We're seeing a lot of food issues coming up to the surface again with our SuSu, and Mommy's starting to get desperate for some insights from any of my fellow adoptive families out there! Food has always been an issue for our SuSu. Some of my fellow traveling companions may remember those little baggies full of snacks that SuSu clutched in her hands 24/7 during our two weeks in China:) One nite she even fell asleep in her crib with two pieces of jelly bread firmly in her grasp!
We were totally prepared, or so we thought, for food issues. But being 6 months into home life, we're seeing them actually getting worse all of a sudden. We certainly have an abundance......or maybe even an over-abundance, of food available for our SuSu! We let her have a snack in between each meal and even a snack at bedtime. We have a pretty solid routine with meals, and yet there almost seems to be a newfound obsession with having enough.
While I'm cooking meals, she quite literally will be hounding me the entire time, begging to eat as if this was our first meal in days. When we sit up to the table, her eyes light up and she asks for a little bit of everything. We're careful to only give small portions, even though she'll beg for more and more before even starting to eat. Then, after only a few bites, she'll start playing with her food and then announce "all done". After watching the big scene in the kitchen while Mommy was cooking, you would imagine SuSu would be shoving the food in at a desperate pace. But it's almost like a game. Then, it goes on again at the next meal.
We're not sure if it's really about the food, or about the pre-dinner show, or for control or maybe for attention. We just don't know. But we do know that a lof of food gets wasted and that Mommy's tolerance for this whole scene is waning! We're wondering if we should take away snacks. Make her finish her plate of food. Send her to the "thinking chair" when the pre-dinner show starts. We don't know. We've tried taking away candy. We've tried taking away snacks. We've tried the thinking chair. Nothing seems to be touching this routine we've found our SuSu in.
If anyone out there with adopted kiddos has any suggestions, please please share them in the comments! We want to be sensitive to SuSu's needs for security when it comes to food. We don't want to force her to eat if she isn't hungry. We want her to feel like she can come and ask us for food when she's genuinely needing it. But we don't want this cycle anymore. We don't if we need to be punishing her or handling things differently.
This is one of those things that I can't find in my books!!
8 comments:
This sounds very much like food hoarding, which is so very common with internationally adopted children. It will lessen with time. Sometimes children will go through stages of it easing, then reappearing. Patience seems to be key.
You may want to consider giving SuSu her own "food cabinet" in the kitchen, to store goodies and/or healthy snacks that are hers and hers alone. You could also allow her to have an air-tight plastic container of food in her room at night, in case she wakes up hungry. During dinner prep, see if she can help you with the cooking. For example, have her use childrens scissors rather than a knife to cut things.
If it IS food hoarding, it's not so much about feeling hungry as much as it is an emotional security thing. She is experiencing stress that she won't get enough food and - despite you doing everything right - she's still worried that you won't give her enough food. She might even be picking up on the understandable frustration you feel, which would just increase her anxiety.
Having easy access to it and being involved in food prep may help her feel more emotionally stable and secure. It may also cut down on those behaviors.
Just a few thoughts from a momma who dealt with food hording issues for almost a year.
Oh Heather--You and I must chat!! Hope still has issues with wanting wanting wanting food!! A year and a half later!! However--she does actually eat it when it is in front of her--I just have to regulate the amount. She also very sneakily takes food from her siblings plates when they aren't looking. Now--my word--we have enough to go around--but it seems to be secretive behavior--but only surrounding food! I also know of another Wuxi girl mom whose daughter seems to horde food as well. Possibly they were very strict on amounts?? Or used food as a reward? I'm not sure-since I know the children from Wuxi sure seem to be well-fed. Possibly a control issue? As you can see-I am learning right along with you!! Hopefully we can chat soon and figure it out together!!
I am waiting to see if the 25th will work--Darrin will know tommorow if he has a work thing or not!
XOXOOX
Amy
This is very interesting to me Heather. Annelise has been doing this too. I have been feeling frustrated as well. In our house, I pretty much make whatever the kids ask for at breakfast. So she will place her order and I cook it up and then she will sit there and take a bite or two and say, "Don't want ____ (whatever food I made her)". Then a bit later she wants something else. At a playgroup recently, she had a graham cracker and was loving it until she saw someone put out some goldfish. Then she didn't want the graham cracker (which now she said she didn't like), she wanted the goldfish. When I told her she had to finish the graham cracker before she had any goldfish she had a meltdown.
I am starting to think it is a control thing because she does this with other non-food things too. She wants me to hold her and when I do she whines that she wants to get down. Then when I put her down she has a fit saying she wants me to hold her...and back and forth it goes. Very frustrating.
HOpefully some other btdt moms can help! Good luck! - Charissa
i haven't finished reading your email about this yet! anyway, i was going to respond by email but i figured that i would join in the discussion.
i know the food thing is a sensitive issue. i know that hoarding is completly a psychological thing and can be a sensitive issue to deal with. BUUT, I will go against the grain of the "books" here and say that a lot of yao yao's issues have been about control and nothing more.
for our 1st almost 2 months home i let all of the "food stuff" go. if she ate a 1/2 of bag of chips, i let her go. if she changed her mind what she wanted for breakfast, i made something else.
