Wondering About 16 Month Old Eating Habits.....

Hi, my son is almost 2 and is the exact same way. He eats well at daycare and not so well for me. When I make dinners he throughs it on the floor and sometimes I force him to try it, and still won't eat it. He likes frozen foods like nuggets, fries, fish sticks, and tator tots. Its stressful because I want him to get his nutrients too. I do make him a smoothie every day. I just blend up frozen fruit, juice and a yogurt. He likes that a lot. I always say I guess it doesn't matter what he eats as long as he is eating and he feels full, not the best moto, but I feel the same way you do.

B., you could have been writing about my own 22-month old son. Great eater up until 12 months, OK eater up until 18 months, horrible now. Everyone keeps telling me it's a phase, but it doesn't make it any easier on a day-to-day basis. Smoothies have been a pretty successful option for my son - any combination of fruit, yogurt and juice; sometimes I'll even stick in a little baby food veggies and he doesn't seem to notice. I've noticed that texture has a big part in what my son will eat versus what he won't. For example, he won't eat anything that's ground - like meat - but he'll eat just about anything that's pureed or smooth in texture.

Just keep offering a variety of foods and he will eat if he's hungry. And try to look at his nutrition over the course of a few weeks or a month instead of day-by-day.

Kids' natural eating habits are pretty healthy - they eat what their body craves, they stop when they're full, they don't eat if they're not hungry.

My son is the same way. I just keep offering different nutritious things and try to ride it out. He'd eat an entire cow, or any breadlike thing in the world...but is really picky about veggies. I'd suggest a healthier juice like Trader Joe's veggie juice (no sugar). Sometimes they'll eat stuff you never think they will-my son LOVES kale-cut up, brush with olive oil, add parmesan cheese, and bake for 10 minutes. He calls it "crackers." If he'll eat spaghetti sauce, you can sneak any pureed veggie into that. My son doesn't love fruit but he'll eat tons of dried fruit (gotta brush his teeth well, though). Trader Joe's has a lot of great stuff you can try-both my kids love freeze-dried rambutan (a tropical fruit that provides 25% of daily vitamin C)and dried veggies-kinda taste like popcorn. I'd make sure that since he's not eating much, make sure what you're offering has as much nutrition as possible (ie whole grains, limit processed food, etc.).

We had some simlar problems with our daughter at that age. Eating issues and pickiness are common in toddlers, but they can be signs of other problems, too. We found out that our daughter actually had food allergies and sensitivities that caused her to reject a lot of foods and also that she had problems with her tonsils/adenoids (removed at two years old). Once we recognized the allergies and sensitivities and addressed the tonsil issue, her eating habits have been great!

My daughter did this and I know several other kids who did it-there's nothing you can do to force them to eat. They will when they are ready and they will. We talked to our pediatrician about this too and he just said to ride it out-pretty soon they will eat more than you ever thought they could. I know you're worried about nutrients. But a couple of weeks lacking them won't hurt them. Also, I recently read an article in a health article about V8 Fusion which talked about how it's really not all it's cracked up to be, too much sugar and not really the proper way to get vitamins.