Vegetarian toddler very picky

Yep - as the PP said, suspicion and refusal is a normal development stage, especially around vegetables and fruit - unfortunately for veggies!

We evolved to have a natural suspicion of plants as until very familiar they could be poisonous. Especially mushrooms! Toddlers will naturally go for high fat high calorie foods as an instinctive survival strategy and as small beings they do need higher calorie food rather than filling up on bulk.

A plain cheese omlette is fine. Cheese on toast is fine. Some pasta with cheese is fine. A cream cheese sandwich is fine. What about homemade potato wedges? (oven or air fryer baked) . Using wholemeal bread, and with a few raspberries and strawberries. Will he eat blueberries?

Would he eat little fritters? Crispy, with egg and mashed red lentils, as finger food?

I wonder if you gave the parents a couple of your batch meals to try at home whether they'd have any more luck? And they could give you some of theirs? I must admit I'd be out of my depth if I had to cook all veggie meals from scratch, so credit to you for making the effort!

Parents sound like they don’t want to deal with the eating. Maybe say that a later dinner might be better in his own home so he can then have a good feed. Yes they may prefer it but kids routines change and they need to adapt. Giving their kid dinner at 5:30 is fine as 4pm is a bit early.

tell them you can give an afternoon snack and they need to do dinner as it’s a waste of money for you otherwise. Or you can box up some food to go home. Childminders aren’t paid much so I can see how wasting the food would be annoying.

they need to parent. Maybe the kid knows that dinner time is close to home time and they want to go home. Do you send after pics of what kid ate

You need SR_Nutrition on instagram she’s the expert!

Same!

I’ve just come back and seen you think I am against a vegetarian diet! I’m not, I married a vegetarian, we eat a lot of non meat meals!
Having experienced low iron in a child (who’s not vegetarian!) but is fussy, I would recommend checking iron levels. My child’s were super super low, and a lot of problems were ‘ironed out’ (boom boom) when we addressed it.

Why was that deleted as being against the guidelines?? How peculiar.

I’m vegetarian, but my children aren’t. I would still cook veggie for them though. A popular food was cheesy vegetable patties that I would batch cook and stick in the freezer, fry them on demand. You can put anything you want in them. Dips to make it exciting for them to try in different ones. Tempura veg too.

My vegetarian kids turned fussy at age 2. They wanted plain food with different bits separated so pasta on its own with sauce on the side (that they mostly wouldn't touch) and cheese separate. They would eat pizza and rice and noodles. I did a homemade satay sauce out of oil and peanut butter in a pot on the side with veggies on the side too with the noodles. They went off jacket potatoes for years but would eat homemade chips. Main protein from eggs and yoghurt. They always ate baked beans too, could you do a homemade version for him? I would support offering a variety of different foods including what you know he will eat. This is in line with the Division of Responsibility approach. (Worth a google). The challenge is, of course that responsibility is across you and the parents so you will need to discuss how best to proceed with them.

The child doesn’t know what meat is, he’s never eaten any.

Get the parents to provide you with his meals. That is what I had to do when mine were at the childminder.

Pickiness at that age is a normal part of development. Keep offering the food and he should move past it soon enough. It's all the do with them becoming self aware and realising they can say no.

My veggie 20 month old is similarly fussy. He only eats peanut butter on toast, pasta in tomato sauce (with hidden veg), yoghurt, bananas, weetabix, toddler biscotti, rice cakes and melty sticks. He is growing well and meeting his milestones so GP and HV weren't initially interested when we sought help.

However, he goes months refusing to try anything new. We have been pestering our health visitor and have attended a course with a dietician. We are now implementing some strategies to help improve things and will be referred to a dietician if we don't see change in the next few months.

Toddler fussiness is normal but a very small list of foods eaten may mean more support is needed.

Parents need to make sure they offer meals at home - my DS tends to graze at nursery so we always give breakfast and tea at home.

