I don't know how he even poops...
 

My 6 year old has almost gotten to the point where about the only thing he will eat is something peanut related!

Peanut butter sandwich (no jelly)

Peanut granola bars

Peanut butter pretzels

Sometimes, he just wants a gob of peanut butter.

Now, I like it as much as the next person but too much of a good thing...

In the morning he its a normal variety of stuff. At dinner he usually eats what we put in front of him (though it can and has been a struggle).

But now during the day, at lunch I'll send him apples in his lunch, he asks for apples in his lunch and today my wife comes up from dropping him off with 3 containers of apples that haven't been eaten!

I'm just ranting a bit here...

Today's lunch was a peanut butter sandwich, with some cheese puffs (pirate booty) and for snack I made him some apples and peanut butter pretzels and for his TLC snack he requested a peanut butter bar and something else...

PEANUT BUTTER!!!!

ARGGGGGGGGG!!!!!

I'm contemplating taking peanuts out of the equation entirely for a bit but that may be an over reaction. I'm sure he's just trying to exert some control in some aspect of his life. My #2 problem with all this is when he doesn't eat what I send him, he wastes my money and I like my money. I work hard for my money, I don't have an endless supply of money. I'm just sayin...

Wife is pissed!

We have decided he's 6, he's old enough to talk to us about this food wasting craptasticness...

The other one, the 2 year old eats whatever I put in front of him.

The other night we were having sausages and I like mustards - nothing hot really, more of a dijon or yellow mustard lover and the boy had a sampling of each of the mustards we had in the house. I also enjoy korean food and sometimes the little one will even try the kimchi I'm eating. He loves rice vinegar on his rice. He'll try ANYTHING, it's great. #1 however...want's nothing to do with anything that isn't peanut or ketchup covered.

I know, I know it's just the way he is and his sensitivities are what they are - I don't want to punish him for that. But he has GOT to work with me here...

at least he doesn't have peanut allergies....

My oldest son went through the same thing with something else. Wanted to eat that and only that. He didn't pitch a fit or act out, but he just acted like he wasn't hungry and woudn't eat unless we gave him his food obsession. He'd go for a long time without eating, too.

One of our best friends is a pediatrician. The only time we asked him for free advice was then. He just laughed and said a lot of, if not most, kids go through a food obsession at about that age. He said there's nothing wrong with it, and that as long as the food is reasonably healthy and low fat, go ahead and give him whatever he wants. So we did. He ate like a champ, was a happy camper, and grew out of it in no time.

Just let him eat through his food obsession and tell funny stories about it when he hits his teen years and is trying to impress the babes.

We do know that peanut butter is good for you right? It sounds like this is his primary source of protein and it has a lot of fiber (thats how he can poop).

My parents handled this differently:

* They put food on the table, I ate it.
* If I didn't want to eat it, I didn't leave the table
* I didn't get to make requests
* I didn't get to peruse a menu
* I didn't get to send it back if I didn't like it
* I didn't get any say in the menu until I was old enough to do the cooking myself.

I'm not a parent, so you can take this with a big grain of table salt, but you're setting this kid up to be a spoiled brat.

So its wrong that my wife prints up a menu??? LOL

I think the biggest mistake is to 'MAKE' someone eat their dinner. Thats how I was raised and I think it contributes to obesity.

Anyway, in our house, dinner is served and you eat what is prepared. If you dont want to eat all of your dinner then you are obviously too full for any kind of dessert and you better not come in later wanting to eat.

This, except I was always welcome to go hungry - but just had to stay at the table until the family was done.

We have never had to get quite that strict with our girl since we didn't have major problems, but it is the approach we went with and now we have an adventuresome and agreeable little eater at 7 yrs. Now she gets flexibility since she doesn't cause static. About the only rule now is that she can't turn up her nose at stuff until she's had a bite of it first. Most of the time she ends up liking it.

Last night she ate pad thai and a piece of spider roll.

Or, be glad he doesn't go to a school where they've banned peanut food products because someone else in the school has an allergy to them.

To counter that arguement from the school I would go to you to get a note saying that my kid HAD TO HAVE PEANUTS...then let us see the school district squirm with that one...

