence so that she doesn’t opt to behave unacceptably?

Also, if she just does not want or like what is being offered, how many more options do we give her? And do we wait to give her option B until the next offering 20-30 minutes after she has thrown food, or do we clear her plate of what she clearly does not want, and at that same meal, give her another option(s)?

Hi Frith,
Everything children do is about learning something… So, your response is either going to teach her that, yes, this is okay for her to do… or, no, it’s not what you want. Do you see what I mean? It doesn’t really matter if it’s “intentional” at this point or not. But, yes, I think an 8 month old generally knows what she’s doing, particularly if this isn’t the first time she’s tried it.