RSS Feeds: Babies and Toddlers and the Strange Things they Eat
When I speak of the strange things that babies and toddlers eat, I'm not talking about breastfeeding and consuming mother's milk. That's normal and expected. What I'm talking about are other things you wouldn't expect. These other things do not include what people consider baby food.
If you're a squeamish person, or you just got done eating yourself (no humor intended), I advise you to NOT read any further.
Eating Dirt
I understand from reading several sources that it's common for toddlers to eat dirt. I don't agree with any of the reasons, the most prominent being the child is lacking some nutrient or another. I wonder who came to the conclusion about that useless bit of information. I think they eat dirt because they're hungry and they're not getting enough to eat through "conventional" methods.
My younger sister ate dirt as a toddler. She may deny it, but there are slide photos at my mother's house to prove it. They show her reaching from a playpen while on a camping trip and scooping dirt up to eat, through several photos, and wet dirt dripping from her mouth. Believe it or not, that was the last time I ever saw any child eating dirt.
Eating Baby Food
My son, Jonathan, was an amusing toddler. My family (me, my wife and two sons) was on a trip to the San Diego zoo once and Jon was sitting in his stroller, sucking on his baby bottle — he could walk, but it was recent and he tired easily — not caring for anything in the world. The other son, Joseph (who's five years older), had just bought a hot dog from a hot dog stand. I just happened to turn around at the exact moment when Jon threw the bottle to the ground and snatched the hot dog out of Joseph's hand. Before Joseph could even react, Jon had shoved most of it into his mouth. It was at that very instant I knew he would never be satisfied with a baby bottle ever again.
If you're familiar with the Gerber brand baby food for toddlers, you know that's it's too much for a baby and should be enough for a toddler's meal. Not so with Jonathan. He wasn't satisfied unless he ate TWO of them at every meal. History repeated itself when my one-year old grandson, who my wife says looks like Jon did as a baby, started demanding two jars as well. In both cases, it wasn't the two-jar thing that was amusing (and a bit expensive if you think about it), it was the fact that they cried if their mouths weren't constantly full during the feeding process. I can still picture the chipmunk cheeks.
Eating Other Things
Everything I've mentioned is somewhat normal, right? Try this on for size:
One of my nieces here in the Philippines would eat anything when she was a toddler. We once caught her scrounging around under a chicken coup and eating, umm… you know. It was disgusting and her mother spent some time cleaning her up and having her drink a lot of water to umm… help it leave her body as quickly as possible.
Her name is Honey Lynn, but everyone just calls her Honey. Honey was caught eating dead flies on the cement outside of my mother-in-laws house, just after she learned to talk. She thought they were raisins. More internal cleaning was required. She was caught again, later in the same month, trying to eat the moss that was growing on one side of cement wall. She only managed to turn the skin around her mouth green on that attempt. I'm sure she tried to eat other things, but I didn't hear about anything else.
I didn't mention one thing that my son Jon ate and it makes me ill to think about it. I learned to smoke outdoors (this was in 1986) long before it was ever required because of him. We caught him ashtray diving on two occasions (that I can remember) and it wasn't pretty. He had ashes and butts in his mouth and was chomping away. My wife thought we might have to take him to the doctor, but he apparently didn't swallow anything — he just liked the taste.
He's 23-years old now and doesn't smoke and has never had the desire to do so. He suffers from asthma on occasion and it wouldn't be wise anyway.
Anyway…
I'm curious if other people have had similar experiences. Feel free to tell me, but try to keep it as clean as possible. Oops, I almost forgot to mention something. One of my nieces refused to eat anything chocolate until she was more than three-years old. Apparently, she thought it was something else we know to be brown and that's all I can say about that.
Similar Posts:
I sit back and laugh now about how paranoid we both were with the first child. I remember him having this white cream around his mouth and then finding the tube of desitin on the floor. In a panic called poison control since that is what it said to do on the side of the tube. They laughed and said there was no need to worry. Then there was him dipping his hand in the latex paint bucket and then putting it in his mouth.
My last blog: Common Sense When Choosing a Designer Diaper Bag
Too funny. my son has tried sand, but he didn't like it at all. i hope that he sticks to the conventional food that i feed him though:) i have seen him sniffing the dogs food before. lol