Our Temple is like that for the summer day camp he attends. Not as bad as what you're referring to but we substitute soy nut butter which he actually likes more (as do I) so there is no issue.

Sometimes he asks for a soy and peanut butter sandwich.

We have gone the route of trying to force him to eat what we do and frankly this boy is willing to fight it much more than we are. I'm not a roll over parent but seriously - the fight was a CONSTANT, knock down drag out every night. We finally just gave up. If he doesn't eat - he doesn't eat and there isn't anything I can do about it (except give him candy right? He'll eat that...). Now that was the past - we have had him and us in some counseling and that has been productive. We're dealing with a some impulse control and ADHD issues. I'm fine with him snorting peanut butter up his nose, I'm not fine with him asking for food and then not eating it.

These days, and there are previous threads on this - we have lightened up at dinner time and so has he. He eats more, I know what he likes and doesn't and I do tailor things a bit but I don't go far out of my way. I meet him part way and he's meeting me part way.

Hopefully he will grow out of it but I'm a bit food obsessive myself, I just have more range. =-)

It's funny how children can come from the same physical place (my house, specifically) yet be so entirely different. My wife has friends who complain about their parents and their childhood. This 6 year old is very challenging and sometimes insufferable. These two situations makes my wife now ask her friends who complain about their parents and childhood ask those friends 'um, maybe you were a craptastic child eh?'

HA!

I would tell your little rug rat, that if he doesn't want the Apple don't ask for one. That he is not hurting your feelings by NOT asking for one...and that you are trying to give him something that he likes in his lunch. That you thought he wanted Apples. That he should ask for what he truly wants to eat.

If he wants Peanut Butter give him Peanut Butter. It is not bad for him, the only thing I would check is the Sugar and Salt content in the brands.

Unless there is some hidden agenda that i am missing here, it sounds like a phase. Ask him what makes peanut butter taste so good to him. Keep asking why...it makes you think about why you do the things that you do and the things you like or don't like.

OK. There's something wrong with your kid if he likes soy nut butter. Yech.

Like tabs suggests, just check how much sugar is in the peanut butter you're giving your kid, as some have a buttload of the sweet stuff as an ingredient.

This sounds like me! I swear there are times when I'd rather have a PBJ than a filet from my favorite steakhouse. And after making a sandwich I always sneak a big bite of peanut butter before putting the jar away. Great, now my mouth is watering.

That is 'sig-worthy'.

If you ask for it, then you eat it. Otherwise, you don't get it a second time. There is no third.

As far as the peanut butter thing. I don't think it's a big thing as long as the butter in question is a healthy choice and it's supplemented with maybe a multi-vitamin. Kids go through food phases. My little brother went through a period of about two years where he would only eat peanut butter and jelly. And the jelly had to be blackberry. He hate it 3 or 4 time a day and absolutely nothing else.

Apples or bananas with peanut butter spread on them = YUM!! Might try to diversify on that basis. Peanut butter pancakes, etc. Have fun with it and he'll outgrow it.

angela

Actht ZOOOO.."a bit food obsessive...." does the Apple fall far from the tree...

"Impulse control"...yeah it is called being SIX YEARS OLD...at 6 years old you are letting the WITCH DOCTORS diagnose your kid...that is fking insane...What do yu have to say about that? Are you abdicating your own common sense to someone who is a supposed expert?

The day that he stops fighting is the day I would start to worry. watch the movie "Stand By Me" some parents tend to beat the creativity out of their kids instead of encouraging a kids talent and focusing it....

Howevr a parnet also has to teach their kid to recognize that there are limits, that they are not all powerfull and can get anything they want. Clint said, "A man has got to know his limits' of what he can do today and what he can do tommorow.

At 6 years old Dad is Lord and Master, and what Dad says goes...why do you have that power, because in childhood you are respoonsible for their safety and welfare. Hopefully you are teaching them good survival skills for later on in life.

IMHO it's just kid weirdness- but don't take my advice. My son would run in circles and yell. I don't know why. Later he carried 2 liter bottles of soda around all the time. Then it was hours of Pac Man at the arcade. Annoying as hell and scary but I put it down as kid weirdness. Now, with a Phd that he earned through scholarships, he teaches at Boston University hospital and has given me two of the greatest grandkids a man could ever pray for. I don't know if I did right by being moderately tolerant, but it all worked out for the best. There is no formula. You do your best and hope it's right.

