Feeding a 10 month old

[SM23Mama21]

DS loved to eat until about two weeks ago. He has now decided that he does NOT like vegetables or meat. What do you do when this happens? I keep offering it to him in hopes that he will decided to like it again, but he will not open his mouth just from the smell of it. He still loves fruit, bread and some of the sweeter veggies, but nothing else. He also will not eat anything with chunks in it. He likes to finger feed bread, bananas, egg yolks and yogurt bites, but that is about it. How do you get your DC to eat the healthy stuff? I know that table food is just for practice for the first year, but that first year is fast approaching and I want to be sure that he is getting the right nutrition.

[brittone2]

I like Ellyn Satter's advice. Your job is to offer a good variety of healthy options. DC's job is to choose what to eat (from those healthy options) and how much. Beyond that, IMO there is no use in trying to control the situation because it causes stress for both of you and you can't make them eat.

Both of my kids preferred finger feeding and essentially went straight to that at 9-10 months. DS ate only *very* small quantities of food until he was about 13-15 months.

[truly scrumptious]

Not a BTDT, but a friend had the same thing happen with her DS. She became very good at hiding veggies (like hiding zucchini in banana bread). Maybe a baby recipe book would help? (Like Annabel Karmel, or Super Baby Food?) That's where I usually go when I'm stumped for ideas.

[Katigre]

I would just keep offering and not worry. It sounds like he's eating a variety of flavors and textures and I'm sure it's just a phase that will pass (when he'll refuse a different kind of food instead, ha!).

I read somewhre that it takes up to 12 times of being offered for a child to accept a food and most parents stop offering too soon, so I'd just put some of the food on the plate/tray for him to take if he wants.

If you want to be creative there are lots of cute designs and ways of preparing vegetables that are kid-friendly (the Annabel Karmel book has tons of ideas with really nice photos of what they look like).