J was very underweight at that age also. I didn't force him to eat anything, but I only bought a limited amount of his narrow interest foods each week. If he ate them all by Wednesday, he was more likely to branch out into some of the other foods available in the house. Then he would likely obsess about the new food for a while, but at least it was different.

Picky eating is difficult. Sometimes we have to let go of what we want them to do and accept what they will do. I always look for opportunities to improve his diet when he is open to it.

Pedicure was our best friend for a long time!!

We went through this with the twin girls when they were between 8 and 13. Each doctors visit...we always heard failure to thrive and underweight. We finally got a doctor who was willing to work with us and found a way to get the social workers to get Pediasure for the girls. I could not believe that this worked and along with us testing out some foods that although you do not want to give them these things all the time, it did help them to gain weight.

Frozen yogurt, pasta with melted cheese, veggie chips, popsicles, baked salmon with a lot of non salt seasonings and olive oil, organic pizza veggie, ground turkey and chicken are just some of the things that the twins ate and started gaining weight. Veggie and fruit juice combo worked as well. It did take a while, but we were able to get them to gain weight.

Will he drink milk or chocolate milk? You can take nonfat powdered milk which has lots of protein and add it to 2% milk or whole milk so he gets more protein. We went to gastroenterologist and now he takes a prescription liquid laxative and fiber which helps constipation. There’s also candy- like Reese’s peanut butter cups have protein in them. And Hershey’s chocolate and m and ms- all those will get him chewing if he will tolerate those.