Help!! 15 month old and picky eater or texture issues?

[first-time mom]

My son will be 15 months and I am having a hard time getting him totally on solid food. He will eat anything pureed. He will not eat a vegetable non pureed maybe an occasional pea. For fruit he will eat the following bananas, grapes, blueberries, apples. He will eat anything carb related except for pastas. I am so frustrated. He will not eat eggs either.

I want to get him off baby food jars but he will not except a single veggie I am so confused as to if this is a texture issue or picky? Is this normal? My older kiddo wasnt like this at all she ate everything. My son wont even try things.

He is totally normal in development has about 30 words. I am freaked that this means he has a sensory issue. We have autism in our family so it bothers me that we are struggling with this.

Anyone have a picky/texture kiddo.....

[first-time mom]

anyone?

[claddaghmom]

Originally Posted by first-time mom

My son will be 15 months and I am having a hard time getting him totally on solid food. He will eat anything pureed. He will not eat a vegetable non pureed maybe an occasional pea. For fruit he will eat the following bananas, grapes, blueberries, apples. He will eat anything carb related except for pastas. I am so frustrated. He will not eat eggs either.

I want to get him off baby food jars but he will not except a single veggie I am so confused as to if this is a texture issue or picky? Is this normal? My older kiddo wasnt like this at all she ate everything. My son wont even try things.

He is totally normal in development has about 30 words. I am freaked that this means he has a sensory issue. We have autism in our family so it bothers me that we are struggling with this.

Anyone have a picky/texture kiddo.....

Remember that introducing foods can really vary from child to child. Have you checked out http://www.drmomma.org/? She has a 16 month old who is exclusively nursed. He has never eaten foods other than human milk his entire life. She makes a very strong argument for delayed solids (not that I am saying you should switch back to only human milk). I'm just pointing out that at this stage, babies are all different.

DD has the opposite "issue" with foods. She is 14 months and refuses to eat any pureed foods. Absolutely despises them. She will only eat if she gets her own chair, her own plate and her own fork.

I would not worry about his choices. He is accustomed to the ease of pureed foods. And unless he is feeding himself, I bet he has developed a bit of a relationship with you feeding him. Just keep offering a colorful, flavorful variety of solids so he can touch and taste them.

[first-time mom]

Thanks for your response. I guess I just dont get why he will try grapes and blueberries but spit out sweet potatoe and eggs?!? Of course I make him take that first bite but he wont even try things.

He was nursed until 14 months when he self weaned. I tried for sometime to keep him nursing. Not only that I have to have my amalgams out and it isnt safe to do while breastfeeding but I followed his lead and he self weaned and now sleeps through the night.

[azzeps]

I don't have time to write a long response, but I just recommended this book to another poster: Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense by Ellyn Satter.

Basically, she says that you have to continually "challenge" your child to progress from smooth purees, to something a bit chunkier, to teeny tiny pieces, to bigger pieces, to whole food.

Keep offering and eventually he will eat it. My DD wouldn't eat eggs for the longest time, but I kept making them, and then one day she finally did, and now she eats them no problem!

[claddaghmom]

Originally Posted by first-time mom

Thanks for your response. I guess I just dont get why he will try grapes and blueberries but spit out sweet potatoe and eggs?!? Of course I make him take that first bite but he wont even try things.

He was nursed until 14 months when he self weaned. I tried for sometime to keep him nursing. Not only that I have to have my amalgams out and it isnt safe to do while breastfeeding but I followed his lead and he self weaned and now sleeps through the night.

Well this is JMO but it could be that he simply has personal preferences. Now if he is on a solid foods diet, it's more important to make sure he has balanced nutrition, so maybe you need to 'hide' certain foods within dishes he enjoys?

I just know from my experience introducing foods to DD....well she is very opinionated! She will gobble some foods down but not others, regardless of how I as an adult view that food. For example, even though cookies and cake are both junk food IMO, she will only eat cookies, not cake. She loves tomatoes but hates carrots. She wants orange and bananas but spits out berries.

I've noticed that a factor is the parent's response. In fact last night we went out to eat at Olive Garden and my husband ordered a seafood dish. He started digging into mussells (eww gross lol) anyways he is in love with them and started slurping them up. So DD, who has never seen nor tasted them, demanded one. And then another and another. She ate the whole dish and got mad when we didn't have anymore. She was licking the shells.

Weird, but hey, that's how they are.

[mbm]

DD is the same. She does better with really tiny pieces of meat and veg. I think she is bored by chewing larger pieces -- she'll gum them for a while, then get frustrated, and spit them out. (Fair enough, since she only has four teeth.)

However, in the last couple of weeks, we found that she will eat anything if we give it to her on chopsticks. A little novelty factor goes a long way, I guess!