Ya know,
Who knows? My mother had a cow because my brother wouldn't eat anything but buttered egg noodles for about 3 yrs. So, she always had a bowl of egg noodles on the table and thats what he ate for three years. He's 45 now with no major health problems. When she's ready to eat, she'll eat...until then, I guess unless you want to deal with untold drama every dinnertime, let her eat what she wants....unless its like a scotch and a bong she wants...In the end, you can only do so much and then you have to, as my grandmother would have said,"Give the little shit to Jesus to handle."

My seven year old daughter has three items she will eat for lunch and they can't be rotated daily. For weeks on end she will only eat Chicken 'n' Stars soup. Then it switches to hummus and pita bread. Then it switches to Calabrese salami (no chuncks of pepper) and water crackers. There is never anything on bread. Sometimes I can get her to eat tuna or egg salad, but only with a fork. Dinner is often spaghetti with olive oil and salt. The good news is that she loves vegetables.

Have you tried balsamic vinegar? My kids treat it like ketchup. It's about the only way to get the five year old to take a single bite of pork tenderloin.

Make stuff you and Jon *enjoy* eating. Bless you for seeing a therapist about this. No emotion over food means no anxiety from *your* corner over the menu allowed.

My nephew is a notoriously picky eater as well. He is 6. It has been going on for years. Probably as long as Leta. He is so picky, he cannot even sit at the table if others are eating something he won't eat... specifically meat. If he saw anyone eating meat, smelled meat, whatever, he would gag and sometimes vomit. Finally, my sister brought it up to his pediatrician and he referred her to a child eating specialist. (Maybe a child nutritionist? I'm not sure.) He has gone to a few counseling sessions and the specialist said that some people have extra sensitive olfactory and taste senses where food smells and tastes overly strong. His therapy sessions include tasting things he has in the past refused to eat and finding things that he will eat. It might be worth a shot... I know it has helped my sister and her family with their food time frustrations. Good luck with Leta.

You guys seem like good parents, so I don't say this to seem harsh. But it's clear Leta needs some tough love in this instance. A case of - 'eat what you're given, or don't eat at all.' Let her go hungry. Use the oldest trick in the book, 'some children in the world have no food.' Or if worse comes to worse, use the charming line my Dad used on me: Eat it, or I'll shove it down your throat. You're going to eat it, and you're going to like it!

I know this is really hard for you, Heather, because I live it every day. My youngest ( 7 years old) lives on PB&J and cheese melted on a tortilla. Every time I try to push food, it ends in tears, gagging, and parental rage. I don't have any answers, but I take comfort in the fact that he's growing, he's healthy and when he does decide to eat, he eats. The only thing I have done to save my sanity is give him the option to eat what I've cooked or fix something for himself. That way I don't get ragey and resentful that I have to cook a separate meal, and I don't have to watch him gag over a bite of chicken. Yeah, his diet is not great, but I give him vitamins and his doctor isn't worried as long as SOMETHING goes into his mouth at the end of the day. I don't know if it gets easier, but giving up control on this sure makes it feel easier. *hugs*

My sympathies are with you, since I also make separate meals for my daughter, and feel terrible about it. Meanwhile my son has eaten Ethiopian, Indian and Thai food, and hasn't met a vegetable he doesn't like. One idea that is starting to work with my girl is getting her involved in the process. Her girl scout troop got to take a class at a local cooking school and she ate a bit of everything they made. We've also gotten kid's cookbooks from the library and let her pick out recipes which she helps me make. The bottom line is she is a freakin' control freak, so it shows up in her eating just like everywhere else in her life. Good luck, and this IS NOT YOUR FAULT!

I hear you. I SWEAR I hear what you are saying and what you are going through. I get that you feel as though you are trying to be the parent for god's sake and do the right thing and yet holy crap is this going to scar them forever but wait - I'm trying to do the RIGHT thing so why do I feel this way???

Thanks for putting it out there because there are hundreds if not thousands of us nodding our heads and agreeing with your latest child episodes.

I try to cook rounded meals but they are kids so whatever - they don't care about that. My kids love chicken so sometimes they get baked chicken w/ketchup for dipping, fruit and a roll. It seems as though the fancy wheat rolls will entice them to eat things they wouldn't normally so I use that like crack to an addict. You want the roll - you eat SOME of the food. (Enought that you aren't whining about snacks before bedtime 20 minutes later.)

Maybe find some small something that she really likes and use that as bait? If rolls don't go with the meal then I remind them that X dessert is available. (We tend to do 2 or "gasp" maybe 3 cookies as dessert so we aren't exactly wild here either.)

Good Luck and isn't this parenting crap just beyond anything that you were ever warned about? I just didn't KNOW how intense it would get over the most ridiculous issues.

You rock, You figured it our much earlier than my mother did. I am 39 and did not eat crust until I went away to college. My major food groups as a child were crustless grilled cheese, chicken SKIN, hard candy and homemade pancakes. Maybe some white rice thrown in for good measure. My mother doted on me simply because I was tiny and sick all the time.
I have tried so hard to not make food an issue with my kids, but lo and behold I am also raising myself.( I also have one of the best eaters on the planet!) She is now 14 and eats lots and lots of fruits and vegetables and cannot wait for the day when I will let her be a vegetarian. She can be when she finds a few more sources of protein that she will consume. Leta, too, will figure it out. Her taste buds will mature and she will eventually become good company at the dinner table. Enjoy the journey as much as you can.

Krystin B, you must not have a child with the steel will of mine (or sounds like Leta). Mine once went days without eating when we tried the "eat what you get or you go hungry" routine. Tough love isn't always the answer! Of course I have no idea what the answer is but I'm too tired from fighting my daughter to think about it right now!

