Dinnertime & Other Times to Freak Out

I really like Ladybug's answer, about making her feel invisible. We actually took things farther than that. One day I got really frustrated with the freak out, so I planned a "party" the next day. It was WAAAY more elaborate than it had to be, but I made a big deal about decorations, place settings, the whole nine yards. My daughter was very crestfallen to learn that only people who regularly ate their dinners would be allowed to attend said party. Devastated might be a better word. ;-)

I didn't have any problems the following night, or for a week afterwards, so she got a party of her own. She still wasn't eating all the food on her plate, but there were no more temper tantrums, and the gagging was cut down to a minimum. As I recall, she was about three at the time.

I would suggest stop making dinner time such a dramatic time for her. Which seems to be stressing her out, making her not want to eat etc. I would be concerned about her not eating though. Have you been to the dentist? Tooth pain maybe one of the reasons she isn't eating. If there is no physical reason she isn't eating then I would slowly introduce dinner together time to one night a week to start with, the slowly increase it over time. I think that everyone is so stressed out over this time of the day that everyone is on overload. Time to step back and re-evaluate the situation, as far as foods go at this age they can be very picky. Try fresh fruit, things will some flavor but not overboard. Cut out the fruit snacks and offer other things in place on occassion. I think everyone needs to take a deep breathe and fight the things that are most important, the health and well begining of the whole family. Family time can be enjoying a meal together, reading a book or spending an afternoon playing in the yard.

OK--not to be harsh, but I think what you're expecting is a little much for a 2.5 yo. She's not eating and you expect her to sit there with you--still--unoccupied--at the table?
Just try fixing her a plate of a variety of things (fruit/veggies/meats/cheese) and place it there for her. Tell her it's there and go about your dinner and your life.
Also I think it's a bit cruel to give her nothing to eat until breakfast the next morning! She's little and needs to eat.
I would not make mealtime into such a big deal. If you & hubby want a quiet, stress free sit down dinner--eat after she's in bed.

Kids need to learn how to sit at the table. You are doing the right thing.
I'd ignore her while you are making dinner. Your paying attention to her might be making things worse. It kind of sounds a bit like a tantrum...
When you sit down for dinner, call her over and have her sit. If she's crying - ignore it. Make her invisible. (my mother used to do it and it worked!) Simply say, "Daughter, you are not behaving correctly at the dinner table and until you do, you are invisible." She will ask if you can see her. Do NOT react. Once she's calmed down, you can say, "Oh, there you are."
I wouldn't make her eat if she doesn't want to. But, I wouldn't allow anything until breakfast either. Do not give her snacks during the day, either. Obviously she is getting the nutrients she needs - you might consider a multivitamin just in case...
Good luck!
LBC

Have you taken her to to doc to she if there is any medical reason for her not wanting to eat. If it were me I would start there first to rules out anything medically that may be wrong. If this is ruled out then I would go with some behavior management plan, As Kate mentioned in the last post - 123 magic is a very good one to use. Best of luck to you! That is why many people talk about the terrible TWOS. They do outgrow this.

My daughter was the same way, I thought it would never end. Here was our situation: Great with the bottle & baby food till age 1, at age 1 she seemed very senstive to the texture of table food this went on till age 3. Our rule at the table is you HAVE to stay seated till EVERYONE is done eating, no dessert unless you have eaten enough of your dinner. We did allow a coloring page & a few cryaons but that is it... starting at age 3 she sat without anything to entertain her unless we are at a resturant.

Here is how I handled the 'not eating, gaging, picky eater' she LOVES white rice, crackers, mac & cheese, chicken nuggets baked, cheese slices, yogurt, nuts and various fruit... I would make a large batch of mac & cheese and rice each week and give her a little of either or at lunch and dinner since I knew she would eat it. She would just eat fruit most of the time, it is healthy so I gave as much as she wanted. The mian drink is water, with a glass of juice for breakfast and a SMALL glass of milk for lunch & dinner (if she wanted more to drink water). I am sure some mom/parents would say I did the "wrong" thing in giving my child something different from what we were eating BUT first off we only have one child so it is not like I have to make a handful or more of different meals and secondly at age 3 she started to eat mroe of what we ate and now at age 4 she is eating just about everything we eat. We decided to not push it, she had to try at least one bite, and no dessert/snack if she does not eat enough of the meal.

Some kids are more sensitve to the texture of food, and at age 2 1/2 I remembering that being the most trying time of the gagging and not eating part. You are doing a great job and if your daughter is like mine in the next few months she will start a growth spurt and eat more and it will be less of an issue (hopefully).

This is the perfect time to pick your battle. You have laid down the law, and you know how it is going to be. She has issues with food, and you either live with your resolution to teach her the lessons you want about meal time, at any cost, or you don't. There is probably no way for you to get her to eat your way and have her behave exactly the way you want her to without some kind of compromise on how she is hardwired. Your choice, it is an either-or situation.

