Toddler food challenge

I'm not sure when did this happen - probably around the time when we started to be a little more liberal in giving Faith some food off our plates/table and the time when I started transitioning her to rice - our heretofore hearty eater has now become a fussy little eater.

We've pretty much been blessed that Faith enjoys her food since the time I had started her on solids. With very very few exceptions, she eats nearly everything that I've given to her. Even food that I feared she might not take a liking for in the past, she's mostly eating them now as she got older. Smelly yucky cod-liver oil, unsweetened yoghurt that's a little tart, kiwis and all types of berries that might sometimes be sour - no problems. She would eat them all.

Up until recently.

Now, we would have to chase, cajole, threaten, trick or bribe her to finish her food at every meal and sometimes, without much success. Lately, if she's not interested in her food, she would spit it right back the moment you put it into her mouth, splattering that spat-out mouthful of food onto her lap, her baby chair or onto the floor if we're not quick enough to put a hand out to catch it.

I had spent hours using the slow-cooker to make all sorts of what I deemed to be nourishing chinese soups to go with her rice, only to have her take a few spoonful and spit them all out. Pastas with tomato-based sauce, pesto, bolognaise have all been cooked and tested on her with mixed results. Some day, she would finish them all. On other days, she would eat half or less of what I lay out and refuse to eat any more, although tomato-based pasta seemed to be preferred.

Last Sat, I made a western version of pumpkin soup, served up with a pan-fried piece of cod seasoned very lightly with a wee bit of soy sauce and chinese rice wine. I had thought that she might not be keen on cod and would lap up the pumpkin soup, which would be great cos I had made it with pumpkin, potatoes and carrots to ensure she gets her dietary fulfilment of vegetables and carbohydrates. In the end, she loved the cod and would only drink about 1/3 of the pumpkin soup.

On Sun, I had slow-cooked some carrot and corn soup for 5 hours, of which she only took maybe 1/5 of the portion and some spoonful of rice and refused to eat any further. To be fair, that was the day that my elder BIL returned home after 2 months overseas and we had an early dinner at 6 pm after picking him up from the airport.

Faith only had her milk at close to 4 pm cos she had a long afternoon nap prior. It was too much to expect that she would be ready to eat her dinner that soon after her afternoon milk and so early when her normal dinnertime is at 7.30 pm.

All that I've read warned that as babies turn into toddlers, they do not require as much food to fuel their tummies as their growth rate is slowing down. Of course, toddlers are more intrigued by the world around them and are not keen to sit down for long to finish their food either. And don't be surprise if one day, they stop eating whatever food that they seemed to lov from young. Add to the mix that once they have had a taste of food that is seasoned and salted, their bland fare seem even more unappealing.

As much as I've read all the literature on the challenges of feeding a toddler and that parents do not have to worry that they will starve themselves or become malnourished, there's an anal part of me that still worries when Faith's not eating all her food. Especially when her weight range has always been hovering around the 25th percentile i.e. she's underweight.

However, the spitting out of food and not finishing her entire meal has been happening so frequently that these days, I don't panic as much when she doesn't finish her food. I am trying to follow the advice of these books and ensure that I lay out as much nutritionally healthy food for her throughout the day and hope that even if she does not eat much, every mouthful and morsel that she eats adds to her daily dietary requirements.

And so apart from her usual meals, I try to ply her with fruits, yoghurt, nuts and dried fruits in between her meals so that even if she eats little for dinner, her total food intake for the day would still be acceptable.

Faith had had her 18th month inoculation yesterday and I had the chance to talk to her pediatrician about her "fussiness" in food.

He concurred on all the challenges faced in feeding a toddler.

However, his point to me was that baby food is very bland and sooner or later, we would have to transition Faith to food on our table. There is thus a need for balance -- do we continue to not season her food at all and let her eat whatever pitiful amount or adopt a very light touch with salt and seasoning so as to titillate her taste buds and arouse her previous interest in food?

Hence, it might be better for everyone if Faith gets to eat our food as she's more interested in them anyways. On the matter of salt and seasoning in our food, that is something that we can do about it i.e. reduce the amount of salt.

With that bit of advice in mind, this evening, I made mashed potato with unsalted butter and milk and grilled another slab of cod, seasoned lightly like the way I did it on Sat. We also gave her some chinese style pumpkin soup that we ourselves were having for dinner, although we scooped out her bowl of soup before we added a little bit of salt to the rest.

She had the mash potato first as I was still grilling the fish. She loved it and asked for more until we gave her the fish. Thereafter, she only wanted the fish. As for the pumpkin soup, well... let's just say that it didn't rank up on her first nor second choice of food.

So there you have it! Her taste buds craved and lapped up whatever little bit of seasoning I added to her food.

Anyways, I would continue to rise up to the challenge of being creative and inventive with cooking dinners for my little one, experimenting food with and without salt/seasoning to see what she would appeal to her.

It certainly helps to know that Faith isn't the only finicky little eater. There are 2 other mothers at Faith's JG class, who are right up there with me, tearing their hair out on getting their own kids to eat their meals too.

Somehow, it makes me feel a little better when we all lament together about the amount of time we spent labouring over food preparation for our little ones only to have them turn up their little nose at our "labour of love".