“My Toddler Will Only Eat Peanut-Butter-&-Jelly Sandwiches!” How it happens, how to avoid it, how to change it

Apr 29, 2013 by

When your baby hits toddlerhood, a lot of normal changes occur, but a couple of things in particular:

  1. His appetite becomes less reliable. He’s not growing as fast anymore, for one thing, so sometimes he won’t feel like eating at all, or less than before.
  2. He starts asserting his individuality. He starts wanting to call some of his own shots.

Where parents go wrong in response to these changes:

    1. They think it’s not OK if their toddler doesn’t eat anything or very little one day. They get worried. They get the mindset that he has to eat something and that it’s their job to make sure he does. They begin to interfere with his natural appetite and natural ability to self-regulate. Said toddler also notices that not eating gets an interesting reaction from his parents.
    2. They offer the toddler something else to eat in an attempt to get him to eat something. This is…
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Serious Reasons Not to React to a "Picky" Toddler

Feb 21, 2012 by

If you give your toddler some sticks of red pepper as part of her lunch, what should you do if she chews them up and spits them out?

  • Some parents will decide they need to find a way to make the peppers acceptable, like peeling them or disguising them in ranch dressing.
  • Other parents might tell the child to eat the peppers, maybe scold her for having spit them out, or find some other way of pressuring the child to eat them instead of spitting them out.
  • Others won’t try giving the child peppers again, worried only about getting something down the hatch, and will look for other foods the child is sure to eat.

But our problems, and our children’s, are likely to…

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