My 4 year old has severe food aversions. Help!?

Question

She will only eat KRAFT spagetti, homemade gravy, and roman noodles. When I say she will only eat these three things that what I mean. Nothing else. She wont eat anything else. I have tried everything in the book and there is no way to get her to eat new foods. She refuses to eat fruits and vegetables and she doesnt eat meat. Her extreme pickiness has lasted at least 3 years and it is only getting worse. She use to like chicken nuggetts from Mcdonalds but now she wont eat those so there is no meat in her diet. Im not sure what to do. All the doctors keep blowing me off saying she will grow out of it but how many years does it take. It has gotton to the point where she has iron deficiency anemia because of her diet. What can I do? Please help!

Answer 1

Stop giving in to her...YOU are enabling her eating habits.  which are not healthy at all by the way.  STOP buying the crappy spaghetti, STOP making gravy and Stop getting RAMEN noodles.  When you make a meal and she won't eat excuse her from the table and send her to bed hungry, no snacks, NOTHING.  She will NOT starve.  A couple of missed meals and she will be willing to eat what is healthy rather than the garbage you have been allowing to put into her body.  By the way...chicken nuggets from McDonald's (ANYTHING from McDonald's) is far from healthy.  The are the leftovers from processing chicken, in otherwords they are garbage.  Stop feeding her fast food period.  No wonder children are obese...their parents feed them c**p.  I suggest you see the movies "Super Size Me" and "Fast Food Nation".   My parents once gave one of my dogs part of a McDonald Burger...Two days later the dog started puking and what came up was the entire piece of burger/bun/cheese she was given...If it makes even a dog sick do you really think that garbage is healthy?

Answer 2

Whenever she refuses to eat something tell her that this is what we are having if you dont like then you dont get to eat. I learned this by watching the show Jon and Kate Plus 8. If thier kids dont like what for dinner (or breakfast and lunch) they dont eat. Ofcourse the kids are hungry so theyll eat it. And if she doesnt eat it then by the time her next meal comes shell be hungry and want to eat something

Answer 3

Here's some options you can look around if you like.

1. Start adding like fruits with her Roman Noddles. Our if you have too add them with it! It may look gross to you but anything in here favorite food will look good to her.

2.Give her rewards for them like say, she eats a strawberry take her out to the park or movies etc.

3. There's this option, if she needs to get her fruit in make a smoothie and say its apple juice.

4. If she see's you eating it she might like it too.

Hope I Helped

~`Brandi Mother Of 2`~

Answer 4

I feel you pain.. My 3 year old son is a  fussy eater as well, do your daughter sounds like an extreme case. The theory is that they will grow out of it.

I'm sure you've tryed everything by now and I can only think of a few things:

If she likes noodles, you could try and sprinkle them with cheese and let it melt, so that she wouldn't see it; also raisins are usually quite popular even with children that are fussy eaters;

I would not give her any sweets or any kind of treats until she starts eating some proper food (say, you want this bar? ok, but you will have to eat at least two nuggets);

Also, you didn't mention what she likes to drink, but you could try and make some smoothies, instead of giving her a piece of fruit. Not too thick do or she might not drink them.

I don't know if there's frubes where you live(their yogurt in a plastic wrapping, quite like cool pops). I usually buy them and freeze them, so the kids eat them like cool pops, but they're actually eating yogurt.

Does she eat bread? If she does you could do what we call french sticks. Cut the slice of bread in sticks, dip them in egg and than fry them. You can't really taste much of the egg, but it's there and it's rich in protein.

Are you giving her any food supplements, like vitamins and iron? At least until she improves her diet.

That's all that comes to my head right know..

Good luck!

Answer 5

OK. ignore the doctors that will tell you to wait her out. She has serious oral defensiveness that needs to be treated ASAP. Your best bet is to call your local MR/DD department and ask them what programs might be able to help you.  I think a speech therapist might be one of the people to treat her, but I am not sure. I was looking in a catalog and found small mesh pockets to put a single bite of a food in so they can taste it and feel the texture, then throw it away. you might want to try www.superduper.com and www.integrationscatalog.com  for different tools to help her, including books.