Peanut Butter and blackberry jam sandwich. Yum. I love peanut butter.


I have five kids - 12 to 19. I have been through everything, including food issues. All I can do is laugh because, man, things never go the way I think they should.


You asked for apples! Why did you ask for apples and then not eat them? If you're not going to eat them, then don't ask for them! When you have a job and want to waste your money on things you're not going to eat, go ahead, knock yourself out. But until then, it's MY money and MY food your wasting, so knock it off.

Oh, man.

Mike, seriously chill with the kid. Get him outside and run him around until he's hungry enough to eat whatever. One of the best pieces of advice we ever got from our docs was that there are three things you can't force a kid to do: eat, go to the bathroom, and go to sleep. If he's six and you've already had him into counseling and you're worried about ADHD, it really makes me wonder if you're getting a little too intense for the kid. He's going to grow up and develop into a fine young man no matter what you do. He'll learn to eat other stuff. He'll be a polite, constructive member of society no matter what mealtime rituals you instill in him. So why fight over it? Maybe family counseling for parenting advice would be helpful. It's always nice to pick up tips and other techniques from other parents and pros in the field.

As to the apples, he's six years old. Sometimes when you're that age you start out in the day thinking you'd like some apples. So you ask for them. But when you get around to eating lunch, what seemed like dessert in the morning looks like an extra helping of fruits and veggies, or you get filled up with delicious PB&J, and so you don't eat it. I know I've done the same thing and my chonological (but perhaps not mental) age is considerably older than 6. How much do a couple apples cost? Is the toll on you, your wife and the kid worth the value of the lost food? And no, it's not the principle. Kids need to learn to throw away food. They shouldn't take it if they're not going to eat it, but more harm comes from forcing people to eat all they take than comes from throwing away the excess that shouldn't have been taken. Just tell the kid the next time he asks for apples that you'll only give him one slice because he didn't eat any the last time, and that if he eats it this time, he gets more next time, but if he doesn't eat it, he gets none next time.

Don't turn things into a battle of the wills with a 6 year old boy.

Edit: By the way, my older son who went through the same phase now eats anything, including authentic Chinese stuff my wife and her mother eat, including a lot of stuff I can't even force myself to touch.

+ 1000 Best advise I've read on OT in a long time.

Do a search on, "Supertasters".

My business partners son is one...could be your son's issue.

I'm not going to defend myself or the diagnosis of my child with you; I struggled against the ADHD crap for a long time and finally - it is what it is. Take it or leave it.

I think you have read my post and gotten the wrong idea entirely.

I have worked long and hard on being 'chill' with the kid. The problems isn't what he's eating right now it's what he's wasting.

Much like I said to a previous post, I will not argue about the diagnosis. I struggled against the diagnosis for along time simply not willing to accept his behavior as anything other than 'being 6' or whatever age he was at the time.

Seriously though, I imagine he's pooping payday bars.

Mike,

We've been there too...the food that lives in the schoolbag; only to be seen when Mike or I clear it out :rolleyes:.

Here's how it went for us...

No1 son ate anything when he was little. By about 4 or 5 he started to get picky and would only eat a very small variety of things. Being a foodie, this drove me crazy...our family friend & doc just said to let it go; it was a stage only. But once he started school at age 6 he found he had no time to eat at lunch; was waaaaaay too busy playing. So often the lunch would come home untouched and would land in the rubbish bin :mad:.
After a while I ended up putting less in the lunch box and kept it simple...often if he didn't eat it at school and would come home famished and try to eat his way through the fridge I would block his path and remind him of the uneaten lunch...two choices then. Eat the uneaten lunch if he was so hungry or wait til dinner...he soon learned that arguing wasn't an option cos I spewed forth the same spiel day after day...he grew out of it in the end (tedious stuff though).

Daughter never ever did this...would eat just about everything, every day. To the point where she would prefer to miss out on playing in order to finish her lunch when she was younger. Now though, she is losing her taste for meat and that's OK...I remember in my teenage years I wasn't so fond of it either. I can live with that; just tastebuds changing and probably hormonally related. She eats really well, meat or not.

