Cheese Burger/Pizza/Lasagne for 5 Month Old?

I am a US home based childcare provider, not currently on a food program, who has been working very diligently offering one food at a time (steamed/pureed) to a 5 month old infant with the parents involvement. I have been following a very detailed/signed feeding plan we worked out. Recently I began having great difficulty getting this infant to take formula from a bottle or eat from an infant spoon. Then the screaming began without symptoms of being sick.

After speaking with the parents about scheduling a doctors appointment to rule our ear infection/strep/thrush or anything I could think of, I peeked through their family photos on facebook while waiting for a return call. There were photos of this infant holding/sucking on a McDonalds cheeseburger/fries, a slice of pizza, and a couple photos of the parents hand feeding this baby lasagna and giving sips of soda by dripping it in the baby's mouth with the straw in an area restaurant. I want to scream, I have worked so hard.

How would you proceed if placed in a similar situation? Is it really any of my business? This infant is with me 5 days a week at 8.5 hours a day and has been since six weeks old.

[marniewon]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I am a US home based childcare provider, not currently on a food program, who has been working very diligently offering one food at a time (steamed/pureed) to a 5 month old infant with the parents involvement. I have been following a very detailed/signed feeding plan we worked out. Recently I began having great difficulty getting this infant to take formula from a bottle or eat from an infant spoon. Then the screaming began without symptoms of being sick.

After speaking with the parents about scheduling a doctors appointment to rule our ear infection/strep/thrush or anything I could think of, I peeked through their family photos on facebook while waiting for a return call. There were photos of this infant holding/sucking on a McDonalds cheeseburger/fries, a slice of pizza, and a couple photos of the parents hand feeding this baby lasagna and giving sips of soda by dripping it in the baby's mouth with the straw in an area restaurant. I want to scream, I have worked so hard.

How would you proceed if placed in a similar situation? Is it really any of my business? This infant is with me 5 days a week at 8.5 hours a day and has been since six weeks old.

Seriously???!!!??? WTH? I just don't even have any words for this. The horrible things they are feeding their infant notwithstanding - that baby could CHOKE!! Are they idiots?

I was a little concerned when mom of my 9mo dcg came in this morning saying they have been feeding her all sorts of "table" food - stuff she couldn't possibly chew! But at least she has a few teeth. Here, she's on stage 2 baby food. The only thing I've given her that wasn't pureed is puffs.

I don't know as there's anything you can do (other than print out health/healthy eating facts for that age and hand it to the dcp's), but I understand your frustration!

[wdmmom]

I had a similar problem with two different children (both 18 months old).

I went to Nannyde for advice! What I come to learn about Child A is that she was on a high sodium/high fat diet and if the meal didn't consist of spaghettios, pizza or chicken nuggets, she wouldn't eat anything but fruit. To help child A, I started making meals that were a bit higher in sodium (spaghetti) then eventually got to less salty meals (turkey & noodles). I did this over a 3-4 week period. Today, this child will eat 98% of whatever I offer.

As odd as it sounds, I went to Nannyde just today about an 18month old that I watch that has a massive gag reflex and will vomit if he gets too mad, doesn't want to eat, eats too much, etc. It's really trying at times! Worse yet, he still is on a bottle, doesn't eat table foods and the parents make up Asian entrees and puree them down to a water consistancy for him. He will eat any bread product (cheerios, crackers, even fruit loops) with no problem! He'll even eat yogurt and lollipops but be darned if he'll eat an actual meal. Starting this week, I taking all bread product out of his diet. He is going to be "re-trained" on what to eat and when to eat it. (Parents feed breakfast at 10am so he thinks lunchtime is over the nap hour.) His new diet starting this week will consist of baby food...fruits and veggies. Over the course of a month, I hope to go from baby food consistancy to actual age appropriate finger foods.

This 5 month old shouldn't be eating anything other than whole milk, infant cereal and baby food. I would tell the parents that you aren't contributing to childhood obesity and provide them with a guideline on how much and what their child should be eating each day.

At 5 months, does this child even have teeth?! The last thing you need is a liability and right now it sounds like you have a huge CHOKING liability on your hands. I would nip it in the bud now before it's too late. If you have a family doctor, ask him/her for a website, pediatric guideline on age appropriate meals and size.

Good luck!

[KEG123]

Wow...that baby should really only be eating breast milk or formula at that age. And only slowly should solid foods/purees/cereals be introduced.

[QualiTcare]

i wouldn't over-react over a few pictures. the fact that pictures exist makes me think it's a rare thing and maybe a joke of sorts. when my son was around 6 months old my husband was eating pizza and he kept opening his mouth and bobbing his head. it was so funny. i told him to hold it up to his mouth and i took a pic which i put on myspace. of course my myspace was/is private so it was for family to see. it really looked like he was eating the pizza, but he wasn't. i can't say for sure (don't remember) but if i had to guess, i'd say my husband probably did let him lick it a little bit.

i've given my kids drinks of "bad stuff" from the tip of a straw too <gasp>. there's a difference in a taste of tea and a bottle of it.

maybe everyone i'm surrounded by is crazy, but i've seen a LOT of people do that. i let my kids get a taste of a sucker or ice cream every now and then - keyword being TASTE. i highly doubt this 5 month old is eating so much "bad food" that he's become un-feedable. i just don't see it.

