As Yvette is a fussy eater, most of the time, food doesn’t seem appealing to her. Although she absolutely has no problem of drinking all by herself but eating is really a problem for me here. Although I am fully aware she could feed herself, but she really has no interest to do so. And I guess she could easily goes without food for 2-3 hours if I ever forgotten to feed her.
Yvette started to self-feed herself shortly after she turned one and she loves to eat with her hand. It’s kind of hard to correct her because I read that this is one of the normal behaviour of toddler during their learning-to-eat phase. After trying having lunch with Yvette in July, We brought a high chair from IKEA somewhere in August to further encourage her. But that was really messy. I have to wash her and change her clothes after meal, especially after dinner when she is feeding herself soup. (She is doing self-feeding every meal with me holding another spoon, sending food into her mouth.)
We hardly let her eating by her own when we are out mainly due to she doesn’t like to put on a bib when she eat. She outsmarts us and trying to pull out her bib when she was 13 to 14 mths old. We were really scared at that point, the pulling will hurt her neck and let that go and now seriously realised this decision was really wrong.
As I thought she was gaining independent to eat breakfast all by herself, but that only last for 2 weeks and the breakfast riot came back!!! And now I have to keep nagging her, eat, eat & EAT! Weight will not be an issue if she is eating but it does when she is not. It is so stressful in the morning now when I have to deal with another problem here.
Arrr… It’s really hard to work on this department with Yvette.
Sing praises, encouragement don’t seem to work on my little girl; this left me wondering what else I can do to make this easier for both of us?
And due to the fact that filling up her stomach is always not her priority. Today, she barely eat anything for her breakfast and lunch can really make my blood pressure goes up!
She just ate a few mouthfuls and then stopped totally. I kept asking her, why she’s not eating, she just shake her head and refused to eat. So I have to eat her breakfast and her cousin got to eat her lunch. Somehow, wastage is part of her growing up cost which both of us can’t do much about it. 😦
It’s also confusing for me to really understand why she is not eating too. I cook a variety of food and I know what she doesn’t like but she changes time to time. While most parents need to secretly add vegetable to the food, I have, on the other hand, added meat into her food and hoping she will get some nutrient from the meat and fish (she used to like fish). Another way of ensuring her to get those nutrients, I will add meat to the soup she drink and make sure she will finish them. But then again, sometimes she totally doesn’t want to drink soup too which is her favourite.
Sigh!
I have been working hard on this department, reading topics on why toddlers are not eating and improve my cooking by reading more recipes and yet I am not reaping the fruit of my effort. Again and again I am receiving negative signals from Yvette and soon or later, I might give up working on this?
And if I would have left the food to her, she will be exploring them rather than eating them. Sometimes I have to chase after her to eat at home when she “demanded” me to let her down from high chair.
The road towards self-feeding is long and onerous and wastage is inevitable for a fussy eater like Yvette!
P/S: Thank Lazymummy for sharing tip on self-feeding with me in her post and inspired me to write this post. 🙂
Once In A LifeTime 