Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school feeding light eaters

FYI, Michaela, I sent you a PM.

DD4 has always had feeding issue. She never was able to nurse. She had severe reflux. She spit out most food until she was 2.5-years-old. She was picky about texture. She is still sensitive to smell. She has always eaten like a bird. This is the best way to describe it. She picks at her food. She still has a hard time eating a sandwich the way it was intended.

She has always been in 5-10 percentile is on the chart at all. I used to have to go in monthly for weigh-ins. But, she never got FTT diagnosis and we never really freaked out about it. If I could do it all again I think I would have pursued feeding therapy, though. But, she has come a long way with no therapy.

We let her get hungry. We never resorted to junk food. We tried everything. One month avocados worked, the next month she hated them. Hummus was great for awhile. For awhile she loved sushi. We have enticed her with dips and eating with fun utensils. Right now she lives on chicken breast, boiled eggs whites, and spinach intermixed with samplings of whatever we are eating and starches. She loves starches, but we have to regulate those. She needs a lot of protein or she can become an emotional mess. As far as calories, every other day or so I let her have a meal I know she will binge on--a specific make and model of mac and cheese. She won't eat any other kind.

As far as calories, every other day or so I let her have a meal I know she will binge on


Yes!! This is one that I left off of our list of tricks.

I once made seven pumpkin pies between Thanksgiving and New Year's-- because DD was willing to eat them!

I loaded them with fat/calories and let her have them for breakfast topped with a whipped cream alternative. She was pleased as punch, and nutritionally they weren't really junk food anyway since they were completely home-made and low on the sugar.

I was looking at my youngest this morning and thinking about this thread. All of my kids really. I really do increasingly believe that when kids are difficult about food right from birth that it needs to be considered that what we think of as "healthy" isn't healthy for that child.

We essentially poisoned our eldest child with healthy food. Slowly, carefully, gently, respectfully, without ever turning it into a power struggle we taught her to eat food that was actively harming her, because we thought we knew that broccoli, avocados, tomatoes and all manner if other food was good for her.

My youngest child has never eaten a normal diet in her life. Not ever. First third exclusively breast fed (which made her sick as a dog until I changed my diet at 10 months), second year she pretty much ate chicken, lamb, ghee, rice products and cucumber. Third year he's expanded her diet a tiny bit. And she's my most normally developing child (in terms of not having developmental delays, giftedness she has in spades). Given the full scale developmental regression we get from diet error I am sure the two things are related

Just found this similar thread and thought I'd share it:

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/78620/1.html