The Vicissitudes of Toddlerhood

Beginning around age 1, Emily Rosenzweig refused to eat anything except bland white foods such as cottage cheese, yogurt, or plain pasta. "Now that she's 3, she won't try something new even if she's starving  -- and even if it's white," reports her mother, Pam, of Millburn, NJ.

Regardless of whether you flunked Baby Feeding 101 and failed to offer green beans the required number of times or your child sailed through babyhood with a tummyful of healthy foods, toddlerhood presents special mealtime challenges. Some stumbling blocks and ways to triumph:

Minor rebellions "Developmentally, kids this age are very oppositional, and if you push them, they may reject foods just to see your reaction," says Ellyn Satter, a registered dietitian and author of Child of Mine: Feeding With Love and Good Sense. Solution? Don't rise to the bait. While it's okay to give in to your child's whims now and then, don't make a practice of it. "Erratic eating is also normal at this age," says Satter. "Your toddler may want white yogurt one day and pink the next because it's her new favorite color, and if you don't mind keeping both on hand, that's okay." One-food eating jags are nothing to worry about either, says Dr. Sears, as long as the favored food is nutritionally sound, like pizza or peanut butter sandwiches.

Drinking problems "In my experience, too much milk and juice is actually a leading cause of poor eating. Both are high in calories, so they dampen a child's appetite and displace other foods from the diet," says Will Wilkoff, M.D., a pediatrician in Brunswick, ME, and the author of Coping With a Picky Eater: A Guide for the Perplexed Parent. Although your child can have unlimited water, she should drink only four ounces of milk at each meal and four ounces of juice twice a day at snacktime, Dr. Wilkoff says.

When Stephanie Mullen got this advice from her pediatrician, she decided to break her 2-year-old daughter's milk-bottle habit cold turkey. "It was really scary," recalls the mom from Blauvelt, NY. "Matilda went on a hunger strike for two full days, but I stood firm. On the third morning, she woke up ravenous and has been eating better ever since."

Improper portions Perhaps the most common cause of problems is the gap between how much parents want kids to eat and how much they can actually consume. "Colin, who's 2, will take three bites of a sandwich or three spoonfuls of spaghetti, then claim he's done," says his mom, Lisa Perry of Malden, MA. "It just doesn't seem possible that he could live on such a paltry amount."

"Remember that a toddler's stomach is the size of his fist," says Dr. Sears. "Put his fist next to a plate and you'll see if your expectations are too great." In addition, he's growing only one-tenth as much as he did as a baby, so he consumes less. For most toddlers and preschoolers, then, three square meals is an unrealistic and unnecessary goal. A child can eat a good breakfast, a so-so lunch, and then next to nothing for dinner and still be perfectly healthy. You're on the right course, say experts, if your child's height and weight are continuing to follow the proper curve on his growth chart.

"When we analyzed children's meal patterns," says Birch, "we saw that though they might eat a big breakfast one day and none the next, they automatically made adjustments at other meals so that their entire caloric intake was consistent from day to day."

Interfering with this innate ability to know how much to eat can backfire. "As a mother, I know it's hard not to become emotionally involved in your child's eating," says Birch, "so we beg or bribe him to take just one more bite." But that strategy can have unwanted consequences. "You're teaching your kid to ignore his internal signals, which can lead to overeating later on," she says. "Plus, as soon as you withdraw the reward, he'll often stop eating the nutritious food and may even develop an increased dislike for it."

"It's okay if your child doesn't eat his vegetables one night  -- or for two months straight. His brain won't stop developing," says Dr. Wilkoff. What's not okay is for a parent to become so invested in a child's eating habits that every meal becomes a source of dread for the whole family.

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