Picky Eater

by Nia

How do you know when you just have a picky eater on your hands, or if you need to intervene to see what the problem is? My son has been a difficult eater since we started him on solids. He had severe reflux and food allergies as an infant and when we started solids there were certain things he would love and others he would hate (like peaches). Then when we moved to table food the only things he would eat were nuggets and fries.

Now he's almost two and his diet only consists of cereal, french toast (can't be homemade though),nuggets (only if from Mcdonalds), fries, pb&j, and yogurt. He will not try anything else. If I try to get him to taste something else he screams and has a full blown tantrum.

This has been going on for months now and he doesn't gain any weight, yet he isn't underweight b/c he eats snack food. He is 25 lbs at 23 months old. He was evaluated last week for EI and he got in for speech delays, but they told me that it is normal for him to be a picky eater at this age.

For some reason I feel like it is more than him just being a picky eater. It's almost as if he doesn't know that he's hungry. He'll often go to bed without dinner and won't wake up in the middle of the night hungry. It just seems that even if he was a picky eater, he'd at least ask for food (he can sign "eat").

So if he is indeed a picky eater, how do I make sure to get him the nutrition he needs?