No. 2 son...born famished! Food machine...still is at 11. But not at school; way too busy playing football and soccer and basketball etc at lunchtime. Can't be bothered to eat an apple then, he says it takes too much time :rolleyes:. So he gets one big sandwich and that's it. And then he attacks the fridge with mundane regularity when he gets home every afternoon...

Because I am like you and get very annoyed when I find bruised and battered fruit at the bottom of his bag I just don't put it in anymore. At the moment here it is hard enough to find decent produce and it's getting really expensive because of the floods etc; so I don't want to be wasting it.

Your boy will grow out of the peanut butter thing...Save yourself some dollars and grief and just don't put the other stuff in. Remind him when he asks for an apple what happened to all the other apples...save it for when he comes home and you can present him with an attractive plate of fruit all cut up for afternoon tea...OMG why is it that they will devour it all if it is cut up and looks pretty :rolleyes:?

1> Yeah just blame it all on the Parents..they are always at fault...and thats is why we have such a society of victims...typical

2. Never argue with a 6 year old cuse he will win and you will wind up looking the fool for even trying to argue with him.

3. Ummmmm just LOVE that BLOOD TONGUE...and Head Cheese...

I would tell your little rug rat, that if he doesn't want the Apple don't ask for one. That he is not hurting your feelings by NOT asking for one...and that you are trying to give him something that he likes in his lunch. That you thought he wanted Apples. That he should ask for what he truly wants to eat.


This little passage is what as known as threading the eye of the needle...it expresses the heart of the matter in a very straight forward manner.

Now I wash my hands of this Thread....

Mike, I didn't mean to dispute the diagnosis. I know you've done the medical workup to get where you are. My brother is a school psychologist and Number One son of the picky eater past has an ADD diagnosis. We went through a lot of the same research you probably did when our docs gave us the diagnosis.

My point is simply that he is a six year old. He will grow up. He will learn to eat what's put in front of him, to tie his shoe laces, do higher math and not to end his sentences with prepositions. And he's going to get there from here no matter what you do. You can either pick fights that won't have any impact on his behavior (my parents could have put a gun to my head and I wouldn't have changed a thing, so I know what I'm talking about) or you can set some parameters and not sweat the rest.

The book Freakonomics has a whole chapter dedicated to research that proves what we do as parents - forcing kids to study, making them learn good habits, etc., have NO correlation to the child growing up to having a successful adult life. The researchers say that what the parents do has NOTHING to do with the kid's success as an adult. What is inside the kid, what he is born with, combined with the social standing and education of his parents determines the kid's chances to have a successful adult life. This is defined by being able to live independently, hold a job, form a family, and stay out of jail, not just financial success.

They illustrate their point with an epilogue at the end of the book entitled "Two Paths to Harvard." It tells the story of two boys born at about the same time. One was white, born to an upper middle class white family, surrounded by loving and educated parents. He was a scholastic star, well liked, well behaved, won awards at every turn and blew through high school with straight A's and ended up getting his doctorate in math from Harvard before he was 30.

The other kid was black. He grew up in an inner city neighborhood where he didn't know his father and learned that when his mother's boyfriend knocked teeth out of her mouth in fights he was supposed to run and pick them up before they were lost. He sold drugs, carried a gun, and lived the gangster equivalent of the good life, but he loved sports. He played football well enough to be on the team, and he had to go to school to play ball. After high school, the only way to play more ball was to go to college. Some second rate college gave him a scholarship, and off he went. At college, he realized two things: 1) He was good enough for college ball but he was never going to be a pro; and 2) He liked to learn. He ended up doing well in college, getting advanced degrees, eventually finding himself a professor of sociology at - you guessed it - Harvard.