I do understand the cutsey staged photos most of us have taken at some point or other. I did not start this profession yesterday. This just is not the case with this family. These photos were random group photos, not "baby" photos, not all were taken by the parents and some were "tagged" in. This child also has had orange, greasy, up the back BM's a few times in the past two weeks and is beginning to have a problem with diaper rash for the first time. When the baby's Mom and I discussed those issues originally it was thought to be due to a injection series for RSV. A few days, with no resolution, after the last injection we decided to look for the ear infection/thrush/strep as stated above, again, not the case.

Last night I decided to go with a calmer less personal approach since I was snooping into her personal business and probably should not have been. I asked her to update her infant feeding form. She checked the table foods box and noted she intends to start whole milk next month. I told her that I could not accept it for her file since it was against "the rules". I then gave her the food program infant feeding guide, told her I had to follow it and asked her to fill out another age appropriate infant feeding form to turn in this morning. I have no intention of being on the food program but am still required to meet Licensing regulations which follow their recommendations. I guess I will see when they arrive for the day if any light bulbs went off. I hope so, this child is barely 5 months old. My only real plan is to do what I am supposed to and leave her to do what she is going to do. I just thought this would be the place to discuss it so hopefully other Moms wont do this to their infants or providers?

[DBug]

If the baby is actually eating those foods in the pics, the parents are being really, really ignorant. That said though, you spend more waking hours in a week with the lo than they do, so whatever eating habits you instill will have the upper hand.

The one thing I've learned with daycare is that I need to do what I KNOW is right, and forget about what happens when I'm off duty, kwim? There are so many things we can stress about, it can easily get overwhelming. I figure, unless I know about some kind of abuse, I just have to ignore everything else. Really, it all comes down to parenting styles.

Just keep doing what you're doing, as tough as it is when you know parents are doing the opposite ...

[Meyou]

I provided care for a family for 8 long weeks about 3 years ago. Two kids....a 6 month old hip baby and a 3 year old that I still refer to as the screamer but that's a whole other series of threads. lol The mom brought homemade baby food for the baby and was very proud that she prepared everything herself etc etc. But when I started thawing it out to feed him....it was wierd looking. When I asked her that night she looked at it and said it was fine. Spaghetti and meatballs always looks like that pureed. OMG. I nearly dropped on the spot from shock. The "baby food" she had sent for her 6 month old was spaghetti and meatballs, chicken dinner (with gravy and veg), roast beef dinner (with gravy and veg), lasagna and ham and scalloped potatoes.

Needless to say I instantly knew why this 6 month old was so rolly polly he had trouble sitting up. Between the constant carrying on the hip he was used to and grown man dinners he was not the healthiest of boys.

[SilverSabre25]

sounds like you handled it very well--not that it is likely to change anything, but at least you are sticking to your guns on the matter.

in all honesty, whos business it of yours what or how they feed their child?? NONE. Some of you worry way too much about what parents do or dont do. Its none of your business.
i would be upset if some of you providers ever told ME how to raise my child. You are not paid to raise or parent. your paid to WATCH children. not worry about their parenting .

[nannyde]

Originally Posted by DBug

If the baby is actually eating those foods in the pics, the parents are being really, really ignorant. That said though, you spend more waking hours in a week with the lo than they do, so whatever eating habits you instill will have the upper hand.

The one thing I've learned with daycare is that I need to do what I KNOW is right, and forget about what happens when I'm off duty, kwim? There are so many things we can stress about, it can easily get overwhelming. I figure, unless I know about some kind of abuse, I just have to ignore everything else. Really, it all comes down to parenting styles.

Just keep doing what you're doing, as tough as it is when you know parents are doing the opposite ...

My parents spend more awake time with their child than I do per week.

I'm a firm believer in what happens at home stays at home BUT there are things that do affect the baby in daycare and this is one of them.

If an infant is eating adult food you can have a ton of problems with them. One of the biggest ones is gas pain and loose diarrhea with undigested food. Bouts of that cause diaper rashes and a bunch of full head to toe changes.

I had a nine month old baby years ago who had parents that couldn't afford baby food and wouldn't make it from scratch. They fed her whatever they were having and they were on a processed treat food diet. The poor baby was MISERABLE and they refused to acknowledge that all the bowel issues had anything to do with the diet.

She was also refusing formula because she got so many calories from treats and the nugget food group. Formula and whole foods taste bad to them when they have had high salt, high fat, high sugar foods introduced in their infantcy

I counselled them till I was blue in the face and required them to take her to the doctor for the bowel problems. The day they went to the appointment the kid had a first seizure right in front of the doc during the exam.

That was my last day of caring for her as I don't keep kids with seizure disorders so I never saw how it turned out.

She was sickly plain and simple... the bad bad nutrition surely didn't help.