my 6 year old wont eat!!

[claire99991]

Ok so my daughter turns 6 next month she has always been small she has always sat on the 9th centile in her red book the HV have kept a eye on her weight up till she went to nursery.

She wears 3-4 year old clothes and is 6 next month she is a normal height, she has always had a small appettite but over the last few months her eating habbits are driving me to despair and i dont know what to do. She has turned extremly fussy and refuses point blank to eat most foods, i have tried taking her meals away and not feeding her and waiting for her to get hungry but she never says im hungry, she had a tooth problem that stopped her wanting to eat as it was hurting her and then a stomach bug that made her not want to eat for about a week (well the odd thing) and now her appettite is even worse than before she has a couple of mouth fulls of food at each meal and then i catch her sneaking it into the bin/down the loo or to the dogs or giving it to her brother who is 2...if i try to talk to her about eating she just cries and says everything makes her feel sick, now she is going back to school tomorow terriffied she will be forced to eat her lunch and i hate seing her like this! her trousers fall down when she walks, we had to get new school shoes fitted as the bones in her feet were so prominent they were rubbing on her shoes, you can see every rib on her body,

should i get a appt with a school nurse? or GP? do i take her to the appointment? i dont feel its a power thing as she trys to hide the fact she hasnt eaten

(she isnt intrested in sweets or crisps or buiscuits either incase ppl think she might just eat to much rubbish)

dont know what to do. x

 

[hellohefalump]

Definitely take her to the gp, they can check If there's anything physically wrong that causes her to feel sick. If not then it might be psychological and she needs help to stop it turning into an eating disorder. Either way, gp should be able to help. Good luck

 

[smelly07]

i agree, she needs to see a GP obvioulsy the tooth and sick bug problem may have cause some pcychological problem...............personally i wouldnt create any issue with food around her, offer her food and let her eat what she wants.........she shouldnt feel she has to hide food from you iykwim..............but you definitely need to seek professional help to stop it esculating further.

xxxxxxxxxx

 

[pandacub]

I agree with the others, take her to the gp. Would she drink ensure in the meantime?

 

[sg0720]

i also would take her to the doctor and like the above poster said try to get her to drink pediasure (SP??)

 

[leahsbabybump]

we have just gone through the exact same with ds hes 6 in may he had bad teeth so never ate properly his teeth now sorted had bad stomach so not eating again everything ok now but still not wanting to eat we finaly got down to the bottom of it this morning he is been bullied at school AGAIN so sad really i feel so sorry for him i was bullied at school and it ruined my life even up untill this day
any how this abvs isnt the case with you as you chatted to her and she said she feels sick so i would DEFO get her checked out asap
my son had routine bloods the other week and due to lack of eating he now had anemia bless him at 5 years old sodding bullies im so cross we reported it about 3 times and nothing im changing his school

sorry for mini rant lol i know exactly how you feel so upsetting isnt it i would defo get her checked out have you tried the ooo just have another mouthfull trick sometimes works for us lol when he took that mouth then say oooo go one have another lol usually gets another good 10 mouthfulls down him lol
i know this sounds os silly but do you stop her from guzzling down drinks before meal times when i was a kid i used to guzzle looooaaads of pop then never wanted my food when it was meal times lol

anyhow pm me if you wana chat to someone about it

 

[andrada321]

hey ,a good way to make her eat something i'ts by showinhg her some cartoons where they eat lots of fruits and stuff.she would enjoy that and start eating.LAZY TOWN it's a good one

 

[Fuzzball77]

As her main role model i.e. parent of the same gender, you no doubt model having a healthy appetite in front of her I'm sure, but maybe you can be even more overt about how much 'Mum LOVES food'. Like really make a point of enjoying your sandwich or your banana smoothie. I saw this on Dr Phil and he was saying that little girls' attitudes to food can be vastly improved by watching how their mum's relate to food. Maybe it's just the case that she's not noticing your own love of food because she's not watching you?

Maybe you could get some magazines and do a craft activity together where you each create your own poster of all the foods you love, by cutting and pasting from the mags? That way you can see whether there are some obscure foods that she may like to try that she hasn't let on about in the past. She could be after something funky like pickles on their own or something? My daughter loves pickles and shredded zucchini but turns her nose up at chocolate - go figure!

It's a tough situation because you are not wanting to make a battle out of food but then you want to take care of their nutrition. My daughter refused to eat pasta for dinner last night, wouldn't even take one bite just exploded into tears because she thought she was getting cheesy rice for dinner. She ate half of a small bowl of the pasta (after much encouragement and many thumbs up gestures from me each time she took a mouthful) then she said she was full but wanted chocolate sauce for dessert, the little monkey. I told her the only other food she could have if she was still hungry was a carrot, so she ate one and that was the end of it. I didn't force her to eat the whole bowl of pasta, as I've always tried to refrain from having food battles. Rather I just offer something really boring and healthy as an alternative so she doesn't go to bed hungry.

Best of luck with your action plan. I'm sure you'll get to the bottom of all this but it really is curious that your DD is saying she feels sick after most foods. Maybe you could offer her a menu of 10 healthy things your'e sure she may like in some small way and then at dinner time get her to choose? That way she may feel more in control of what she puts into her body? x