2 year old with food phobia

[tamirra]

Hi, i need help with ideas with food and the best way to deal with feeding my 2 year old grand-daughter as she has a food phobia and hardly eats anything, she is very under weight and wears mainly 6/9 month old clothes, so you can imagain how small she is for a 2 year old, any ideas, advice or help would be so much appreciated as we are all so worried, we have tried all the things we can possibly think off, she wont sit up at the table and eat with others, she wont eat when her friends at nursery eat, we leave food about the house hoping she will go and take it, we make games of it, we are at our wits end. Please help. Thank you

[benny3008]

have you tried seeking the advice of a doctor? they will be able to help you im sure. Good luck. :-)

[cherrychapstick]

what does the doctor say ,if she is that small i am suprised she has not been took into hospital by now

[sherrardk]

Has no-one picked up on this - health visitor or something? I would be worried and would have sought advice on this ages ago (or maybe you have and they are not worried?).

[carron81]

i had a friend whos son went off eating, it doesn't sound extreme as your grand-daughter though

he would eat things like mcdonalds so she would end up taking their wrappers home and serving his food in that

also, im sure she managed to get him to drink smoothies full of fruit so at least he was getting something

[tamirra]

Yes she is under the hospital with it, and also the dietitian, she was given protein milkshakes which she dosn`t like, they only do 2 flavours and both of them she wont drink, she goes every 6 months for weight check, and we were told that everything we do cook for her has to be high in fat and also to fry everything we can to get the fat on her, but she wont eat any of it, so what do we do now, they dont seem to care.

[sherrardk]

Take her back and demand to see a specialist - seeing her once every 6 months is terrible - anything could happen to her in that length of time.

[carron81]

my friend went to her HV and they didn't seem to bother about it. they just seemed to say he'll eat in his own time!!!! its been about a year

he stopped eating around the time her 2nd was born. he does eat but just things like fish finger, crackers.

[cherrychapstick]

sorry just read that back and it sounds awful ,do you know why she doesn't want to eat maybe she chocked on something and now she is scared to eat anything especially when she is so young if you haven't already i would seek medical advice but im sure the mother has already done this try her with things like custard or mash potatoes to try getting her used to eating again it maybe worthwhile feeding her like a baby it may sound bad but it also may work

good luck and hope she starts eating again soon

[tamirra]

It was every 3 months at the start and because she wasnt losing weight she was staying the same they uped it to 6 monthly, she does drink approx 6 pints of milk in a week, we were told to limit the milk as this was the cause of her not eating, we tried this and it made no difference, so we started it again as this was what was keeping her going, it is a specialist that she sees at the hospital.

[carron81]

yeah, thats a good idea that cherrychapstick. try going back to basic vegetable and fruit purees

does she eat sweets

[tamirra]

We have given her baby food and she wont have the spoon anywhere near her, i opened the food cupboard the other day so she could choose something herself and she went into one and pushed me away to close it again, thats how bad she is.

[tamirra]

If you look at my other post you will see im looking for a book that might help, does anyone know what it is called. Thanks

[carron81]

would getting her to help out cooking make a difference.

[carron81]

would she use a straw to suck up pureed food?

what a nightmare it must be

[carron81]

what about putting child locks on the cupboard and making it seem like she's not meant to be in the cupboards with food and could make her want in them more

thats the problem i'm having with my daughter, we've got the locks on the food cupboards and shes constantly hanging from them wanting food

[cherrychapstick]

i would try carrons idea the cooking let her make her own smoothies with lots of fresh fruit ,did this start before or after she started nursery ? age 2 seems quite young for nursery

[annie0000]

I saw one of these nanny type programmes once where they dealt with food phobias in toddlers.

What they did was to choose a piece of food that they thought would be most acceptable to the child - maybe something they have tried before and eaten - even if it is not necessarily a healthy choice, maybe like quavers or cheese or even chocolate.

They then encourage the child to touch the food - if she does, they go mental, clapping and smiling at her, if she doesn't , they just take it away and try again next time. I think they were also rewarding with a piece of food they liked or a sticker or something as well if they were old enough to appreciate a reward chart.

Once they were able to touch the food, they would be encouraged to kiss it or touch it to their lips. Again massive feedback if they did it.

Next stage was to put it in their mouth - even if they then took it out again.

Next would be biting it, again not necessarily swallowing it.

Next chewing and lastly eating - if they progress faster, you can obviously miss out stages.

Once they eat one food, you progress to the next and repeat the whole process.

It takes a long long time and you need a lot of patience, (I think it took a week with one child to get her to the point of kissing a grape!) but it seemed to work eventually. I guess with your little one, you could give her some of her milk, but reward her with a little bit more if she managed to touch the food etc.- that way you can still give her the milk she needs but it becomes a bargaining tool as well.

What an awful situation to be in, I hope that something works for you.

[tamirra]

Thank you for all your replies but we have tried all that has been suggested, she started the phobia when she was about 1 or just over 1, when she is at nursery which is only 8 hrs a week, 2 mornings, and the other little ones are eating she puts her hands on her hips and walks around them all just looking at what there eating, they do set a place for her and give her the same foods but even then she wont try any, what i did find out yesterday was that she loved the yogurts called choobs so im out to buy a lot of them today i can freeze some and get them out when ive got her here, at least its something. Thank you again for your input, oh with the force feeding i would not even think about doing that, it would make the situation worse. x