Food is one of those things you just cannot force. They eat, or they don't and they really do not choose the way they feel about it at a gut level, they either like flavors and textures, or they don't. "Super tasters" find flavors overwhelming, and some kids really do gag and vomit if you force them to eat flavors and textures that are beyond what they can handle. You don't get to decide what those are, but frankly, neither does she!

What if you gave her healthy choices of things she would eat, small bits of the objectional foods, and made the expectation at the table that she behave herself? Would that be enough, if she sat quietly, and the whole family enjoyed themeseves together at meal time? I had a couple of very gaggy, picky eaters. We did not fuss over food or make meal time a power struggle and instead, focused on thier behavior and pleasant meal times. I put the things that they did not like on their plates, and gave them easy stuff that they liked (healthy) and did not fuss about what or how much they ate. I think that they tried the objectional foods sooner because I did not make a big deal about it, they always had them on thier plates.

That this has become a time to "freak out" says a lot to me and I would be very careful about how you shape her attitude about food and her percetion of herself. One thing I have learned over the years with my kids is that success breeds success. Set her up to be successful with something, and she will crave more of it. As soon as she descends into a "freak out" she learns nothing other than that she "failed again" and she cannot meet your expectations. She would really rather be a success. Think about it, what if you knew that you were going to throw up if you ate something, and wanted more than anything to make your mother happy by just not throwing up, but had no control over either thing? You cannot get what you want most (to make mother happy) because you can't keep from gagging when that stuff goes in your mouth...if you were only 2 and a half, what would you do when you see this show down coming? Freak out maybe?

Success breeds success. She wants it. Find a way to help her get there and then show here how good that feels, she will want more and more.

M.

Wow, that is a tough one........I would talk to the Dr. about it to make sure her mouth isn't in some way hurting........is she teething?

As for the table........I would not give her toys, you're right, she will look at this as play time.............have you tried putting her in her room so you can eat? Let her stay in there.......that way she is away from the table, and you're not dealing with it...........if she still yells and screams, then I think it's an attention thing..........she has you both there and you are both focused on her.

You say she eats breakfast.........and sometimes lunch.........how much are you giving her? Cut it down so that she is hungry for supper.........and let her know if she is going to be at the table, she is there to talk and eat........not play or scream.......if she can't do that, then put her in her room.........she will get no attention there and you can eat..........if you stick to your guns and be consistent, she will catch on pretty quick.........she'll either want to be with you and be quiet, or she will be hungry and will be in there and eat..............she is not going to starve missing supper. And while I don't think it's bad to make a 2.5 year old understand that she needs to sit at the table with you, sitting there with nothing to do is not something she can do. My kids did just fine......other than not wanting to eat what I fixed sometimes.

You will get through this, and yes, she has found for a while that she can control her parents during this time and now it has become a habit for attention if nothing is wrong with her......which I doubt there is.

Hang in there, be strong and take care.........

How does your dinner time relate to her last meal?

We don't do the family meal thing (DS is 2) becuase he's typically very hungry by 5:15-5:30. If I don't have dinner in him by that point, I get the same reaction that you're describing above, and it takes half an hour to get him calmed down enough to even look at his plate.

For us, DH and I get home on very different schedules. So while the idea of a family dinner is a really nice concept, it's just not realistic. Eating out is also out of the question for the same reason you've described. We've tried to battle it, but we're the ones that wind up losing everytime.

Can you move the time up? Or instead of giving her only what you're eating, give her the snacks that she likes, just so that she fights it a little less? I think that at 2 1/2, she might just be too little to expect her to sit nicely while you eat.

Sounds like you're doing the right thing. She's at that age to not eat a whole lot just make sure you're not doing too much milk or juice as this will ruin any appetite they have. The only other suggestion I have is start out with telling her your expectations, then if she continues move her to the other side of the table as you two and don't sit anywhere near her or give her any attention. I would put her as far on the other side of the table as I could, then if that gets her attention you could say to hear, if you're going to be nice and not throw a fit M. and daddy will come back beside you, but if you're going to behave like this we won't side beside you. Maybe she won't like that. Goodluck

This sounds a lot like my daughter, who has issues with food as well. She's not as bad now--she's 10--but when she was little, there were only 2 to 3 foods she'd eat. She has issues with taste and texture and spice (doesn't like spicy foods, or any added flavor, for that matter. She likes bland.).

Our issue now is to train her to eat or at least try the food her mother and father are eating, so we don't have to continue making two separate meals. Even when she didn't/wouldn't eat when she was younger, she had to sit at the table with us. We never had meltdowns to deal with, though. We just had the issue of not being able to get her to eat unless it was food she liked--and made the way she liked it.

