The Trials and Tribulations of a Food Avoider

Mealtimes.

A moment for families to sit around a table together, talking about the day gone by whilst tucking into a nutritionally balanced meal of varying portion sizes, the little ones smiling contentedly with a tomato sauce (full of hidden vegetables of course) plastered round every corner of their beaming face. A happy time, a bonding time…. or at least that’s what the magazines and adverts would have you believe.

In our house, the reality couldn’t be any more different.

Mealtimes are STRESSFUL.

I’m sure at this point in my blog post there are a few parents giving me a little nod of familiarity. Sure, you may be thinking, We have a picky eater too. We have a wriggle monster, we have a child who wont sit still. We have a child who wont eat anything green, a child who can spot the tiniest vegetable in their pasta sauce, or a child who gets more food on the floor and around the walls than in their tummies.

We have all of those things, except one even bigger hurdle gets in our way. Our child is a Food Avoider.

In our home, my youngest daughter Neve, who is now 18 months old, is someone who, given the choice, would quite happily not eat anything at all. Someone who despite being a confident walker and mini babble talker is yet to eat a single full meal. Someone who wakes up starving begging me for milk at multiple times during the night, because I am unable to get her to consume enough calories during the day. A toddler whom as of yet, I can’t see myself ever being able to stop breastfeeding for fear that she wouldn’t get any nutrition in her diet at all!

We have now been under a dietitian for over a year, and I have to admit, as much as I wanted to strangle her when she uttered the words “you just need to persist” I have to admit that an element of that has been true. It appears that Neve simply does nee time – time to figure out that food really isn’t scary – time to realise that she isn’t going to choke, we aren’t trying to poison her, and that amazingly, some food actually does taste very nice.

The theory is that Neves food aversions started before she was even weaned. She got a tummy bug at 5 months old (something caught from her elder sister), and ended up spending a couple of nights in Birmingham’s children’s hospital. Her gag reflex was incredibly strong, and after 7 days of a sickness bug, Neve was still unable to keep anything down. As such, Neve had an experience of regurgitating food that made her ever so sensitive to things in her throat, and as a result, when we started weaning, she seemed genuinely terrified at the prospect of swallowing.

12 months on, and she will eat a very limited (and very disolveable) diet which largely consists of:

• Yoghurt
• Dissolvable snacks and crisps
• Fruit smoothies
• Toast / bread / garlic bread / plain pizza
• Stage 1 puree pouches.

Last week at nursery we had a breakthrough whereby Neve ate a small amount of pasta and some meatballs. Our nursery practioner caught the footage on camera, knowing full well that I would probably be in shock at the prospect, and want to see some kind of evidence of her achievement.

For those of you who may be facing similar problems with your little ones, here are my tips for those who have a baby or toddler who won’t eat.

• Stay calm – this is easier said than done but don’t let them pick up on your stress. Often the more I try and will Neve to eat, the less she wants to cooperate, and if she sees me getting angry or upset, she simply starts to cry. By staying calm or removing myself from the situation if I start to get frustrated, we have far more chance of her playing ball.
• Try and remove the pressure – lay the food out with the attitude of ‘you don’t have to eat it’ – helps remove the level of disappointment you experience when the majority of it goes on the floor.
• Try not to make eye contact – I’ve found with Neve in recent months that leaving her to her own devices and letting her watch us calmly enjoying our own dinner is actually more effective than watching her like a hawk.
• Celebrate the small victories – this week we have had a few tiny victories in that she tried pasta and meatballs and a tiny bite of chicken goujon at home. We made sure to praise and clap Neve to try and encourage repeating these positive behaviours.
• Try and offer one meal a day with no alternative – this is one I have really struggled with as Neve waking and feeding through the night is largely due to her not consuming enough calories during the day, and as such, withholding the limited range of foods he does eat does seem like an unappealing prospect. However, with food avoiders there also comes the risk of habitual eating, and picky eating habits forming, so for one meal a day (normally breakfast) if she doesn’t eat what I offer, she doesn’t eat anything at all.
• Persist – accept that these things unfortunately take time – and there is no immediate overnight fix. The moment I stopped putting pressure on myself to have her eating a roast dinner by Christmas, the more easier I have found it to cope.

I am hoping that this is the first of some baby steps towards her eating becoming a little bit better. Every new food or flavour we can get her to try brings us a tiny bit closer to normality, and you never know, some day soon, she may eat an actual dinner with gusto. 

Wish us luck!

Lucy x