Weening off the Bottle

[mweiss]

Our daughter turned 2 in April. While we have had some minor success at teaching her to feed herself solid food and drink from a cup, lately she has regressed to refusing to eat and wanting her milk bottle.

Last spring, I grew rather frustrated. She becomes violent when asked to do something she does not want to do, such as eat what's on her plate. One particular time, we were eating in the livingroom, which has w/w carpeting, because our dining room was being renovated. We were trying to guide her to take a forkful of spaghetti and put it in her mouth. She resisted and the second time we tried, before I could register what was happening, she took the entire plate and tossed it overboard, landing it face down on the carpet. Fettucine Alfredo, on the rug. What a mess. I gave her a little slap (which was minor compared to what my dad did to me when I was two and threw my plate over in the high chair). I found that for a while, she started to behave and eat her food after that slap. But as time went on, we got lenient with her and her lack of interest in solid food became more of a resistance to being fed.

I did discover that she likes cookies though. She has no problem with cookies, potato chips and cashew nuts. In fact, she asks for them by name. But at the dinner table, unless it's something she really likes, 95% of the food we serve to her is met with 100% resistance. No matter how hard we try, she resists with almost super-human physical strength, pushing the arm holding the fork away from her face. She looks at what's on the fork and if it doesn't match the image of what she thinks she likes, there's no way that food's going to enter her mouth. And that's final, so asserts Amanda, age 2-1/2.

My wife is concerned because she only weighs about 26 lbs and she thinks the girl isn't eating enough. She's also constapated as an eighty year old woman, having painful and strained bowel movements every 3 to 5 days. This is likely because she drinks so much milk and not enough roughage. Fortunately, she will eat Oatmeal, which is very good for brain development and is a source of roughage, but the rest of the meals are met with impossible resistance.

So my question to the parents here.... how do you overcome your kid's resistance to accepting and eating what is served for dinner? Do you give in and let them eat cookies instead of supper? Do you spank until they eat? Do you send them to bed hungry if they don't? What methods work? I would love to hear your comments.

[dropkick03]

My wife and I had the same problem with our daughter about a year ago (age 2). I consulted my mother about the problem and her advice was to refuse to give in to our daughter's demands. She simply stated that, "The child will eventually get hungry and eat what you give her." This wasn't advocating starving our daughter, but only giving her one option. She could eat what we give her, or she could wait until she was so hungry that she didn't care to put up a fight any longer. Usually it would be an hour or so. Now this has evolved into our daughter eating on her schedule rather than ours, but she is receptive to what my wife prepares, and usually very happy to eat it.

Now the hard part for us is getting her to eat in her chair, rather than in front of the TV in the playroom. Hope this helps!