DD is especially picky as well so we've had lots of advice over the years. The most common is to just make her eat what ever it is. This was a kid that as a baby refused anything other than breast milk until 9 months old. At 9 months old she grabbed a cracker from DH and started eating those but wouldn't try/eat anything else for a few more months. I'm not just talking healthy stuff - she wouldn't try cookies, cake, ice cream - nothing. At ~16 months a daycare worker photocopied her text book on picky eaters and slipped it into the bag. Ummm thanks but we've tried all of that.
My usual response to the really pushy ones that have all of the answers and think that we just need to force her is to tell them about the time we did. After over an hour of drama DD finally put the microscopicly small piece of chicken in her mouth (we're talking teeny, teeny, teeny tiny) and them promptly barfed all over the dinner table. Yup. Good times.
I think our girls must be related!
In retrospect, I can tell she was picky from the get go. As an infant, she forced me into breast feeding every two hours, round the clock. The midwives suggested I try to put her on a schedule with longer breaks, 3 to 4 hours (DS9 had taken to a three hour schedule like a fish to water, and slept 6 hours at night from two months on, so I knew it should be doable), but there was NO WAY with DD. She insisted on those round the clock snacks for over a year. I could almost breast feed her in my sleep, simply shifting her round from one side to the other, going to sleep with her feeding. She tried to refuse her purées when we introduced them at 6 months, by 9 months she'd grudgingly accept them as long as i wasn't around and no nursing to be had. No one EVER managed to get that kid to take a bottle, by the way, not even with breast milk.
When she was nine months, I needed to go to work full time for a few weeks and DH had a hard time keeping her fed. We went to the seaside on a weekend, sat on a beach eating fries from a paper bag, 9 months old DD on my lap. I hadn't noticed how quiet she had gotten. When I looked down, she had her head in the paper bag, eating up the fries. It remained on of the few foods she'd eat for many months.
Almost a year later, we decided to work on ice cream - we were in Italy and I was so tired of the shocked and suspicious looks we got from people when she threw a screaming fit over being offered an ice cream cone. She was eating chocolate by that time (for some reason, that one was easy), so we ordered chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce and chocolate flakes on top. We started her on the flakes, that went well, then suggested trying a bit of ice cream with the sauce - All of it chocolate....she was very suspicious, but it was one of those "hey, they're right, I do like it!" experiences.
A few months later, I had found the Dorfman book and we started her on her very first microscopic bit of mushy carrot. Five hours of screaming, and she never managed to swallow that day. Thankfully, while we have had lots of truly impressive choking and gagging fits, we never had barfing. Though Dorfman has a line for when that happens as well in her book (it Is apparently not so uncommon among the kids she sees, she has ASD kids as well): "oh dear, the food fell out. We will just have to try this again tomorrow". And then try this over again every day, with a microscopic bit of the same food. Apparently, it is her experience that somewhere within that time frame kids stop throwing up and manage to actually notice whether they like that food they were so afraid of or not.
I don't know how one would survive two weeks of barring at the dinner table, though.
How DID you end up feeding your daughter? You must have gotten to the point where her eating was a serious health risk, like we did.