When she was 5 years old, we found out she has Sensory Processing Disorder, on the high-functioning end of the Autism Spectrum. Food issues is one of the areas, as are bright lights, loud noises, and social situations. Not saying this is your daughter's issue, but it was the first thing that popped into my mind when I read about your issue. My daughter was bottlefed and ate anything and everything until she was about 1.5/ 2 years old but after that, it was like a switch was hit and suddenly, what she would eat was drastically reduced.

We also switched our household over to all organic food about two years ago, as it was discovered that my daughter had severe heavy metal toxicity and has mild gluten intolerance. We've also noticed that since we quit using cow dairy products (my husband and I found out we have a casein allergy), she's been doing a lot better (less anxiety and less meltdowns/frustrations).

You might also want to have your daughter seen by a naturopathic doctor to be checked for heavy metal poisoning and food allergies/intolerances. Do some Internet searching on Sensory Processing Disorder as well; there are lots and lots of different areas--visual, hearing, seeing, taste, spatial/movement (my daughter has this one as well, and has issues with riding a bike and coordination (she takes dance for that) as well as hypotonia, low muscle mass) that your daughter might fall into, besides the area of food. I have a friend whose daughter has refused to eat since she was a baby, to include breastfeeding and/or bottle and/or solid food, and they eventually had to put in a feeding tube. They even went through intense training on how to "relearn" her to eat. I don't know how she's doing, though. It's been tough on the family, so I know what you're going through. And it is very apparent that your daughter isn't eating enough food or getting enough nutrients to feed her growing body.

Visit Dr. Lucy Jane Miller, PhD, OTR, Web site for more information on Sensory Processing Disorder: www.sensationalkids.org. She is a pioneer in this area. I have sent them many e-mails asking for help with my own daughter, and they have been very helpful.

I agree with a few others that you are putting too much importance on it and she is probably freaking out for the attention. When my kids were toddlers and they threw a tantrum i would just ignore them. The tantrums didn't last long. Also when my kids didn't eat i would leave their food on the table and many times they would wander over later in the evening and start grazing on what was left on their plate. Little kids need to eat often through out the day so structured three meals a day doesn't always work. I would say to lay off the focus on sitting at the table for dinner for a few weeks or even months and then come back to it. You have plenty of time to get the family dinner concept going and are just making everyone miserable fighting her on it. Everything with kids is a phase and this too shall pass.

I'm with you, my kids have always been expected to sit with the family, even if they didn't want to eat or were already finished. We sit as a family until everyone is done eating, that goes for the 22 month old, too.

I don't really have any great suggestions for you, my kids are both big time eaters, but as for a way to calm her down and get through to her when she's freaking, try the book 1-2-3 Magic. It suggests starting the methods in the book around age four, but my three year old would throw CRAAAZZZY tantrums and we started it then and it worked like a charm.

Good luck, and no, you're not asking too much!

I had that problem when our child was 2 also. We still have a hard time getting her to eat and shes 5 now. But it has gotten better
i remember growing up and not being able to leave the table until i completely finished my food. (which is why most of us have eating problems today). Think of the size of the childs fist. That is the size of their little belly. You may want to try cookie cutters.(so many shapes now adays one thing that really works is asking how many chews it takes before the food is gone. I will also (only sometimes) allow her to to walk from the kitchen to the living room as a game to see if she is done chewing before she returns. Hope some of these work for you and good luck

First let me say as a mother of six, I've seen almost everything (or it least it feels that way). I suggest getting a fun character favorite placemat with activities on it (the kind you use the wipe off markers with) and the plastic dishes that have the coloring sheets inside them (you color them and then snap them together) when she gets bored you can change the pictures. This helps toddlers get used to sitting at the table for longer periods (to color) and gets them excited to use their new homemade mealtime only dishes. You can usually find them at your local craft store (Micheals). You can also decorate a booster seat with matching character stickers and have her set her own placesettings on the table for meals. Hope this helps!

My guess is you're doing this...but just in case...because I know *WE* sometimes forget this crucial element...are you talking to her at the dinner table? Perhaps spending a few nights really "catering" to her--revolving conversation around her day, telling stories to HER rather than to your spouse, and making sure the dinner table is a good, happy place for her to be. Like I said, perhaps you do this...but I know we often spend more of our time trying to catch up with each other and then getting mad that our 2.5 yo gets up from the table frequently--but we're not doing much to encourage our son, either...just hollering at him when he does wrong. Anyway...just my thoughts! Good luck!

shes feeding off the attention at meal time...dont even discuss it with her-come dinner time act like shes not even around-kids hate to be ignored-dont set a plate for her-just pretend shes not there at all.if she starts whining for snacks etc.dont respond-she will eventually come to the table...good luck