When we introduced baby food to my oldest, he was okay with it. As we started giving him table foods, that is when all the true frustration began....we came to realize he had "issues" with texture in the food he ate. He also would only eat food that a certain COLOR on one side of the rainbow, closer to REDs. I can laugh about it somewhat now, but seriously, I could not at the time. We wasted a lot of food trying to figure out what he would eat or not. We were like most young couples who are just starting out so we didn't have that kind of money to splurge. After all, when I was a child if I dared waste food like that I would have been spanked. I had learned the economics of eating what was put on your plate because I was lucky to have it there in the first place. I also wanted to put some weight on him since his heart surgery, so the fact he was an extremely picky eater just frustrated me all the MORE. I am happy to say I didn't resort to spanking because it is just not me, but many people in my situation having been raised that way probably would not have thought twice in that situation. I chose to look into other parenting strategies.
I read an idea to keep offering the same thing till they ate it, and most mothers said they had success with it, so I tried it. The idea was that they would eventually get hungry enough to try what was on the plate. You put it in the refrigerator and just keep offering it at the next meal. I bet normally that would have worked wonders, but not with my little guy...I was a little worried that after many days he was only still drinking milk and not touching his food. I figured out this method was not going to work and he couldn't afford to lose weight as a I experimented with parenting strategies. I read something about that time frame about food texture issues and it got my mind a whirling on that possibility. I tested out that theory, and we were successful. Finally, I got him to eat five foods, then ten foods, and it kept increasing by doing what I call "food therapy".
You start with smooth foods that they can tolerate, then you slowly add in texture. For example, you would feed them pudding, then tapioca pudding, then pudding with crushed up cheerios, then pudding with whole cheerios mixed in it, and finally the chunky stuff. It was getting their mouths slowly used to texture or to learn how to tolerate it. I am happy to say by age 9, he was eating mostly everything I put on his plate, and now he is a very healthy eater!
I have to say I never did figure out why in that stage his foods only could be a certain color, but we respected it as best as we could. I just remember one day we took him with us to my husband's office party, and there was a bowl of red grapes on the table...and he pigged out of them. I was truly surprised because he would NEVER eat the GREEN grapes at home. LOL
I have read that there are correlations to food textures issues and sensory integration disorder, so you might want to consider occupational therapy with oral devices too. We didn't get occupational therapy until they were school age, so I came upon that later in my journey.
