Feeding my children is probably one of the most exhausting parts of being a mom. But like Caitlin Murray of Big Time Adulting says, “I love my people! I just don’t enjoy feeding my people”…. It’s part of the job. I have some very picky eaters. Or as I’ve learned through feeding therapy: “selective” eaters. I know we all have a child or two who would prefer cheerios and fruit snacks all day to having whole nutritious foods and it can be totally overwhelming trying to come up with new meal ideas. I actually appreciate seeing kid suggestions from bloggers on the internet because I get stuck in such a rut. If you have a child that literally eats nothing: first you are not alone. And second, fear not, because it does get better. Even if it takes some time.

My 3 year old has been in therapy for 18 months now so I thought I’d share an update as we have made a few strides lately that I’m super excited about.

First, how did we know that we needed therapy? Honestly, it wasn’t clear cut black and white. Jack had issues with bottles at the beginning of his life and slowly figured it out. We fed him purees in the same timeline that we did my older two and it all seemed normal. He was willing to try just about any puree. As he got to be about a year, I started noticing that he wasn’t picking up his food. It’s funny, even as a mom of four, its so easy to forget the timeline your other children figured things out in. It was at our first year appointment when we discussed food, that we started thinking there was maybe an issue.

Enter food therapy. We began when Jack was probably 13 months and by 15 months when he still wasn’t picking up food or touching it with his hands, we got on a waitlist to see a developmental pediatrician. But one day, he finally picked up his first food (was it a cheetoh?!) and it felt like a victory. But we still had a long road to travel. His diet was limited to crunchy snacks, select few pouches, and the occasional smoothie. Nothing hot. Nothing cold. No meat, fruit, vegetable, or anything with a non-crunchy texture.

Between speech, OT, and feeding therapy, feeding has been the slowest to see improvement. It was so frustrating that we went down quite a few rabbit holes to try and solve our issues. Everything from seeing an opthymologist, neurologist, pediatric dentist, and what we found is that Jack is FINE! Just in need of some time to develop acceptance of textures.

Here are a few tricks I learned in therapy:

-put only a few items on the plate… two you know your child will like and one new one

-consistently serve that new food over and over again even if you know your child won’t touch it… repetition is everything

-have a consistent schedule for meals and limit snacking (which was REALY hard for us adjust to and often, our days are not like this at all)

-don’t show emotion when your child tries a new food, as excited as you may be! its still pressure… Instead of saying YAY HOORAY, I ask “oooh was that squishy? was that cold? what does it smell like?” and basically just change the topic from my excitement to exploration

-play with food… no, we don’t need to let all our children make face paint with yogurt, but when you have a little one, eating is such a sensory experiment and letting that child explore the texture and smell and feel of the food is so important… We have gotten Jack to try some new things by pretending a smoothie is lipstick, or wrapping our goldfish babies in cheese blankets. Building little houses out of pretzels and soft cheese. Using toothpicks to pick things up…

-have a family meal time with no pressure… Jack now is offered more than 3 choices at dinner but it’s because I am serving all our kids the same options and nobody likes the same things! The more often he sees his siblings eating something, the more he explores or even occasionally bites into the food!

We are far from being adventurous eaters over here but Jack has added freeze dried fruits, nuts, rice cakes, kodiak protein pancakes, parmesan crisps, dried cherries and apricots, and occasionally a meat stick to his rotation! I have switched out our goldfish/cheeze its for Annies crackers and a variety of other brands that use much better ingredients. Recently, Jack has tried grapes, broccoli, and even put a tomato in his mouth! While he did not enjoy them, we are so proud of the exploration!

I have one more thing to add and then I’ll end because I feel like I’m going on a rant, but we also saw an amazing nutritionist in Austin which made a big difference. Her name is Dr. Lea Gebhardt from Pantry Medicine and she took a deeper dive into Jack’s bloodwork to examine allergies and vitamin deficiencies. She got us on Omega 3s and Vitamin D which we take daily along with Juice Plus gummies. She swore that adding vitamins would make my kids bodies feel better and more inclined to try new things and I have to say, following her tips has really proved to work well. I highly recommend reaching out to her.

Did I miss anything?

I’ll leave you with a picture of the lunches I served my kids today. Each child has food in their lunch box that I know they won’t eat but I put in there anyway to expose them to and see what their friends would say. Lunch is my favorite meal to pack because I can be a short order cook without them knowing it ;)

Turkey sandwich, spinach muffin, annies crackers, and fruit snacks for C

Strawberries, roasted chickpeas, cucumber, parmesan crisps (they are SO good), spinach muffin, and cheddar cheese for M

Alyssa’s chocolate bites, roasted chickpeas (he did not touch), freeze dried strawberries, apricots, cheese and parmesan crisps for J!

The most delicious spinach muffin recipe here.

Roasted chickpea for toddlers recipe here.

-XO-

food therapy toddler eating toddler meals