Trying to keep my very picky eater 3yo healthy as we’re (hopefully) expanding his diet. Right now the only foods I can get him to actually eat are McDonald’s, a specific brand of yogurt, banana bread, some crackers and some bars. Refuses any beverage besides water. (He’s likely on the spectrum.)
Dried mango was big for us. We also supplement with Flintstones. There are also vitamin drops you can sneak into their food.
Also, eat something and casually tell him he can’t have any. My kid (AuDHD with PDA) wants anything they can’t have, especially when it’s mine.
Jesus christ. My most powerful negative memories of being an autistic child were when communication between me and adults would devolve into manipulative tricks designed to help me.
I don’t know your experience, but parents have the moral obligation to keep their kids safe and healthy. That sometimes requires that you get your kids to do things they don’t want to do. You can either do this with manipulation or with force. There’s no third option because kids don’t have the proper coping mechanisms to suppress their emotions and do what they’re required to do, even when they don’t want to.
That isn’t to say your parents did the right thing or that they were trying to keep you safe. I don’t know you. Maybe they were abusive. My point is only that manipulation is often the better of two bad options.
Flinstone vitamins, maybe? Or any other kids gummy vitamins.
I would highly recommend talking with a child therapist before this becomes an ingrained habit, if you haven’t already.
Yes, that may be the answer. He’s getting help through early intervention and on the waitlist to get tested for autism so see if that’s what’s causing his picky eating. Luckily his pediatrician is not urgently concerned about his diet because he’s growing well enough and seems healthy, but since I’ve stopped breastfeeding I’ve been keeping track of what foods he’s been eating and noticed how few vitamins are in all the things he’ll eat.
Op, I agree with getting some gastric testing, if possible. I may or not be divergent, testing is cost prohibitive. But I was diagnosed as a child with IBS and still have occasional issues after food poisoning set backs a while ago. After getting that straightened out, a decent probiotic cap with fiber set me back on track until I could eat a mostly veggie diet, until the robber Barron corporate overlords started pricing decent food so crazily. You can add nutrition to crackers or bread with nut butters if your toddler will have them. If toddler requires more sweetness, try adding as little maple syrup as possible, and honey if his practitioner deems it ok.
Have you tried home made sweet potato fries (oven baked or air fry is fine, you’d have to look up how to oven fry them), or if your child will eat baked sweet potatoe with a little real butter they are highly nutritious and gut friendly. It’s just hard to say because one of the many reasons I may be asd is it doesn’t matter how much I like the flavor of something, if I don’t like the feel or consistency of a food, I’m simply not having it.
yo they changed the formula and flintstones are rough these days. Second the gummies though
do… I want to know what “rough” means?
hope they’re just nasty-tasting.
my kid won’t eat em so i’m choking them down. rock hard, gritty as hell and maximum vitamin taste.
so just like the old days, but somehow worse
Your kid seems smarter than you, hehe
100% accurate
I mean, it’s a good thing, and you should be proud.
But, they did get you to eat colored sand.
It’s also worth getting them checked out by a gastroenterologist. Sometimes picky eating is a subconscious thing to avoid having the shits all the time.
that’s a good point, too.
I’m not trying to downplay the reality of serious health concerns sometimes being behind food habits, but I think I need to say…
Picky eating is an absolutely normal part of child development. Anecdotally, both of my kids went through two distinct phases of picky eating, at around 3-5 and 8-11.
They gradually grow out of it. All you can do is try to make sure what they are eating is nutritious enough while they are going through it.
have you tried the old parenting trick of saving mcdonald’s wrappers/boxes and putting real food in it? Like carrot sticks in the fries container and a pbj in a mcdouble box can do wonders 3yos aren’t that familiar with the overall menu and can’t usually read
Muwahahahaha.
Not with real food, but I have saved the mcnuggets box and tried giving him other kinds of chicken nuggets. He nibbled on a couple and then made a look like “well this whole batch is messed up.”
damn sounds like a hard case! I feel for ya one of mine is hyper picky like that but it’s getting better with age.
I use the gummy vitamins with that one and let them have carnation instant breakfast in the morning sometimes that stuff is fortified but mostly sugar.
How about fun shapes of healthy foods? There’s this YouTube video of someone doing some https://youtu.be/5kZwTPGhkdA?si=cDgP6DiKXdKf77ej
How about some dried fruits or dried vegetables like you can buy in bulk bags at a store like a health food store? My mom and dad got me hooked on dried pineapple and other dried fruits as a kid.
That’s a good idea. It’s rare, but sometimes he will nibble on banana chips.
Applesauces with no sugar added?
Refusing anything but water isn’t necessarily bad.
He probably wants things with a predictable mouth feel and neutral temperature that aren’t overpowering.
Hotdogs tend to be popular (the cheap ones).
If you haven’t tried cheese toast, it may be an option, although you need to be careful about the type of cheese.
Also worth trying baby carrots and seedless grapes that don’t have browned ends and are off the stem.
Something else that may be useful is having him help make some snacks; kids will often eat things they’ve made themselves when they won’t accept the same thing from someone else.
If you can afford it, you could also try a sampling party where you buy a small portions of 5 or so similar items at a time, and get him to taste them all and tell you which is the worst and best. Don’t bring “will you eat this” into it at all: it’s a game and he has to rank them. In order to rank them he has to taste them.
Lots of good ideas, thank you!
Dry cereal always worked (still does!) as a nutritious snack. Granted, the nutrition has all been sprayed on, but it’s still there.
A little mixed tub of Cornflakes/Branflakes/Rice Crispies/Coco Pops always goes down well.
That’s a good idea. He’s turned down all the cereals we routinely buy, but I should experiment with more of those.
