his "safety" food

Diana - posted on 06/18/2010

My daughter (20 months) definitely has texture issues. She will put anything into her mouth, suck the life out of it, play with it on her tongue but will not swallow unless it's very small. Right now I fork smash the Gerber Graduate foods and we still struggle with her. I would love to try letting her dictate when she's hungry but she is growth hormone deficient, failure to thrive and physically delayed (just started walking in the last month) so I need to get every calorie into her as possible.

Her 'safety' food is yogurt. That is the one thing I know if all else fails she will eat so I give her the Yobaby whole milk yogurt for every extra calorie & fat. If she wakes up in the middle of the night for any reason (right now it's teeth) I give her the sippy with Pediasure to add some nutrition. She will not drink the Pediasure during the day, she likes her whole milk.

Catherine - posted on 06/15/2010

I would have to say that my daughter (2yrs) has a safety drink not so much a food. She has never been fussy or had a texture issue but has recently decided that she doesn't want to eat. She just wants choccy milk. I give in and give it too her as often as she wants it just so that I know that she is having something. I am just really hoping that it is just a phase that she is going through and that she will return to eating real food soon enough and not become too used to it. Good luck to every one that is struggling with their children's eating!

Melanie - posted on 03/11/2010

Our son loves juice and gingerbreads (no citric acid in them). He loves pureed stuff but we have struggled to introduce a proper meal. He will eat things off my plate but we could never put the same food on a plate for him. The way we found to introduce different foods to him was to feed him something his big sister was eating. He's not keen on anything sweet (thankfully) he mainly likes savoury stuff. If his sister was eating strawberries then he had to. It's hard work because we know he can eat stuff he just doesn't want it on plate for him. We have to put a plate next to me at dinnertime and feed him from it. As soon as i put it on his table he throws a strop and refuses to eat. A lot of children with sensory issues struggle with textures. As he stops breathing regularly we can't let him strop for long in case he stops breathing. So generally he gets his way which is not ideal and i swear he knows what he's doing (he's 2). xx

Claire - posted on 03/10/2010

we have a son who has slight developmental delay and was also born premature at 35 weeks, he will only eat pureed jarred food i have tried taking 1/4 of the pureed food out and putting in some homefood to make up the jar but he also refused to eat it and started gagging so i have given in and given him a new jar of the same food that i took the 1/4 out of so i know what you are going through. We also have an older son with cerebral palsy and we went through nearly the same with him but when he started school he started eating proper school dinners so there hopefully is light at the end of the tunnel hope this helps and good luck with everything