BUUUT, once she started to adjust so beautifully I really began to set limits.
for example, she is FAMOUS for picking an egg for breakfast and then seeing another kid has a waffle she will want that then. I will not do it. what she picks is what she gets. I don't feel guilty about it. in this case it has nothing to do about security...it has to deal with not understanding choice. it's my job to teach her what it means to have choice.
i actually have to say that although she struggles with choice she seems to "get it". she no longer gets upset when someone is eating something else other than her. we eat breakfast in waves here...so she no longer gets upset when she sees her brother eating breakfast in the case when she already has had hers. in the beginning i would have "re-fed" her, but I believe I'm teaching her terrible eating habits. the 1st one or 2 times i told her "no" about this stuff, she did get upset. but I thought i would go with my gut. If I saw that her behavior got worse or she seemed "disturbed" and acted out in other ways, then i would back off.
but that has NEVER been the case for us. just this morning her bro was eating in the car and she wasn't because she already ate. she just looked at him and said, "yao yao no more. yao yao ate."
i had to continue this since blogger cut me off:)
as far as the dinner time thing, we also really struggled with this in the past. she would get her plate out and sit at the table with an hour to go until mealtime. it drove me CRAZY:)
if i would tell her to just go and play like i do the other kids, she would cry and say no. now what i do in that case is just tell her, "mommy is making dinner. You pick...either color a picture or ride your bike." she always complies...because i'm giving her back control by letting her choose something.
i don't encourage help in the kitchen for dinner because i have 3 other munchkins that want to help too. good gravy, that's a nightmare for a normal meal preperation:)
so i would try that 1st. give her a CHOICE about what she could do. again, i have to follow it up with the phrase, "you pick. yao yao picks." she always smiles and sometimes with a small whine picks.
if it is more than just "control", i read a great idea in a book somewhere. it said to let them have a packaged granola bar to hold or put on their plate. that way they have the security of the food, but you aren't encouraging bad eating habits.
i truely believe that God chooses our kids specifically for our families. He gave Yao Yao to us to parent. If he wanted her to have a home where she could continue to pick 10 different things for breakfast, he gave her the wrong parent:)lol
seriously, in the beginning of this i lost a lot of my confidence as a mom. i felt like i had no idea what i was doing and i was scared i would screw her up. but i'm gaining back that confidence. i go with my gut (and i do continue to educate myself). and there are some days i look back and think that i should have done things differently, but even the book writers aren't perfect:)
oh...i thought of another thing i do if the dinnertime prep thing occurs. in fact i do this whenever periods of whining occur. i bend down and say, "do you need your love cup filled up?" and she says "yes" and then i just stop and hug her...even for just a minute. she always smiles when i'm done and then runs along and plays...almost every single time!! sometimes that is all they need.
sooo, after my huuuuuuge long comment i would say, try what your gut (after praying) is telling you to do. do it for a couple of days. if things get worse or not better at all then try something new. you will NOT give her RAD from a few days of trying something...even if it's not what she needed.
i'm sure some people wouldn't agree with my advice, BUUUT i will say that yao yao has come a loooong way and she is so close to normalizing that i have to say it's working for us.
ok. now to my next novel:) lol
Just chimming in on the discussion. Our Naomi who was only 15 mths. at adoption would literally eat anything and everything put in front of her and has just now decided she doesn't like/want some things. But, I am wondering if it is just that she is now 2 and it comes with the territory . My 2nd daughter asked for food all day long and she was underweight and so we gave it to her all day long. Results : decayed teeth. She has very fragile teeth and all the eating between meals did a number on her teeth. She also would NEVER take the first thing we gave her. If it was 2 cookies , had to be 3 . If it was a bag of cereal , wasn't enough the first time. And we know NOW it was about control. Food issues are not easy. But lots of kids that are not adopted have them too and so it's hard to know when to give in. My neighbors boy will not eat the dinner she fixes for family , he has to have a special meal. I refuse to do that. I fix the meal and if they don't like it ---they can always eat bread . I know it's horrible! But, it works and they eat. Every now and then they eat a piece of bread. LOL
Oh, now this is FUNNY--and helpful! Rory does the stand-in-the-kitchen-and-beg thing when I cook--and since the kitchen floor is 3x9 and also occupied by two begging dogs, it's NOT OK. I have no brilliant advice on it. It's one of the few things I just let go of. Sometimes I give her a bite and send her off. Sometimes I don't. SOmetimes I give her the salad spinner to help with. Sometimes I don't.
And she also HAS to have anything anybody else has==and again, sometimes it's ok. It's 4:00 and snacktime? Sure, you can have a snack too. Her 8-year-old brother is mainlining cereal bars to fuel up for hockey and she's about to have dinner while he goes to play? No cereal bar. There used to be a tantrum, but no more.
Take the food and don't eat it? Again, I just let it go. At first it made me mad, but then, everything was making me mad...it was my issue as much as hers. I don't want her to feel like she needs to eat any more than she wants to.
I think Flamingo Mama's advice about the "love cup" was brilliant. Once I gained the patience to acknowledge her in a bigger, more real way while I was cooking, it got easier, no matter how I did it. I doubt that's your problem--you sound like you have lots of patience with her--but it helped us!
Not much advice here, but much sympathy.
Cindy always amazes me with her perspective. She's such a wise woman in so many of these issues.
I have no advice, just really like the free-flow of ideas - so fun to find so many differing opinions or styles without any snarking :) Good stuff to file in my brain for future references.
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