familytastic!

Ray has been a fussy eater from the word go. I'm not sure whether she was born that way, or if it is because she was our first child and I was very cautious and unimaginative in what I fed her in her early months.

She eats the same dinner almost every night: Potatoes with vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower or carrots mashed in. They must be mashed well, with no lumps and plenty of butter and even then she takes ages to finish each night. Breakfast consists of weetabix with warm milk. She won't eat pasta, rice, meat, beans (unless they are of the tinned and baked variety and even then they must be well mashed into her spuds) or even add sauce or gravy to her meal.

This has resulted in a lot of tense dinner times. In a bid to increase her variety of foods we have tried many approaches. Most of these should never be tried by any parent, but we were desperate and looking back now I feel bad at how we conveyed this to Ray.

We have tried restraining her and putting food in her mouth (this was when she was going through a phase of barely eating at all and I was at my wits end!), making her sit at the table for over an hour until she ate everything on her plate (she rarely did), coaxing, cajoling and chastising her for an hour each night as she messed with her food and putting her to the stair or her room when she wouldn't eat.

I can honestly say that none of these approaches worked. There may have been short term victories, for instance the time when she got so sick of us going on and on that she took a bite of fish finger, only to hold it in her mouth for 50 minutes before gagging and throwing up all over the floor.

We realised last year that we were probably really negatively influencing her eating habits by making such a big deal of them. We noticed that she used it to get attention, and had got to the stage where she would never even hold a new food in case we tried to force her to eat it. We realised that if we didn't change the way we approached mealtimes that not only would Ray have a lot of food issues, but that we ran the risk of Jay following in her footsteps.

So we backed right off. We read up on the subject and these were the steps we took to improve the situation ( The green headers are links to sites and articles that helped us plan our way forward)

1) Family Mealtimes: We realised that we rarely ate together as a family, generally Ray ate first and we had dinner after she finished. This meant that she wasn't watching what we ate, and watching us enjoy new foods that she wasn't familiar with. She was used to eating dinner in front of the TV as we used this to distract her. It was hard to tear her away at first but now as soon as dinner is ready Ray will come to the dining room, lay the table and get into her chair.

2) No Pressure!: Dr Paul recommends avoiding power struggles, and there have been a lot of these at our dinner table. So we stopped. We tried to give Ray her dinner each night and if she didn't eat it we took it away denying any other food or treats. We would offer it to her an hour later and often she would eat it then.

3) Don't Offer Alternatives: I would often have done this if Ray didn't eat her food. In a bid to get her to eat something healthy I would often offer her toast, yoghurt or fruit if she refused the dinner I had made. Now if she doesn't eat what is put in front of her, she gets nothing.

4) Gently Introduce New Foods: This was a tough one. At first if we put anything on Rays plate that she didn't like she would go into a hysterical fit of crying until it was removed. But we kept telling her that she didn't have to eat it, but it had to stay on her plate. She had a huge mental problem with new food and we felt if she could even get used to looking at it we may make some progress. We also offered her tastes of food from our plate. She always said no so imagine our surprise the first time she took a bite of hubbys pizza!

5) Positive Encourgment: This included praising her higly for trying a new food, making reward charts and adding stars each time a new food was eaten, giving her non food related treats (such as a trip to the swimming pool) when she ate well.

The first time Ray took a bite of fish finger there was almost a party in the kitchen and every distant relative was phoned with the news.

Ray will now eat fish fingers, chicken nuggets, other breakfast cereals and will tolerate her vegetables mixed with but not mashed into her potatoes. She is much more willing to try new foods, very often she will only lick them, but thats a huge step forward.

I can't say that we had a magical turn around. Even tonight Ray sat while we ate dinner and didn't take a bite. We took it away and refused treats or other food when she asked, later she asked to have her dinner and ate it all.

We have a long way to go, I still need to calm down and stop panicking. Sometimes we still get uptight, sometimes we still yell, but in all, mealtimes have become better.

I hope that as Ray grows older she will grow more adventurous, more willing to try new foods. I now realise that even if I wasn't the original cause of Ray's bad eating habits, I certainly made them worse. I hope that I have learned from my mistakes and do a better job with Jay and Baby D. 

The one thing I intend to improve on is my cooking skills, now that Ray will eat pizza I am going to have a go at letting her help to make her own, smiley face and all!I have such a bad imagination when it comes to cooking, so if anyone has a recipe for a meal or tasty treat that their child enjoys I'd love to hear it.