Plazma (Lane) Biscuits, 600g https://a.co/d/2zIZ29U
They have some vitamins and iron, not too much fat or sugar, but still taste great. There is also a ground version that can be eaten with milk, kind of like a sweet porridge - but better.
Here is one link to nutrition facts label. https://assets.wakefern.com/is/image/wakefern/860004300332-577
Just ordered some. Thank you!
You’re welcome.
He liked them! He just ate 4 of them. Thank you again!
Glad to hear. Our little ones love them too!
Why processed?
He’s a super picky eater. I serve him a wide variety but the only things he’ll actually eat are the more predictable, processed stuff so I’m trying to make sure he’s at least getting all the vitamins and nutrients he needs.
Have you tried Lenny and Larry’s complete cookies?
No I hadn’t heard of those! I’ll check them out
McDonald’s in my region has packaged apple slices with just a bit anti-oxidant added.
Can you get him to drink a chocolate milkshake?
Toddler milk formula. Call it “Milkshake powder” add full cream milk and chocolate syrup. Its a bit of a sugar hit but its an assload of calcium, iron, protein and vitamins.
So far no. He doesn’t like ice cream, which is so wild to me!
Try him with a mcdonalds thickshake. If it comes in the cup from there… then you can do the cup trick.
Here in Scandinavialand, we have “vitamin bears”. They’re like multivitamins, but taste like (and are in the shape of) gummy bears.
We have those in the states too. They’re yummy
My local healthy grocer (for lack of a better name) has “potato” chips made with veggie based ingredients like lentil flour, garbanzo bean flour, etc. Same is true for pasta.
Also, from personal experience, get one of those rubber horse heads and make up an alter ego that talks about how much they looooove veggies and how carrots are their favorite food. You can have a friend or family member do it, but if “Veggie Vincent the Healthy Horse” shows up enough times and talks about all the healthy, delicious things we can eat to grow big and strong like him, it’s a step in the right direction, not to mention fun for everyone involved. :D
I know you’ve thought of this, but encouraging you to try again. Ive found that kids will refuse something to eat and then come back to it later when they are actually hungry.
It may take a tantrum and crazy cry session, but with love and attention they can normalize and get back towards a more normal diet.
I get that kids have certain things they don’t like, but for anyone whose kids only eat things that are deep fry brown, I think it’s worth the short-term crisis to solve the long-term aggravation and health issues.That’s not how autistic disordered eating works.
It may be spartan, but giving them a regular plate of homecooked dinner (with vegetables of course) and nothing else until they’ve finshed it, works most of the time. If not, they go to bed hungry which doesn’t hurt them (it hurts your sleep though) if it doesn’t happen every day. Like you said, they’ll likely come around, but you have to out-patience them.
So, abuse the autistic child…
No, I guess I should’ve mentioned to not abuse your child this way. Just like a microwave manual mentions that you should not put your cat in a microwave.
Problem is, withholding food is abuse, period. You’re telling someone who doesn’t have the same neurological capacities you do to either starve or eat something they very likely have a visceral reaction to.
The other poster mentioned they missed the ‘potentially autistic’ part. While withholding food is abusive regardless,this for sure exacerbates the issues. I suspect you may have missed that part as well. It’s okay, just have some humility to step back and say so. Or keep advocating for old school abusive parenting.
Quite the contrary. It’s abusive to only feed your kids mcdonalds, because that’s the only thing they want. You’re telling someone who doesn’t have the nerological capacities you do that they can decide whatever they want to eat.
My kids get a varied diet with all the nutrients they need. They can choose not to eat it, that’s fine, but I’m not going to give them mcdonalds instead. Mcdonalds does not provide the same nutrients as a well balanced meal.
Sometimes I persuade them to “just eat a few bites” and than they can have desert as reward.
Sometimes we go to mcdonalds or some other fast food thing. But that’s my choice, not theirs (mostly). And it’s an occasional thing and a family event, like maybe once per month.
Maybe this approach doesn’t work for neurodivergent kids, but I never claimed it did. If you have a neurodivergent kid, you should maybe look into other methods. I should add that I also don’t know if this works for children of all ages, genders, races, handicaps, species, planets and dimensions. It works good enough for my kids and I’m taking that as a win.
Right. So maybe go back to the last paragraph, admit you probably missed the potential neurodivergency, and show some humility. Or double down and continue to offer bad advice.
No one here has said just let the kid eat what they want. Not OP, not me, not anyone else. We all want the kid to eat a better diet. That’s literally the purpose of this thread.
The problem is that, for non-typical situations, typical solutions don’t work. And, even for typical situations, starvation isn’t the best option. We’re trying to explore other possibilities, rather than the traditional ones, and being told “force the kid, you’re the parent” is at best tone deaf.
I see were this is going wrong. The last sentence of OP’s post says:
(He’s likely on the spectrum)
That wasn’t there yesterday.
Some crackers have whole grain versions that taste as good or better than their white flour versions. Goldfish and Cheez-its are the two that come to mind. This doesn’t make them “healthy”, but at least there’s some better fiber in there. Compare nutrition labels.
Also try veggie chips/sticks. Again, they’re not “healthy”, but… there’s some better stuff in them than normal junk food. They are junk food with a small amount of bonus nutrition.
Freeze-dried fruit is addicting, but expensive. Try it and/or dehydrated fruit. The latter is chewy while freeze-dried is crunchy and melts in your mouth.
You can also try making your own nuggets or tenders with whole-grain panko breadcrumbs, and seasoning. The trick is to make it better than McDonald’s, which is easy for an adult, but tricky for kids. I don’t know the magic sauce though.
One of the latest Splendid Table podcasts had a guest on to talk about cooking healthy for kids (or she just wrote a book about it, I didn’t listen yet.) It’s a great show. Check that out.