Do they give vitamins? We give a daily multivitamin in his morning milk.

Exactly.

And tbh a limited and vegetarian and fussy-toddler-suitable diet can still be balanced!

Eg my kids basically lived on the following on repeat from the ages of about 2-5...

beans on toast, eggy bread, porridge, stewed apple, yoghurt (by which I mean plain live yoghurt not frubes or petit filous etc!) with whatever fruit they will eat this week, dried fruit, chunks of cheese, berries, pancakes, cream cheese on a muffin, peas and sweetcorn (served frozen if necessary, they all love frozen peas for some weird reason), pasta pesto, pasta with tomato sauce and grated cheese, margarita pizza, jacket potato with beans and/or cheese, cucumber sticks, homemade apple cake/crumble...

All likely to be winners with most toddlers, all veggie, and all add up to a completely acceptable diet.

Do many kids of this age eat a balanced diet?

We used to hear that a lot because our kids eat predominantly veggie, until we pointed out the comparative foods eg that my cheesestring, has more protein that the fridgeraiders their kids were eating and that the apricots were higher in iron then their ham sandwiches.

If people's toddlers were all eating beautifully balanced meal then they can throw stones, but most of us are grabbing what we can!

The comparison is always some clean eating healthy meat eater with a living off quorn, crisps and chocolate veggie. Most people live somewhere in between

Reality is most of the unhealthy veggie stuff is consumed by everyone eg crisps, sweets etc. And for every upf consuming veggie eating a mc plant, theres also a upf eating non veggie eating a quarterpounder

Speaking of consequences, had you forgotten to consider those when agreeing with a suggestion that a childminder should risk her registration by covertly feeding meat to a vegetarian child?

A huge proportion of toddlers (and tbh adults and older children!) don't eat a well rounded diet, vegetarian or otherwise.

I know plenty of meat eating children who eat an absolutely shit diet - nuggets, waffles, ham, frubes and that's about it.

Eating meat doesn't somehow guarantee a well balanced nutritious diet

Are you cooking it as his parents would?

I would really recommend not adding veg. Its tempting/often advised to add things to meals if you discover they like it, eg to get a pasta sauce then "hide" veg in it, or find out they like omelettes and keep trying to add stuff. In my experience that takes food which kids trust, and makes them suspicious of it.

What worked for us was not adjusting safe foods and keeping them consistent and reliable, but giving no pressure options of sides.

Like another poster, seperated plates worked for us with something new in one of the sections but familiar stuff in the other 2. We had yes foods, maybe foods, and trying foods. So for example we would add omelette in the yes section, chosen fruit or grated cheese in the maybe and then something more risky in the last eg chick peas.

We found the low pressure thing meant they sometimes tried it a few times, and liked it enough to be promoted into a yes food but that sometimes the yes foods from old became trying foods
Sometimes they didn't try them at all but we didnt cajole. We realised that the more we pushed the more resistant they are

That’s nice that you eat a well rounded vegetarian diet, unlike this child. Low iron does lead to poor appetite and irritability, it’s a valid opinion and might be a bigger problem for this child.

Good for you.
As for my backwards attitude, I don't care if you eat grass only.
You will find out about the consequences of your rabbit diet when/if much older.
😊

I’ve never eaten meat or fish in all my 43 years and I’ve never been short of iron or anything else. Your attitude was backwards even in the 80s.

You need to start being more assertive about this. If he refuses to eat and the parents are ‘expecting’ you to still feed him then you firmly need to tell them that if he won’t eat you will offer fruit and yoghurt and they need to feed him dinner.
Their attitude will sharply change once you put in some firm rules here.

Stop providing his food get them to.

I was also going to suggest this.

I thought my 2 year old was being extremely fussy but when I give him dinner leftovers for lunch he generally eats them or at least is much more interested in tasting things. He just doesn't seem to always be hungry enough for a 3rd meal after a good breakfast and lunch.