The second kid is some famous sociologist whose name escapes me now, but who wrote a lot of the research that the authors of Freakonomics used for their book. The other kid was

Ted Kaczynski

The moral of the story, and what the docs (and my brother) have told me repeatedly is, set boundaries, but don't worry about small stuff with kids, and define small stuff broadly. They're going to do what they're going to do whether you fight with them or not, so don't fight with them. My wife is the absolute most Type A obsessive compulsive parent in the world. She is in fact a Chinese Mother of the type who recently made the cover of Time. She got where she is in life by studying for 12 years on the family's toilet seat because it was the only place she had room to sit in the apartment she shared with about twelve other people and by golly, if she did it, her kids can too. But after enough talks with the docs, she has calmed down about a hundred notches. So have I. And our kids are 100% the better for it. The older one would do anything to go to the Air Force Academy and fly fighter planes. The younger one missed straight A's last semester with a B+ in something. Trust me, it will all work out.

Knee jerk reaction - everyone is an arm chair psycho therapist.

It's either my fault, his mother's fault or anything but his actual brain.

It's his brain. There isn't anything wrong with it really, it's just under developed in a few places and so his impulse control is slightly less than that of a 'normal 6 year old'.

Yeah, what's normal? He's a great kid, he doesn't get in a lot of trouble at school and he isn't terribly disruptive but he has been identified with a few problem areas. He's average.

His life at home is a bit different, he used to throw a lot of temper tantrums and we worked on that with a moderate amount of success. I would say we are fairly 'normal' there now, he still has them but generally speaking they are at a normal frequency instead of a daily or more frequency. We do tend to monitor what he eats because we have correlated his eating habits to some of his problems. He has a tendency to do what has been described here as normal and forgo eating in favor of playing. When this happens his behavior later in the day is kind of like those new snickers commercials where the dude is a diva and eats a snickers and then is normal again. Except my boy doesn't just turn into a diva he will have a complete and total Chernobyl meltdown. So we are trying to impress upon him that eating regularly will help him with that. We keep emergency food with us all the time, he's a growing boy and technically 'always' hungry, he's very active in sports. Soccer, baseball, swimming and now he's developed an interest in basketball.

His brother at 2 is much more self sufficient than he is. I can't tell you how many times I have walked into the kitchen to find #2 sitting at the table eating something entirely appropriate (box of raisins or a piece of fruit) just happy as can be and perfectly content because he was hungry. #1 gets hungry and it's like he doesn't even realize it - It is perplexing to me.

Part of me wonders if it has something to do with him being first born and used to us getting it for him but we do the same thing more or less for #2. We don't lock the cabinets, he knows where the food is...I dunno...

Still; I can't stress this enough - we go through a lot of peanut butter and if you don't like soy nut butter, you're buying the wrong kind. The kind we get from whole foods is fan-damn-tastic. It is smooth and creamy and has a very excellent texture and flavor to it. I wouldn't be able to tell it wasn't peanut butter if someone didn't tell me it wasn't.

Mike, you are not alone in this. My son doesn't eat much but mashed potatoes.

Our doc told us to let him eat when he feels like it as he lost weight since starting some new meds. We make him sit at the table for dinner but he usually doesn't eat anything. He gets hungry around 8 pm. It goes against pretty much everything I want to teach my kids but we work with it.

Every day is a challenge with him. It wears us out and I keep needing to remind myself that it could be worse.

Exactly, I have kept the things you have said to me in mind. We haven't started any medications but we have talked about it. He does eat, it's usually the same things but he has a variety. He eats well in the morning. School time is a challenge because he would rather play. Dinner is more normal these days and he's actually lightened up a bit. One day he said 'I'm Six now, I can eat mashed potatoes.'

We had to pry the bowl from the hands of #2 (imagine a 2 year old with the bowl of potatoes and most of it on his face...) to get some for him.

SmileWavy

I'll probably touch base with you a little more just to get some information on what you're dealing with. My understanding is that the meds make them EAT LESS. Which I'm just not sure I can handle.

I'll probably touch base with you a little more just to get some information on what you're dealing with. My understanding is that the meds make them EAT LESS. Which I'm just not sure I can handle.



Anytime, Mike. PM, email, carrier pigeon, whatever method you prefer.

My daughter is only 10 months old so no PB yet. But if she's anything like me, she'll enjoy a big spoonfull of PB on 2 scoops of chocolate ice cream, yum!
(Very interesting post)

Oh and he will always eat his own boogers.

Always.