Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What do you do about extreme food pickiness?

I wasn't considered a picky eater at all (and people would comment that I ate my veggies with enthusiasm) but at some point started "refusing" bologna and hot dogs (they made me throw up, as an adult I suspect it was the nitrates??) Also fried food. People thought it was weird to have a kid that would only eat one french fry reluctantly and get teased but not eat any more... My mother threw on a hamburger when the others had hotdogs. Her father had alot of stomach issues so she said I had "his stomach" in a nice way.

Generally as I grew to adulthood I just don't like alot of preservatives/fat people think I'm being snobby or concerned about weight but if I eat something and throw up I'm not having fun and don't care to repeat this, so I avoid. I am still called the one with the [insert surname] stomach and just do what I need to do.

So I guess this is a long-winded way of agreeing with the others that especially if they are willing to go to bed hungry, there might be something physical about it.

Good luck!

This is not an issue we have (we have plenty of others!) but Ellyn Satter's books are highly praised both by nutritionists/experts and parents.

My eldest was an extremely picky eater, refusing to eat solids in any meaningful way until forcibly weaned at 2.5 and even then continuing to consume as much of her calories as milk or fluids as she could get away with.

Over the course of nearly 7yrs old we offered her mostly only the few foods she would eat, never commented one what she ate beyond possibly "wow you were hungry today!" and being full of praise if she would try a bite of something new and never forcing more if she did try something and then refuse. As she got older we forced less fluid and insisted she eat a reasonable volume of meals (of foods we knew her to like). By almost 9 we had 10ish family meals she would eat without complaining.

And then we put her on an elimination diet and "surprise" there was almost nothing left that she wasn't quite happy to eat... She likes her lunch box much better on her diet! Her behaviour is vastly improved, her LDs seem less severe. All those years we spent slowly training her into a "healthier" diet while watching her development slowly become more and more abnormal...

I made a turkey sandwich for DD4 the other day, the one food she seems to eat consistently. Knowing her tendencies, I made it as perfectly as I could, but after I cut it in half I noticed one side didn't look quite as good as the other. Still, both halves were definitely the same sandwich.

I brought it to her on a plate and she took one glance, pointed at the "bad' side, and scream-cried about how she doesn't like "that kind of sandwich." She then took a second look at the other half and gobbled it up.

All that to say, we haven't really figured it out. We often use the dessert ransom technique which works about 75% of time. DD tends to eat a lot of cold food.

Our SENG discussion group leader said that was one fight she never picked since there were so many others, and her children managed to stay healthy. They would finally would eat big meals when they got hungry enough.

For our DS, pickiness was anxiety-driven. We worked on it AFTER about 6 months of ABA therapy, a form of behavior therapy, which improved his coping skills and his compliance with instructions in other ways first. Then we tackled the food by asking him to eat two bites of something we were eating. It was not pretty, but it got much better, and the range of things he would eat improved.

I know that for some people there are sensory issues, but for our DS, the big problem was not sensory. He still gets anxious about unfamiliar food, but the range of what he will eat is more in the normal level now. We still work frequently to expose him to new dishes and new ways to present food.

I don't think that I would have been happy to leave this issue alone. Being able to eat with colleagues in restaurants is a job-getting and job-keeping skill; being the guy who orders plain noodles is not endearing to peers once you're in your 20s.

DeeDee

This is such a hard issue, I have "average picky" eaters: 2 kids AND hubby. My hubby has ssues with meat stemming from being tricked into eating a lot of different meat products (cow brain, gizards, blood sausage, etc.) as the child of two no-nonsense farmers. Both he and his brother have texture issues. Sometimes, I refuse to cook for ANY of them after a new recipe gets rejected. I am not picky at all...love a huge variety and always have.

I do see there can be biological component. My mom is a picky eater, as is my sister, and one of her kids. My neice litetarally only ate maybe 4 foods until she was about nine. Her parents picked their battles as every meal was a potential minefield. So have hope!

We choose a sensible approach. Kids need to take a no-thankyou bite. We don't trick our kids. They have water with meals and unlimited milk after they've eaten a fair amount. We do not do juice...they must eat their fruit. We try to understand if the
pickiness is coming from anxiety (as DeeDee noted),
taste, texture, sight or plain obstinance. Though I wish we didn't we use the
dessert bribe, we totally do.

There can definitely be a biological component, in my observation. My own DD astounded us. When she was a toddler we wouldn't order separate food for her at a restaurant. One of us (usually me) would order a kid-friendly dish and share with her. It's worth noting that pickiness wasn't an issue at that time, and she'd try anything. The phase came later.

The astounding thing is this: we'd order something that we KNEW DD would like. Maybe it was similar to something we had at home, or maybe it was something she'd had at that restaurant before. She'd take one little taste, and refuse to eat any more. Later that night, whoever had ordered that dish (again, usually me) came down with a mild case of food poisoning. Every time. How she detected there was a problem, I don't know. I sure wish I did.

But don't rule out a psychological component, either. DD once got a case of food poisoning from a piece of pizza (apparently it slipped past her detector), and it was more than a year before she'd try pizza again. That's an interesting one to explain to other moms.

Also, giving her medicine has been, to put it mildly, an an adventure. DD has a talent for quickly progressing from mild sinus issues to bronchitis, and she has such an aversion to taking medicine that she has, at times, made herself so upset she threw it up. Whether the medicine tastes good or not makes no difference. Because so much of her medicine is cherry-flavored, she has transferred that aversion to all things cherry. Honestly, what kid doesn't love a cherry popsicle?

Along the same lines, my brother was preschool aged when he hold of our mom's meatloaf sandwich, which was coated in grandpa's homemade salsa. Nevermind spicy, it was many years later before he'd eat anything red.

Dude - sounds like you got a 'super taster' on your hands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster

My husband is a supertaster and it can be rather annoying to the rest of us, lol.

Just wanted to point out that there are a couple of evolutionary factors at work here. One is that food really does taste different to children. Kids prefer sweet foods and hate foods that taste bitter to them. In the hunting gathering days that helped our ancestors survive childhood, since toxic plants tend to be bitter. As we get older, we tend to enjoy bitter foods more (though I still avoid arugula).

And pre-adolescent kids have an aversion to risk-taking that, again, helps them survive, but would be abnormal or dysfunctional in an adult. So, file those traits under normal, yet infuriatingly inconvenient.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts, stories, and suggested resources. I've got a few new ideas and more realistic expectations thanks to this thread.

Ul.H.