unhealthy food obsession

amother

Sun, Feb 15 2009, 9:28 am

My little one and a half year old daughter is OBSESSED with food!!!
She just can eat and eat and eat all day.
I give her a full breakfast- so much so that she is refusing the rest of the food, but then not even 5 minutes later, if she sees me or anyone else eating some food, she'll have a full blown meltdown if I dont give her that food. She can be eating some food very nicely, but the second she sees someone else has food, she throws her food down and wants THEIRS! I or anyone else cannot touch food when she is awake otherwise she freaks out if I dont share it with her.

This almost seems like a sickness, an eating disorder. But in a child this young?!?!?

What causes this? What can I do about it, I can't keep on giving in to her every demand for food, and I cant handle such frequent meltdowns...

rachie

Mon, Feb 16 2009, 3:42 pm

my daughter did that a lot too but 2 things help-
eating what she eats and constantly saying which is mine and which is hers. now she likes labelling my food and her food.

amother

Mon, Feb 16 2009, 10:19 pm

my toddler is also completely obsessed with food and is quite chubby. he was really chubby even before he started solids so im not blaming it on the amt food he eats but is certainly isnt helping. im not even concerned that he is fat because he will probably slim down eventually and even if he doesnt, so what. what concerns me is is obsession with food which is never a good thing. I think the only way to handle my situation is to provide healthy foods for him (which he does like) and to limit eating to certain times instead of letting him graze all day (ie think about food all day).
in your situation, it seems that more than loving food, she is a "jealous eater" because she wants what someone else has even if she is in the middle of eating. that is a different issue than being obsessed with food. does she eat a lot? does she want to eat all day if noone around her is eating? does she in general always want what other ppl have whether or not it is food?

HAPPYMOMMY

Mon, Feb 16 2009, 10:31 pm

You mention two issues. One, that she eats all day and two that she prefers someone else's food.

For the first issue, like another poster mentioned setting meal times and snack times instead of grazing should get her mind off food.

For the second issue, I think that at that age most toddlers prefer their mommy's food. Isn't someone else's food always better? I know that my son does that with food and even objects. For ex. he wants Mommy's toothbrush instead of his. Like previously mentioned, try labeling food and objects to specific family members. I label my toothbrush as Mommy's and my dh's as Taty's and so forth. Now when we go to brush our teeth ds automatically starts naming all the toothbrushes! Same with food and then we sometimes 'share'.