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Heck, when I was 5 they still couldn't get me to eat anything except cake candy or pop; and that's only when I felt like it...I weighed 49 pounds, like forever. By trial and error they discovered a couple things I actually liked (mashed potatoes and eggs are the ones I recall). At about nine or ten I began to gain weight, and slowly I began to eat everything in sight and blew up to a whopping 165 by the time I was 13 and a half and only about 5'4" no less (hadn't grown upward yet). Thank goodness all that pudgy weight fell off a few years later. (Buying pants in the "Husky" rack caused a lot of grief for my parents and I of course, was mortified.)
Today I am by far the thinnest of the [now old] sibs in my family.
Last edited by StuffedCabbage; 11-29-2013 at 10:15 PM..
My daughter was not a big eater when she was younger. She has always been very short for her age, we celebrated this year when she was finally in the 3rd percentile for height. At the end of second grade, she was still wearing 5T clothes. She was so much smaller than her classmates that it was a major consideration when I decided to homeschool her. Over the summer, she developed a big appetite and she's put on weight...now she wears size 10 girls pants (I have to chop off about 8 inches of length on them).
I used to worry because she didn't eat enough and now I worry that she's eating too much. I guess it's just my lot as a parent to worry, one way or the other.
Your 3 year old's stomach is as large as her fist....if she eats that much in a sitting, she is full. She is also done with the huge growth spurts and doesn't need to eat as much. A "serving" for a 3 year old is about 4 cubes of a meat (small), 5 or 6 green beans and a spoon full of potatoes. It's not very much...
My older son was a very picky and light eater at that age. My pediatrician told me that a child that age can survive just on milk ( which my son drank a reasonable amount of). Pediatrician also told me the a child's stomach is the same size as their fist, so they don't really need much to feel full. I know it's very stressful, but do try to relax as it's one of those things you really can't control and if it becomes stressful that just tends to make it worse.
This is an area which can become a very sick dynamic. Accept what the pediatrician told you and forget about it. Just put out normal healthy food at regular intervals, and don't allow yourself to even think about it anymore.
My oldest is also not a big eater, and has always been small on the growth charts. At 3 years old, she was 25.6 pounds. At 4 years old, she was 29.3 pounds. Now, at 7.5 years old, she finally just hit 40 pounds. She is usually under the charts on weight, and around 15% on height. The doc is not particularly concerned, especially because she's always been this way. She's just a small kid and doesn't have a big appetite. My youngest feels huge to me because she is a 50th percentile kid on the growth charts. She is 3 years younger, but weighs the same and wears the same shoe size as her big sister. People just come in all different sizes!
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