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Old Tue, May-30-17, 07:10
tess9132 tess9132 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 873
 
Plan: general lc
Stats: 214/146/130 Female 5'4"
BF:
Progress: 81%
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My biological kids were premies and they didn't eat until they were almost a year. I think I tried to give my oldest food so she'd sleep better, but she had the tongue thrusting reflex until she was about 11 months so it didn't go very well. But I'm a pretty relaxed parent and food was not something I ever wanted to fight over so I gave up pretty quickly and let my kids learn to feed themselves (unfortunately, that mostly meant Cheerios and those gross little hot dogs meant for babies).

My adopted kids on the other hand came from foster care and they were feeding themselves very early on. I remember one of my boys was drinking coffee (and that was probably the least worrisome of his habits) and eating any food or drink left on tables when he came to us at about a year of age.

I think this is the key:
Quote:
Brown adds that parents who want to spoon-feed children should be careful not to force them to finish a jar of food. “Let them eat as little as they want. A jar of baby food is too big for what a little baby needs. When you are waving the spoon around and saying ‘Here comes the big aeroplane — let’s finish it’, if they clamp their mouth shut, forget about it. They will not starve.”

I firmly believe emotional health trumps all things physical and so I very deliberately let our kids eat as much or as little as they wanted and there were times our adopted kids would gorge themselves until they got sick. Although that sounds awful, they desperately needed to understand that food will always be there for them. I used to give gentle reminders, "careful, you don't want to get sick" but never, ever did I (or do I) battle my kids over food.
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