Feeding Problem

Honestly in my experience 6:30 is too late for an 18 month old to be having dinner. I have a 4 yr old and a 20 month-old and they start dinner between 5-5:30. After that they have a bath (not every night), play for awhile, and get pajamas on. At around 6:30-6:45 my 20 month-old has a cup of milk, and then one more diaper change and into bed by 7 or 7:15 at the latest. She sleeps solidly through the night and wakes up happy (not overly hungry) - she eats breakfast around 6 or 6:30 AM.

Don't worry, it might just be a phase. Our 19 mo. old is getting a shorter attention span at dinner also. But he is still a very good eater (we just feed him quicker if we can tell ahead of time!) but our son eats at 7pm and probably gets his last snack around 4:30/5:00, so there is more time in between. She just might not be hungry yet.

But I don't think she has to eat dinner any earlier. She definitely won't be hungry then if she just had a snack. As my doc says, don't worry too much, when they're hungry they'll eat! I agree with others who say she may just be testing the limits of what she can control. I think our son is doing that a lot these days!

FYI i worked at a day care and we couldnt refuse kids food since that would be violating DCFS regulations. If we feed snacks to kids we have to feed all of them. If this is an at home provider then it may be different. Id just make sure shes eating healthy foods throughout the day and dont worry about dinner. toddlers do this all the time when they arent growing so dont worry she will b fine!

I just heard about this place. You might want to get in touch with them- they offer help with feeding issues.

http://www.swellbeing.com/transition.html

Good luck,
T.
Barefoot Books Ambassador
www.ReadandGrow.com

Sounds like you are on the right track. Just make sure she has healthy food in front of her and let her eat what she will at this age. Kids go through crazy stages. You don't what to get into a power struggle over this. Don't make her special food. She gets what's prepared. Think big picture. If she is getting what she needs on a weekly basis and she is growing appropriately, she's fine. A few bad meals don't matter. Remember you can't make someone eat. Your job is to provide her with healthy food to eat. She eats or doesn't eat. Kids are not going to starve themselves.

That's normal for an 18 month old. They can control food intake. It works great especially if the parents get mad. Just keep it up, is there anyway you could feed her a little earlier? I am guess that her bedtime follows dinner soon after. My son started this routine and to help, while we read book I served him cheese cut up into little bites some cheerios and bananas. He would eat the whole bowl and drink some milk and sleep through the night. I was a nanny for twenty years and I learned that sometimes a child just has a different schedule. I have never forced my son or my charges to eat, because I don't really know if they are hungry, I can't feel that, only they can. My son would sit at the dinner table with us and I would give him his dinner and he would just push the food around. Then he would have his snack at booktime. This lasted for about three months, then he went back to eating at dinner time and no more snack at book time. I know setting a schedule to eat is a great idea and has a purpose, but what if your child is not hungry at that exact time or maybe is super hungry and needs something before "that" time. I know the picky eater has worked for some families, but not every family. I think you need to write a food journal for her for a couple of days and figure out 1, is she getting enough or not enough and 2, what time is she eating. Maybe her time needs to be change or maybe it is just a stage she is going through. If she is growing and gaining weight like the doctors like, then I would worry to much about it. hang in there!

There is a great book by William G Wilkoff, MD called Coping with a Picky Eater that every parent or provider of kids should read and have a copy of. http://www.amazon.com/Coping-Picky-Eater-Perplexed-Parent...

This book has what I call the Picky Eater Plan. I have used this plan with kids that literally threw up at the sight of food and within 2 weeks they were eating normal amounts of everything and trying every food.

First you need to get everyone who deals with the child on board. If you are a provider it's ok to make this the rule at your house and not have the parents follow through but you wont' see as good results as what I described up above.

The plan is to limit the quantities of food you give the kid. When I first start with a child I give them literally ONE bite worth of each food I am serving. The book suggests that every time you feed the kids (breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner) you give all 4 food groups. So, for lunch today I would have given the child one tiny piece of strawberry, one spoonful of applesauce, 3 macaroni noodles with cheese on them, and 2 oz of milk. Only after they ate ALL of what was on their plate would you give them anything else. They can have the same amounts for seconds. If they only want more mac and cheese, they only get 3 noodles then they would have to have more of all the other foods in order to get more than that. If they don't eat, fine. If they don't finish, fine. Don't make a big deal out of it, just make them stay at the table until everyone else is done eating. They don't get more food until they are sat at the next meal and they only get what you serve. When I first do this with a child I don't serve sweets at all. So no animal crackers for snack but rather a carrot for snack. Or one of each of those. I don't make it easy for them to gorge on bad foods in other words. Now if they had a meal where they ate great then I might make the snack be a yummy one cause I know they filled up on good foods.

Even at snacks you have to limit quantities of the good stuff or else they will hold out for snack and just eat those snacky foods. I never give a picky eater the reward of a yummy snack unless they had that great lunch prior to it.

It really is that easy.

ps - proper eating schedule for 12 months to under 5 yrs old - times are just for demonstration purposes to give amount of time between things
7 eat breakfast
8:30 snack
11 lunch, followed by nap
3 snack
5:30 dinner, no further food for the day unless under 2 yrs old, then a bedtime snack is ok