10-month old not eating well

Thanks viki123.

 

This is the age when you will determine how meals will be for the next several years: do you want to go the traditional "desi route" where you spend the day running behind her shoveling mouthfuls of food into her against her will only to have her vomit it out 20 minutes later? Do you want tears and tantrums anytime you mention food?

Or would you rather have a happy mealtime when she runs to the table in anticipation when you announce lunch/snack/dinner? Do you want her to eat on her own while you eat on your own with mealtime lasting only 30 minutes with the rest of the day free to do other things such as play with her, do household chores, etc?

I am an ABCD mom married to a man raised in India. I have a daughter who turned 4 in December and she loves her meal time and has been self feeding finger food since 8 months and proficient with a spoon since 14 months. I haven't physically fed her anything since she was 16 months. Any time that I announce a meal or snack, she runs to the table and eagerly sits in her chair and starts eating when I place the food in front of her. She wakes up on her own between 6:30 and 7AM DEMANDING breakfast saying "MOMMY, I'm HUNGRY!" This is because I give her dinner at 6PM every night and put her to bed around 8PM on school nights (preschool starts at 8:30AM) so she goes 12 hours without food and wakes up hungry.

We sit down at the table together for half an hour and eat side by side. I serve her food she likes and never make her finish her meal. Whatever she eats in half an hour, so be it. Even if she only eats a few bites, she eats them happily. I respect her appetite and food preferences.

When she was teething or having a cold she would eat way less (sometime she said she was done after 2 or 3 bites of mac and cheese and one strawberry). When she was having a growth spurt, she would eat way more than usual, gobbling down an entire sandwich, a bowl full of blueberries, and asking for more food. The key is I always respected the amounts she ate. If she eat very little, I'd offer a snack a couple of hours later. When she was first spoon feeding herself, 1/3 of the food would end up on the floor, 1/3 on her body (including her hair!), and maybe 1/3 in her mouth! Yes, she'd make a mess but it would only take 5 minutes to clean up after the meal and she had a lot of fun and developed some motor skills while she learned to self feed!

She is not a large child; she is on the small side and only in the 19th percentile for weight but she is healthy and enjoys food.

I suggest you let your daughter eat on her own giving her finger food of different variety. You can try to feed her if she's willing but if she starts refusing, let it go and let her play without you trying to "distract feed her. Try some food again in a couple of hours.

In my circle of stay at home mom friends (all raised in the U.S, some ABCD, some white Americans, some other Asians, and one Latino lady), ALL our kids enjoy their meals and none of us have feeding issues. (There are rare cases of non-Indian kids having food issues for medical reasons and in that case medical intervention is given to solve the feeding issues but I'd estimate less than 1 percent of non-Desi kids have food refusal issues).

Contrast that to what I see with my husband's India-raised friends and how about 90 percent of the moms have food issues with their kids. I see moms running behind their 3-8 year old kids as they play with their friends, watch TV, play video games, trying to shovel as much food down their throats as possible in any-which-way they can. Kids dread mealtime and so do the moms! They keep their kids up until 11PM on SCHOOL NIGHTS spending 3 hours feeding them dinner forcing them to finish no matter what. Then they complain about how hard it is to wake their kid up for school and force feed them breakfast in the morning. The number one complaint from Indian moms is their kid doesn't eat enough and how much "work" it is to feed them all day.

Feeding your child should not be "work" but a pleasant, happy experience of spending quality time sitting side by side. It is okay to physically spoon feed or hand feed a young toddler but only if they are willing. Other than that, encourage them to pick up food on their own and enjoy the food together. If your child doesn't like a particular food, offer an alternative. My daughter has some likes and dislikes but I'm always able to give her healthy food she likes (whole grain mac and cheese, steamed carrots, cheese sandwiches on whole wheat bread, tandoori chicken, roti, etc). She does not like dhal, spinach, or broccoli so I don't ever force her eat it (although I've disguised spinach in pasta salad which she eat happily!)

The bottom line is, the more you stress about your kid not eating and try to force feed, the more your kid is going to develop food aversion and actually eat less than they would have if you did not force feed. The "American" way of feeding means although she won't always "finish" all her food as you'd like but she'll develop a healthy attitude towards food.