What does your toddler eat........

[Kermit]

My boyfriend and I have had serious discussions regarding how we want to raise our kids with the mindset of trying new foods as a good thing. My two nephews were ridiculously picky eaters and we want to stop that from happening right away, if possible. We plan on introducing sushi, calamari, meats, and anything we are having ourselves. My boyfriend grew up with parents who would tell him, "Just try it. If you do not like it, you can spit it out!" and this is what we will support as well.

That's a great idea, and you're wise to be thinking about things like that already.

We've never given our kids "kid food", and they just eat whatever we give them. My 2.5 year old loves Mexican food, even if the food is pretty spicy. He eats whatever we're eating, unless it's something like steak that simply requires more teeth than he has.

If you want some unsolicited advice, my experience is (and there is some research to back it up) that one way to help ensure your kids will eat a wide variety of foods is to breastfeed. Flavors of foods you eat pass through your milk, so breastfed babies are generally more open to eating foods with stronger flavors. (They also are more likely to refuse that yucky, bland rice cereal, but there's certainly nothing wrong with never giving that stuff to your baby.) Baby books always say to start your babies on bland foods, but my babies never read those books. If food doesn't have garlic or cayanne pepper, they don't eat it.

 

[justhat]

Madison will eat anything we give her too, but very small amounts of everything-we're working hard to get her to 23 lbs.! Her favorite foods are black beans and rice, any type of cheese, donut peaches (which are so hard for us to find now), dragon plums, apricots, strawberries, well basically any fruit. She also likes fish (salmon, shrimp, and calamari are her favorites) chicken, steak only if it's very well done, and pork. Green beans and sweet potatoes are her favorite veggies (especially sweet potato casserole!), but she'll also eat peas, corn, carrots, and sometimes broccoli. She also loves to dip chips in salsa too. Whatever we're eating/doing is what she wants to do so we're pretty lucky.

Our only real problem with her is that she is such a carb addict! We literally have to hide the bread when we got to a restaurant, or tell the waiter not to bring any, because she sees the bread and immediately yells out "ooooohhhhh" and points and cries. She'd eat only bread everyday if we let her!

 

[icebrat001]

Madison will eat anything we give her too, but very small amounts of everything-we're working hard to get her to 23 lbs.! Her favorite foods are black beans and rice, any type of cheese, donut peaches (which are so hard for us to find now), dragon plums, apricots, strawberries, well basically any fruit. She also likes fish (salmon, shrimp, and calamari are her favorites) chicken, steak only if it's very well done, and pork. Green beans and sweet potatoes are her favorite veggies (especially sweet potato casserole!), but she'll also eat peas, corn, carrots, and sometimes broccoli. She also loves to dip chips in salsa too. Whatever we're eating/doing is what she wants to do so we're pretty lucky.

Our only real problem with her is that she is such a carb addict! We literally have to hide the bread when we got to a restaurant, or tell the waiter not to bring any, because she sees the bread and immediately yells out "ooooohhhhh" and points and cries. She'd eat only bread everyday if we let her!

It's good that she eats a variety of food.
That bread would make her closer to your goal of 23 pounds though. Will she eat a sandwich or a bagel and lox?

Just curious... Is there something wrong with a baby being a card addict?

 

[justhat]

It's good that she eats a variety of food.
That bread would make her closer to your goal of 23 pounds though. Will she eat a sandwich or a bagel and lox?

Just curious... Is there something wrong with a baby being a card addict?

She'll sometimes eat a sandwich, but generally if there's bread involved, she picks off anything 'not bread' and leave that on the dish. Or if it gets in her mouth, she sticks her tongue out and picks off the bits she doesn't want. It's actually very funny to see. I have never tried lox though, so thanks for the idea. She does like bagels so we'll have to give it a try.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being a carb addict itself, but in our case, that's all she'll eat. If there's bread involved at a meal, she'll only eat the bread till she's full then stop. Nothing else the whole meal, just bread. We don't buy bread anymore cause she would see it (no matter where we hid it) and ate only sliced bread for 3 days. It was wheat bread at least, but that was literally all she ate, she refused everything else cause she knew there was bread available. The problem is that she eats so little as it is (she's 25th percentile in weight, 75th in height) that if we give her bread she eats it till she's full, then doesn't really get any nutrients for the day. She does still get plenty of carbs, she loves her cereal, pasta, rice, etc., so we don't try to keep the,m away from her entirely. I should have said she's a bread addict, cause she can eat other carbs in moderation and still eat other foods at a meal, but not if there's bread around!

 

[DisneyAddict_M]

My dd's favorite foods are shrimp and steak. Surf and turf anyone?