14 Month Old Only Wants Crunchy Food

I know what you are going through my 2 year old is a wierd eater too,but as long as they are eating enough throughout the day he should be fine.Get creative with his foods.Put some peanut butter and a few raisens on top of that celery to get some much needed protien and some fruit in him.wrap a piece of ham or cheese around that carrot for some calcium.I have to be very creative with my little boy,but you would be suprised at what you get in them without them even knowing it.Good luck girl!!

Hello S.,

I don't see what the problem is, your baby loves fruits and vegetables. So he is picky about what brand he likes. Children are truly smaller versions of adults (little people)! Don't worry unless he is not getting enough food to eat. Your child may go veggie & fruit for a while, just make sure he gets the right amount of protein and vitamins in his diet. If you get really worried about that, they make over the counter liquid baby vitamins, check in the organic isle at your local grocer. Children go through phases, both of mine did and still do and they are 5 and 10. One day they like something the next day they don't. All in all, this is stuff is more stressfull to the parents than to the children.
Enjoy your healthy veggie and fruit eating son. Take a lesson from him and eat more veggies and fruit! LOL Obviously his body is craving the vitamins from these items. He is listening to his body tell him what he needs to eat! He is perfectly normal! :-)

C. C. of Accokeek, MD.

I've read that the goal is to have children eat what you eat by one year old. That might explain the refusing baby food. My 11 month old is on all table food now, but he never really liked baby food. (Can you blame him?) As far as the crunchy stuff, it probably feels good on his teeth/gums. Could he be cutting a few more? ...or does he have a full set of teeth yet? At any rate, as long as he eats nutritious stuff, I wouldn't worry. Just keep offering new foods as they come up. Congratulations on the family situation... that's great.

First of all, as long as he IS eating, you're probably fine. I'd be more worried if he didn't want to eat at all! =)

Secondly, my son had the opposite problem - he would NOT eat anything OTHER than soft, mushy foods all the way up until he was almost 4 years old (he's now 5), so I also wandered if something was wrong. I found out recently that my son has a Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD, or sometimes called Sensory Integration). There's a great website about it www.sinetwork.org that has some good information about it. I'm not saying your child has this, but it's worth looking at. Only an Occupational Therapist can diagnose it. I didn't know any of this until just last November (never heard of SPD before then), and luckily a friend of mine had heard of it and suggest going to an OT to get my son check. I'm so glad I did! Good luck!

From my experience with my now 17 month old - she'll love a certain food for a few weeks then hate it all of a sudden and move on to a new food. As long as your son is okay in his weight I wouldn't worry about it. My #2 daughter only wanted to eat fruits around a year old which I thought was great but at her next well baby check she had fallen off the "curve" which caused concern and trips to the nutritionist. She is 5 now with okay weight and loves her fruit! Congrats on your "retirement" from the Navy. Enjoy being a full time mom!

You just have to go with the flow. Nothing to be worried about. They go through phases of what they want to eat. My son used to eat bananas every day and then wanted nothing to do with them for months and now he likes them again. Now is new favorite is cereal with milk, he was just introduced to it this week and now he asks for a bowl at every meal. Hey, it's healthier than dessert! Sounds like your little guys still eats healthy foods and that's what matters. Just get creative to find crunchy foods for him. He probably has more teeth now and is able to broaden his horizons a bit. If you think he could use a spoon try yogurt with crunchy cereal in it or let him dip the cereal in the yogurt. Dipping is very exciting for kids and my son loves to eat with a spoon b/c I tell him what a big boy he is!

My 14 month old (now much older) ate only GREEN things. My daughter at that age would not eat things that came off one of those horrid SPOONS! She would only eat what she picked up in her fingers. My current baby, though younger, will not tolerate LUMPS. So go figure...You could have it worse. Soon the food preference will change and you will wish for the "good old days" when the baby ate only crunchy foods. S. S

Hi S.!

I have 5 kids and learned that we keep kids from real food a lot longer than we need to!

Cut up all those crunchy fruits and veggies into nice and thin manageable slices - long and thin. If he's got a few molars out, the carrots should be alright but maybe blanching them so they soften a bit will help.

Bottled food is expensive. Let your little man eat big boy food! :-)

--M.
www.SlumberPartiesbyMariaElena.com

Well my daughter is 13 months and she doesn't want anything to do with baby food. She eats what I eat now. I get her the gerber things. Maybe he is ready for adult foods. I also have a group for mom's in their 20's if you would like to join. It's www.raisingthem.com or email me at ____@____.com
Good luck!

don't worry, my son (15 months) only likes things that have strong taste. Like salt and vinegar chips, and hot sausages. If it doesn't have a bold taste, it isn't going in his mouth. He loves the Jalapeno Cheetos and Tiawana Mamas

kids go through stages of what foods they like... at least your son is eating good things like apples and carrots. I really wouldnt be too worried about it. Just keep trying to give him diffent things and he will eventually try it. (my oldest is a picky eater and only eats certain foods... its so hard to make anything, but my youngest, put anything in front of him and he will try it... even if he doesnt like it, he still tries it lol)

Hi, there, S.. My son (who is now almost 6) did the same thing at about the same time. His crunchy was crackers, chips and dry crunches. He was finally diagnosed with tactile dysfunction. This was only after he was still eating only goldfish and crackers (pretty much, he'd eat yogurt or pudding sometimes, but eventually left that, too) after his 2nd birthday. Anyway, you might want to talk to your doctor about it and they might send him to Portsmouth for an evaluation. Eventually my son had an eating therapist coming to the house 1 or 2 days a week and force-feeding him a meal. He now eats hot dogs, peanut butter sandwiches or chicken nuggets. Not fantastic, but HUGE compared to what he used to eat.

Hope this helps! Let me know!

Hello S.,
My daughter is almost 15 months and she hasn't eatten jarred baby food since she was 9 months old. She has about 10 teeth and eats a wide varity of foods. Just make sure your son isn't getting huge piece of the crunchy food he likes to eat. Hasn't your doctor said that he can be on table food?

HI S.,

I have raised five children and helped with two step children and now have 11 grandchildren. That's a lot of experience. Kids go through phases in their eating just like adults. There are times for instance I really like ice cream, and I'll have it 3 or 4 times a week, then there are months that I don't even want ice cream. I wouldn't worry about your little boy. He has just found something he really likes now. Keep offering him a variety of food and he will eventually eat other things again. Make sure he sees you enjoying other healthy foods too, that will make him more likely to try them. Especially if you ham it up a bit. "This is soooo good, yummy etc., He'll probaby start wanting to try yours. But don't be surpised if later he goes through a phase of only eating peanut butter sandwiches or something else. So don't worry, just have fun. As long as there are plenty of good choices available, he'll be strong and healthy. Right now just be glad he's chosen such good foods to focus on.

This may be a way for your toddler to break new teeth through the gums. Perhaps, even, it feels very good to eat the harder, crunchier items.

my kid is already 6.5 years old, so my memory about that age is a little hazy, but maybe your kid is still teething and eating crunchy food soothes his gums? it's a good thing he likes crunchy food that's healthy!