How much food is enough?

Now I understand that toddlers are fussy eaters and can go fairly long stretches without eating much, but older children aren't in that crazy growth mode so I don't know how it works.

My older child for the past week has decided she "hates" absolutely everything we are cooking. Tonight it was just ridiculous - we had a garlic roasted Lilydale chicken with roast potatoes and sweet vegetables and it was done to perfection and orgasmically delicious. Offspring had maybe 2 mouthfuls of chicken and a bite of potato, leaving her 2yo little sister to clean up - so I had a toddler eat almost half a chicken, huge pile of potatoes, veggies, all while going "yum yum yum" yet I have this sullen child at the other end of the table whining about how much she hates the food. Yesterday while she was doing the same with a different dinner (patties) she was telling us how much she hated patties but loved roast chicken.

This has been going on for about a week. So Child Elder is eating loosely 1 piece of toast for breakfast (plain with a tiny scraping of butter), a very small glass of chocolate milk, maybe a piece of cake for recess if she remembers, a peanut butter or nuttella sandwich on one slice of bread, small glass of chocolate milk when she gets home and maybe a mouthful of dinner if we are lucky. Today she skipped the cake and just had one slice of bread for lunch. FWIW she has wholegrain bread, not that that is much of an improvement. Wholegrain bread is about the only thing she doesn't hate at the moment. She likes the cake we always have in the house but constantly forgets to eat it.

We told her she's not eating enough and she asked us how long it takes to die of starvation eating what she's eating. I've been sending her to bed straight after dinner the last few days on the grounds that if she doesn't eat, she must be sick. She goes without objection.

Is this much food seriously enough to keep a 30kg, 9.5yo girl alive? She says she is very hungry before dinner but then refuses to eat because she "hates" our food. Its driving me nuts. She is quite good at self-denial, the worst she's done to date is decide not to drink for a few weeks other than a few sips of water at dinner and gave herself pretty serious dehydration, which I should have picked up earlier but it is rather an odd thing to do to yourself - I picked it in the end because she was complaining about stomach cramps and her classmates teasing her about her "cold sores" because her cracked lips were so bad. It took 2 days of arguing to convince her she actually needed to drink. I still need to remind her to drink or she simply doesn't do it, while my other child just helps herself to water all day.

I don't doubt that she can keep up this not eating for quite some time and I don't want her getting sick from malnutrition.

I don't have a daughter that age yet, but my younger sister used to do this to mum. Mum used to just tell her that she must eat something and would give her a sandwich for dinner. She then had the option of what we were eating or the sandwich. Obviously it isn't ideal long term but at least she would be eating something in the meantime. Would she take childrens multivitamins?

Sorry, not a foolproof answer but at least an idea!

Seems it is just dinner she objects to rather than food in general - today I got her to eat a big bowl of porridge for breakfast and quite the stack of pancakes for lunch. Not exactly ideal but still food. I've done the sandwich thing before but in her case, just plain unbuttered bread instead of dinner was her preference. Odd.

We're about to have a stew that has been cooking all day and smells very very nice and she's hovering around whining about when is dinner going to be ready, so fingers crossed I can actually get some meat and veggies into her this evening.

Could something else be triggering it like self image? It does sound pretty extreme....but then I grew up with brothers and it was eat or miss out.

She's just hard to deal with sometimes and very hard to predict. She loves a food one day and hates it the next so it is impossible to buy food for her knowing she won't complain about it, so we basically ignore her and buy what *we* like since she's going to complain about it regardless. Been happening for years and years, nothing new.

Tonight I gave her a tiny amount of dinner. She wanted it with her multigrain toast, she got it with pasta like the rest of us and was told if she wanted more she could have it with toast. Remember how I said she loves multigrain bread?

Well she doesn't want it anymore (she's been after us to buy her multigrain bread for over a year, we were putting off buying it for her for reasons that will become apparent later in this post), she wants white bread, she couldn't explain why something she's been wanting for so long she doesn't want anymore. This happens a lot - she pesters for ages for something and as soon as she gets it she might eat it once if we're lucky and then it sits in the cupboard untouched until it expires and we throw it out. Every now and again we relent and get her something she is particularly keen on and the same thing happens. She couldn't explain why she didn't want multigrain bread anymore beyond "I really really like it but I've had it now and I don't want it again" and we were pushing for an explanation of why she always does this so she hit me quite hard.

I hauled her off to bed (its 7pm). She is now slipping notes under the door saying I don't understand her. No, I don't understand her.

She hasn't hit me for ages now - she's sworn at me a few times, slammed doors, smashed things, but its been a while since she last hit me. But I do hear her little sister from the next room crying out "don't hit me" and she's been pinged at school for hitting so I know its not just me.

Ah, dinner time fun.

Argh! Talk about turnaround after last night's effort ...

Tonight at dinner time (we had leftover stew) she commented on how delicious the dinner was and how anyone would love it because it was so good, she sat up straight and ate nicely without poking at the food or messing with her hair or fidgetting or waving her legs everywhere, and we had delightful dinner banter with a cheerful smile about what she did at school today instead of the usual sullen whining about how disgusting the food is. Basically the Perfect Tween in every respect, picture perfect out of one of those tossy parenting magazines.

She is currently complimenting me excessively on the pumpkin scones I made this afternoon, which she asked me very politely for for dessert.

Ok, who kidnapped my daughter and replaced her with this little angel?

Wow. Sounds like she might be starting puberty with all those mood swings :hug: I know she's only 9.5 but do you think that might be a possibility? I started puberty at around 10-11 and had af at about 12. Alos, it sort of sounds like maybe she has body image issues? The not eating sounds quite worrying. Does she get picked on at school or something like that?

mmm pumpkin scones. Mum used to make those. I haven't made them as my husband doesn't like pumpkin. Maybe I'll just have to make them for me :D

I'm pleased to hear about the change of attitude. Long may it last :)

Sorry that I have no suggestions for you as I've always loved food and don't have children yet to offer much advice...

Actually this is really very normal behaviour for her, irritating as it is. She picks something to be progressively more obnoxious about (this week it was dinner) and escalates it until someone snaps (me or her) and then everything is good again. Sometimes it is short cycles like this one, with her general behaviour it can go in phases several months long, and just when you're on the verge of wringing her neck she is suddenly the Perfect Child again.

She's had food issues before though. They did "healthy eating" at school some years ago and for the next 2 years she got completely OCD about visible fat in food, so it was really hard to get her to eat chops or steak but really easy to get her to eat stuff like crisps or cheap sausages that are just soaked in fat but you can't see it.

I don't think she's going to hit puberty any time soon. I think I was 15 or 16 when mine hit. She's about 4'6" and 30kg, tall and skinny but well proportioned. I haven't had a comment about her being fat or ugly for quite a while now thankfully, she did have a brief phase of saying she was fat. She's absolutely gorgeous, she's really starting to look like a young and very attractive adult now (I know I'm biased as her parent but other people back me up too), and quite the reverse of being picked on at school - she has a fan club of boys who think she is beautiful and goes through "boyfriends" at an alarming rate for someone so young. She's quite peculiar so all her friends say she's weird but they don't pick on her. She's actually far more likely to be picking on THEM, she can be very mean.

Not sure if this is going to set her up to be more or less prone to eating disorders when she's older and puberty DOES hit, to be honest.