Feeding at 12 months

JW has mostly been an enthusiastic eater. He has been willing to try new tastes, and up till a month ago, had his favourites when it comes to food. But just after his first birthday, we did notice a change in his behaviour: with increased fussiness, unwillingness to sleep, and distraction when it came to meal times.

Now, a month on, JW has taken to refusing his solids, sometimes going without a meal (or 2) and just drinking milk. At first, (and still to some extent) this raised alarm bells in Mrs Kong's mind. After all, isn't a well fed child demonstrative of good parenting? And what about all the time and resources to put the food on the table? It is certainly a waste of money and good food. Shouldn't we just feed it to JW anyway, after all, he is only a baby and we are acting in his best interest?

Yes, it is all too tempting to force feed JW at times like this: a thought that has crossed Mrs Kong's mind. However, after consulting several well recommended books on baby care and child rearing, this quite clearly isn't a simple solution for the reasons below:

It is believed that force feeding can lead to unhealthy eating habits as it teaches the child to ignore his own bodily signals - and to continue eating when he is indeed full. Further more, the right to decide whether he is full has been named as a component of a child's physical integrity, not too dissimilar from the right to be free of physical abuse. This is alleged to have far reaching implications to a child's emotional and psychological well being.

Hence we are now faced with the question: do we (a) force feed JW and ensure that he gets 3 square meals a day (assuming we are able to do this?); or (b) do we let JW decide for himself if he is indeed hungry and wants to eat, but waste all that food AND let him skip meals?

The latter choice is still too troubling for Mummy, but it might be the better course of action just to let him be.

[As long as he does not lose weight. ... !]

This is how much JW had for lunch yesterday... just the bit on the bottom left ..

Thankfully, JW had some broccoli and orange. The remainder fell into his "little pouch"

Of course, there could be other, more sinister reasons for JW's refusal of some of his meals. It could mean allergies for one, but we are not certain of this yet. Reading up on allergies at the moment, and hopefully we won't find anything serious.

Meanwhile, Mr Kong and Mrs Kong have now taken on DBKL like roles. We get rid of the wastage from JW's meals - Mr Kong being in charge of liquid disposals (milk in particular) while Mrs Kong is responsible for the solid disposals (all other foods not containing milk)! Lets see who puts on more weight from these new parenting duties!