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Lissa Kristine 09:26 PM 11-10-2017
The daycare I work at has kids bring their own food in each day.

In a typical day, you will see:

DCG1 (14 months): Screams when being spoon fed Gerber shelf-stable yogurts. The Gerber toddler meals (like pasta pick-ups) are hit or miss, but there's less screaming over it. Had pizza the other day because of a Birthday party and loved every bite.

DCB1: (14 months): All meals are pureed and consist of cereal and fruit/veggies. Will also eat things like Cheerios and Puffs.

DCB2: (14 months): Lunch is a jelly sandwich with Entenmanns Little Bites muffins as an alternative. Is also fed a fruit/vegetable pouch that is poured into a bowl and spoon fed because he won't eat from the pouch.

DCB3: (11ish months): Lunch is baby cereal and formula; consistency is very thin- it could probably be put into his bottle instead of spoon-fed. Refuses to hold own bottle.


Now, to compare, here's a list of the foods my friend's 15 month old ate for dinner at Bible Study Thursday night:

Rotisserie Chicken
Baby Carrots (raw)
Strawberries
Macaroni and Cheese
Oatmeal Raisin Cookie
Peas & Corn
Potatoes
Sausage

She may have even eaten some salad. No purees. Just bits of the same food everybody else was eating.

DCB3 barely even ate any lunch. It was so runny that it ended up all over him.
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Josiegirl 01:37 AM 11-11-2017
Wow. I cringe at the lack of nutrition and texture that are being offered to these little ones and the thought of future eating issues that are possible. Can you work on changing that at all? Do you have any say or input as to policies or even just offering ideas? Does the dc require certain nutritional standards; it's too bad they don't make the parents step up to better foods and put the end to anything considered junk food. Jelly sandwiches and little bite muffins?? Egads....how can healthy bodies develop on a diet like that.
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Lissa Kristine 05:13 AM 11-11-2017
Right now there's nothing I can do to change any of this. Of course, my coworkers think Veggie Straws are a great way to get veggies into the kids. Are they terrible foods? No, but it's still junk food- NOT an alternative to carrot sticks.

DCB2 came in with a macaroni and cheese Gerber meal one day. It was his first time having mac and cheese, and after a bite, he made a "face." The other teachers immediately concluded that he disliked the food and gave him his pouch or muffins. It was his FIRST TIME trying it, and he DID try it. I think they took it away from him too quickly. It was a new flavor and texture- he just needed time to adjust.

My last job, I had 4 year olds eating tea biscuits for lunch (not with lunch... FOR lunch) and snacks were large trays of Cheetos, Oreos, and chocolate covered pretzels.

This is making me confirm my desire to do baby-led-weaning if/when I have kids of my own.
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HappyEverAfter 01:00 PM 11-11-2017
I provide meals over the age of one. My DCG is 16mths old and will eat absolutely anything except cabbage. Seriously, anything. It varies what I serve her but I do a lot of steamed veggies and soft things like pastas. She will eat raw veggies but with teething this seems to hurt sometimes so we don't usually do those. She can sort of feed herself but often I assist just to save on the messes. I do always let her feed herself at snack time though. I can't for the life of me imagine serving her muffin bites as a meal though.
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storybookending 01:33 PM 11-11-2017
I serve my own meals so I don’t have this problem. My 15 month old eats the same as the 2s and 3s on a plate with a spoon and fork. I WILL NOT spoon fed anyone over a year. Sure they make a mess the first couple times we have cereal or yogurt but they get the hang of it. My almost 1 year old I still can’t trust with a lunch plate and has no interest in silverware but it’s always offered, he can just eat faster this his hands I think.

I wait until the parents give the OK to switch to table foods and then just give what everyone else is eating. I found it strange when my youngests mom needed to be suggested by me that it was okay to start table foods around 10 months. She has two much older kids and when they were babies I think it was more common to wait with most foods until after a year. I had my niece here as a drop in one day a few months ago and I felt bad as she’s a month younger than him and that day at lunch she ate an entire pancake and he just watched her interested in what she was doing like crazy and why he wasn’t included in on the fun.
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Lissa Kristine 09:23 AM 11-12-2017
I agree that muffins do not equal lunch.

I also don't agree with giving the alternate lunch immediately after refusal of food.

Many times, these kids are given bottles right before lunch. Sometimes, they drink the whole thing before lunch, other times, they drink a portion (some are still on breast milk and/or formula, others have switched to whole milk). It's possible that they're filling up on milk.

If I see a 1 year old not eating what is served to him/her, my first response is not to serve an alternative. Kids are smart. If they learn that not eating their macaroni and cheese and vegetables means they get muffins, they'll never eat real food. Instead, if they are refusing to eat after given plenty of time and encouragement, I'll wipe their hands and face and let them go play. Then, in 15 minutes: "Ok, DCG, are you ready to eat your lunch now."

And I'm just waiting for us to get in trouble with the state. We have one family who brings in 1 or 2 big GLASS bottles full for her 6 month old. State regulations say we are to refrigerate the formula until we are ready to serve it, then we can heat it in a crockpot where it's good for 1 to 2 hours MAX. (I'm sure they also have rules about glass bottles, but don't quote me on that). Before, we were heating and re-refrigerating the formula, so I spoke to the mom and asked if she would bring in a smaller, empty bottle so we can pour smaller amounts of formula into the smaller bottle to heat because TECHNICALLY we are supposed to discard of any unused formula. Mom said that she doesn't heat the formula. She wants us to just leave it sitting out on the counter.
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Pestle 11:20 AM 11-12-2017
Originally Posted by Lissa Kristine:
Right now there's nothing I can do to change any of this. Of course, my coworkers think Veggie Straws are a great way to get veggies into the kids. Are they terrible foods? No, but it's still junk food- NOT an alternative to carrot sticks.
I don't do veggie straws unless I was already going to buy potato chips. It's the same stuff.

But I do sometimes offer those green pea crisps from Aldi and Whole Foods; they're 70 percent green peas and the rest is rice flour, so it's more like a real food than, say, a graham cracker.
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