Refusing solid foods: Encouraging your eight month old
My eight-month-old son eats about 32 ounces of formula a day and is very content with that. He wants nothing to do with solid food. I started feeding him oatmeal at four months and he would eat a little. At six months my pediatrician said that I should start replacing a feeding with solid foods. He will still only eat a little bit of cereal and vegetables. He prefers them chunkier and not mashed and likes to feed himself. What should I do?
Question:Sue Gilbert
Sue Gilbert works as a consulting nutritionist. For many years she worked with Earth's Best Organic Baby Food, integrating nutrition and... Read more
Your pediatrician is right, he does need to start solid foods. The longer he puts off eating them, the more he will balk at them later when you are really desperate for him to move on to solids.
He is obviously ready for chunkier foods. Try offering him even more consistency in his foods. Offer him some mashed table food that you are eating. Serve him finger foods like soft cooked carrots and beans, ripe banana sticks, cubes of tofu, scrambled egg yolk, large curd cottage cheese, ripe bits of avocado and papaya, Cheerios, moist chunks of a muffin and cooked pasta.
The fact that he likes to feed himself is a good sign, and is a trait you want to encourage. By offering him foods that he can pick up with his fingers, you are doing just that. It is more difficult to get the food into his mouth with a spoon.
Continue to be patient with your son. He will probably continue to be picky about what he eats for a long while. Right through toddlerhood, kids are often very fussy eaters. Research has shown that the more often a young child sees and tries a new food the more apt he is to like it. That same research showed that it takes at least 8 to 10 tries of a new food before it becomes an accepted food! (They obviously weren't offering ice cream in that research.) Therefore, your patience and persistence are paramount to your son increasing the amount and variety of new foods that he will eat.
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