Toddlers and fussy eating (merged)

HappySad

Thanks Tely Addict for you comments.
I do feel luckly that at least he will eat his breakfast, fruit and yogart.. Which are all healthy foods. Some parents have to struggle with toddlers that will only eat crisps and biscuits.

I have been to the heath visitor today and had my son weighed. He is exactly on the normal line for his age and so he is not over or under weight .. just right.

The health visitor said that it is good that he is eating fruit and to give him what he likes. She suggest to eat meals with him and to offer him a small portion of what I am eating.. if he eats all that then give him a bit more. She also says that because he is a good weight I should not force feed him and just work with what he will eat. She also says not to offer him unheathy snacks so that he get full on them (i already do this)

Thanks everyone for this advice & support I really appriciate it.

Tomorrow I will try him again with tuna and mayonase for lunch to see if he will eat it again. I'll let you know how it goes along.

Poppy9

There taste buds change all the time. I brought my daughter up on a mainly vegetarian diet which I follow - however she has turned into a carnivor and is reluctant to eat pasta & rice now which were favourites. She adores chicken so much so that she wants a chicken breast or roast dinner daily. She also has a passion for eggs eating one fried egg every morning for breakfast (this fills her).

HappySad

Today I am keeping a food diary and so far his eating has gone from good to not so good. Not so good is today where he just has a small pot of puree fruit for lunch and only two sneaked spoon full of lunch and for dinner the same except he has an apple and a small pot of yogart. When he is not looking at what is on the spoon I can sneak in a mouth full of lunch or dinner. I will continue with the food diary for a number of week to see if I can find any patterns.

foreverskint

HI there, Happysd.


I have two oldesr daughters 13 & 11 and a two year old. When the older two were toddlers, I used to really fret about their eating. Now they eat anything and everything, infact tey are the sort of children who ask for spinach & brussels for dinner, My eldest thinks that sunday lunch is not omplete unless there are at least 7 veg on her plate!

With my tow year old I decided not to fret & just go with what she wants. She only likes peas, at the moment in terms of veg, but I still put whatever else we're having veg wise o her plate and sometimes she'll try them, even if she chew it up and spits it out again.
I put her food on her plate, always the same meal as us, and just let her eat what she wants to from that. Sometimes it lots and at others she just picks and wanders off.
I found that she didn't like sandwiches if they were all made up, but she will eat the bread and filling if laid out separately on her plate. Now she's learnt that it takes less time to just have it made up, and she can go and play.

I find she eats more if there are friends round for lunch, nothing like a bit of competition, or if Dad threatens to eat her dinner, she comes running back and eats it all before he can;)

On a day like today, when it's so hot, I can't blame them for not wanting much. It's also a long time in a childs mind to be sitting down in one place doing something they consider quite boring. Worrying about sitting down to eat at this age is I find self defeating. If they wander round with a sandwich in one hand and lego in the other, but they're eating, to me that's fine. Now my daughter's turned two with a good degree of reasoning ability, she understands that mealtimes are for sitting down now.
This time of year weather permitting we eat all our meals outside. or have picnics in the garden.
Keep at it and in no time youll be like my friends with older boys, wondering how you can afford to feed the little wheelie bins:D

telly-addict

HappySad wrote:

Today I am keeping a food diary and so far his eating has gone from good to not so good. Not so good is today where he just has a small pot of puree fruit for lunch and only two sneaked spoon full of lunch and for dinner the same except he has an apple and a small pot of yogart. When he is not looking at what is on the spoon I can sneak in a mouth full of lunch or dinner. I will continue with the food diary for a number of week to see if I can find any patterns.

I can understand why you would want to see if there are any patterns, but you could get a bit obsessed if you keep a food diary, I know that we kept a record of my first one's bottle intake because we were concerned. The midwife just told us to get rid of it and she was absolutely right.

I suspect there is no rhyme or reason why your little one is picking and choosing what he eats, other than he can and somedays he wants to eat more than others, just like we do. Like foreverskint says, this hot weather can really diminish your appetite.

As long as he has a good weight (on the growth charts in the red book) and is eating healthy food then try not to worry. At least he's not surviving on chocolate buttons and milk!

Would he graze on raisins or cubes of cheese, bread sticks etc while he was playing at around snack time mid-morning/afternoon so it wasn't such of a big deal like mealtimes can be? If you just put them down next to him and started eating them yourself, without any comment, he might just join in?

Good luck and try not to fret.

gravitytolls

Ah, he's only a tiny tot still. Let him have what he wants, then have his fruit.

Avoid snacks, though the temptation is to let him have cake cos he's had little else. But fruit is good for him, and he'll soon rediscover his appetite.

You know, the weather may be to blame, our appetites wane when it's hot, and fruit is sweet and thirst quenching.

Maybe try some salad on his plate too, cos lettuce, cucumber etc is wet, and thirst quenching.

Don't make mealtimes a battleground, or you'll condemn yourself to years of worry.

picnics are good too, as it's okay to wander with a sarnie clutched in a little chubby hand, maybe he'll consume more when he's too busy looking at things to notice what he's eating.

HappySad

Don't know if anyone else is still reading this thread... anyway.....

My son is now eating. He is eating different food now. I did a food diary and found out that there was certain parts of the food that I was offering that he liked. He likes rice and he likes pasta. Nothing else he likes. So I have been trying him out on different foods and I have discovered that he likes cooked sliced meat and also tinned mackeral. So I am now trying different types of sliced cooked meat.. so far he likes beef and ham. It is great to give him the food and see him eat it all up with no problems. He also likes feeding himself by hand.

I am feeding him different fruit instead of any veg at the monent. I am now going to try out different vegs to see what he will eat. But at the moment he is eating all kinds of fruits.

Lets hope that he does not go off these foods. In the next couple of months I will try him again with the food that me and my partner eat to see if he will eat it again.

BrokeBrokeBroke

That's fantastic!! I had also had trouble with my son who is now nearly 27 months, He hadn't really been very good with eating since he was 9/10 months old, but in the last 6-8 weeks he's really come on. (It's so nice when it isn't all a fight) He's also trying to feed himself much more and is getting really good about eating what I offer him. I'm so proud, and he's even getting a bit chubby!!
Brill news!

carpool72

That's great Happy - I came into the post to ask you to let us know when things improved. Going by the people in my parenting group your experience is very common and most children will slowly start to expand their range. One top tip I heard was to offer new things or things that had been rejected before in small amounts along with things you know they like, then leave them to it. That's kind of working with my 25 month old - sometimes she'll pick up the offending item and drop it off her plate, but sometimes she'll have a go & then decide she likes it after all.

rchddap1

Certainly good news. My little nephew has a thing for toast...especially when it belongs to someone else. I regularly stay for a weekend here and there and whenever I have toast there is a smallish sized sparrow that keeps turning up wanting some.