Ok, so if I give him a vegie for breakfast & he won't eat it, should I...
a) chuck it out & consider the meal over?
b) chuck out the uneaten veg & give him some fruit that I know he will eat?
c) mix the veg through the fruit & give it to him?
Personally, I consider the meal over. And then perhaps next meal make it something that might appeal a bit more by adding fruit or something.
Perhaps it's my laziness LOL.. but I don't want to get into the habit of re-preparing meals just coz they won't eat it. They'll eat if they're hungry hehe. (maybe I'm just mean!)
ETA: re creating a fussy eater.. I think catering to them each meal if they don't eat what they're given can create fussiness, coz they'll keep refusing until they get what they want. Not that I force that meal, they just don't get anything else if they don't want it. I guess that applies more to a toddler than a 6 mth old, but it's a habit I certainly don't want heh.
I wouldn't worry too much about it. As the others have said, at this stage, solids are more about the experience than the nutritional value. Squashing vegetables between your fingers and drawing on the table with them seems to be lots of fun. I would often give DD one thing to play with and while she was distracted, I would shovel food into her mouth
Just don't let things like cereal dry on the table - it turns into concrete. I've learned that the hard way
It is true that it often takes them a while to "like" a new tatse. And they have a natural tendency for sweet things as breast milk is sweet. So it's not something you are doing to him. DD now has a habit of putting things inot her bowl. So if there's some pasta still on the table from her mains, but I've already brought out the yoghurt for dessert, she decides to have tuna vanilla yoghurt pasta. I don't care, as long as she eats it.
I think you're doing a great job at offering variety for him to sample. But I wouldn't "force" him to eat it as you don't want anxiety to build up around meal times. That would create even more fussiness. I agree with Liz, I do the "ok, this is what is for dinner, take it or leave it". My mum did that with us while growing up. My brother was a little fussy as a toddler. But she would say: "Alright, if you don't like the lamb, that's fine, you can just eat the potatoes" so she wouldn't let him go hungry, but she also wouldn't indulge his fussiness. Not getting attention for it quickly put a stop to it and both my brother and I eat pretty much everything these days.
I found with DD that she was much happier eating a "meal" rather than individual veges IYKWIM. For example she was happy to eat minestrone with all the veges mashed up in it, but she would not like mashed up potato by itself. I guess she's like me, she likes a bit of flavour.
I know the common advice is to introduce foods by themselves and see if there is a reaction. But I decided to ignore that advice and just offered DD what we had in a more mushy form.
So, if we had tuna penne for dinner, I would cook some risoni for her and serve them with the same sauce. If we had Thai Green Curry Chicken with rice, I would give her the same just with extra coconut cream and more rice to dull the spicyness. If we had Cottage Pie, I would feed her the mash, mince and gravy from my plate.
As someone else said, they loooove to eat what you eat.
I also found that DD would eat more and with more pleasure if we all sat down to eat together. So I tried to have dinner ready the minute DH came home so that we could all eat together. We don't always manage to do that, but we try to do that a few times a week. it's a nice habit to get into as a family. But it can also get a little stressful in the afternoons when you have to get it all ready. Pre-cooking really helps here.
I tried a bit of a mega-mix for lunch today (apple, zucchini & carrot) & he was happy with that. So, I think I'm going to try mixing things up a bit more - not worry so much about the single vegies (because, let's face it, I don't eat single vegies either - they always have sauce, salt, or other vegies with them)
great to hear he was happier eating.
I just remembered that I got given a vegetarian baby cook book when DD was born. I'm not vegetarian and I think the only reason I was given that book was that it was the only German kids cook book our friend could find in Sydney.
When I introduced DD to solids, I initially used one og th "recipes" in there. Her first meal was pureed steamed carrot with a dollop of butter and a little fresh pressed orange juice. The butter (you could replace this with olive oil, sunflower oil or any other of the good oils) is supposed to help with the digestion of the fat soluble vitamins and the orange juice adds Vitamin C. Carrot is naturally sweet, so not too big a shock when you're used to sweet BM. DD really liked it. She ate that for a few days after which I added some potato mash to it and then we just took off from there.
And I second the ice cube tray. I still do that to this day. Some days she eats 2 cubes of food at one meal, some days she eats 6 or 7. So I usually start with 3 cubes and then see how we go. I can always defrost more. But I hate throwing it out.
My DS is a little older than yours, but for the last 3 or so months I've been doing a mega-mix all in one - pumpkin, zucchini, carrot, beans,broccoli, parsnip, corn, peas, cauliflower - all pureed up together in the blender, and then I hand mash through some potato at the end. I do it like this cos my DS has been really fussy, and it's been a way to get him to eat a broad range of vegies in a way that he wouldn't have done otherwise. All frozen into ice cubes. I also do a pumpkin/steak or pumpkin chicken puree mix to add the the vegies, so that he gets some meat into him occasionally too, although you're maybe a couple of months away from introducing meat yet. Doing the vegies in one big mix i reckon saves me time, as the all get cooked together in the one pot, although I stagger the cooking process a little, as obviously things like peas & corn cook really quickly, whereas pumpkin & carrots can take a little longer to soften. And I have to confess that a couple of times when I've had freshly cooked up vegies, DF & I have had a spoonful or two on our plates for dinner, surprisingly tasty....
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