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The day after her son Ronan turned six months, Suzanne Ricard, a professor in Toronto, decided to start him on solid food. He showed all the signs of readiness: an interest in food, good head control and the ability to sit up and lean forward. He had also started picking food up from Ricard?s plate and trying to put it in his mouth.
But when Ricard offered Ronan his first spoonful of rice cereal mixed with breastmilk, he pushed it all back out with his tongue. She waited a week and then tried again?and again, he tongue-thrusted the food back out. So she experimented with different consistencies and temperatures. Oatmeal made him throw up; bananas left him blotchy; he gagged on eggs and flat out refused sweet potatoes, peas and butternut squash. ?At first we thought it was no big deal,? says Ricard. ?But we soon started to worry that there was a physiological reason he couldn?t eat.? As the weeks went by, Ronan seemed hungry all the time, wanting to breastfeed every two hours. Then he began losing weight. ?That?s when I started freaking out,? says Ricard. She consulted Daniel Flanders, a Toronto paediatrician who specializes in infant and child feeding, and is the owner and director of Kindercare Pediatrics.
Why babies refuse solids

Ricard had done everything right?doctors generally recommend starting solids when the baby is developmentally ready, which is usually somewhere between four and six months. And, she discovered, spitting out food is a commo...