I did this, too. I would eat "cold dogs" (because, ew, "hot" dogs are gross) with ketchup and minimal mustard (on the side because I had to choose how much condiment I wanted on each bite) and macaroni and cheese every. single. day. My parents started doing awesome things like what you're about to do. It works. How do you keep your kid from starving?

1. Don't keep any of her "old standards" in the house. Then, you can't fall back on them and she won't see them and beg (plead! sob! Mom, all I want is some high fructose corn syruuuuuup!) for them, either.
2. Take a "favorite" and change it up so that it's different. For example: she loves mac and cheese? Make quinoa and cheese. Or homemade mac and cheese (if you tend to use Kraft). When done right, it's healthy and a different option. Make spaghetti-o's with meatballs....but use whole wheat pasta, make your own meatballs, use real tomatoes, etc. She won't eat it at the beginning (I would lock myself in the bathroom), but she'll get hungry enough to give things a try.

You will win this freeze-out. My parents sure as hell did. Hope that helps!

My own parents had the policy of I could eat what was for dinner, or nothing. It worked. I wasn't quite as fussy as you're describing Leta, but I pretty quickly learned that food wasn't a battle worth picking and ate at least *some* of what was offered.

I'm not a mom (yet), but I do work with children professionally and I've employed similar tactics. I've worked with special needs kids who have food texture issues and my strategies have always been to offer them a choice between two foods that I *know* that they like. If they won't make a choice, the next step is that I choose one of the two foods and offer it to them with the caveat that it's that or go hungry. If they won't choose, I choose for them. There are no other options. It works. The battle ends. They usually, being children, immediately ask for whatever the other option was and that's totally fine. It keeps every snack time from being a battle of wills and keeps me from being a glorified waiter who has to go and fetch whatever Sir desires.

If there are specific foods that Leta WILL eat, just keep offering those foods for lunch if she really needs to be able to plan ahead. Ask if she wants the croutons or the big bowl of nothing. It'll give her a small amount of control over the situation, and it sounds like the lack of control is part of what's stressing her out about lunches.

I have a 7 year old daughter with similar food issues. Lunch entails of mainly peanut butter and nutella sandwiches, every day, every day, every day, except when there's "Big Daddy" (i.e. really unhealthy) pizza at school. I just don't sweat it anymore, her daily visits to the nurse before lunch made me rethink it all. It was hard to let go :-)

Our picky eater is in the form of a 9 yo boy. When I met him he refused to eat tomatoes or pretty much any other vegetable. Now he tries all kinds of things.

I had two big breakthroughs with him - the first, with tomatoes. During a calm, non eating time, I asked what it was about the tomatoes that he didn't like. Come to find out he liked the flavor, but the seed goo made tomatoes gross. So, I bought a different variety with less seeds the next time I went shopping, and cut out the seed area. After a few tries, I cut out less and less seed/goo, until now he will eat almost any kind I bring home.

The other big discovery: lettuce and typical salads were a no go. Once I happened to find spinach on sale and he ate almost the entire bag all by himself. Lesson learned. we make salads with spinach leaves instead of lettuce.

Now we talk about food at times other than meal times to get an honest reaction without pressure to taste or feel compelled to push a new food. We talk about what we like and what we don't like and why. Also, we have instituted a rule that you have to try one bite of things, even if you don't think you'll like them. You never know if you like or don't like things unless you actually taste them, y'know?

I believe in choices - you can choose to eat dinner or not, no skin off my nose. If you choose not to eat the meal that has been prepared, you can make something else or choose to be hungry, but I don't make two meals.

Often a substitution helps ie the spinach vs lettuce. Also noticed that he has an issue with textures, so changing the texture helps. ie he hates cooked broccoli but loves raw - I just set some raw aside. Same with zucchini - loves raw, hates cooked. Talk to her and ask WHY. Getting my picky eater in the kitchen with me and letting him not only help choose the meal, but help prepare made a big difference in his attitude towards trying things. Once he realized that I was taking his preferences into account, things got easier.

Good luck. It sucks having mealtime drama.

Um, yeah. I just realized I didn't actually answer the question. Here are some things we eat:

*nutella on toast
*homemade bruschetta - we like it on almost any round, sliced bread, sprinkled with shredded asiago, dubliner and parmesean, broiled then topped with chopped tomato
*homemade pop tarts - cut up premade pie crust, filled with whatever type of fruit filling or nutella - lots more options than at the store.
*roasted cauliflower in a crescent roll crust/log (this is a HUGE favorite of the picky eater!!!) roast cauliflower w/olive oil and season to your liking, then on a pizza stone lay out the crescent rolls, small points out; pile on the califlower, and criss cross the crescent roll points until the cauliflower is encased and bake until the rolls are done.

My daughter is 9 and is crazy picky. I actually signed her up for a day of hot lunch at school after you tried that with Leta and it was a miracle. For a day. I decided a long time ago, when Leila started taking things off her "menu" that I would not get upset about food, or over-value food one way or the other. I was also a picky eater, and the dinner table with my family was a very stressful place for me with yelling and threats, and this stretched into my adulthood. Whenever I sit around a conference table, I get very twitchy and nervous.
I wanted the family dinner table to be a harmonious place for us, and that meant no fighting about food. I don't know if this was the right decision, and I have an only child, so I do make her a separate dinner. She's happy and healthy and does well in school and sleeps all night, so it can't be all bad. Sometimes, in darker moments, I'm afraid that she'll grow up a junk food junkie who has panic attacks in the produce aisle of the grocery store (like I do) but then I think, too bad for her: we all have our challenges, and this will be (one of) her's.