Vegetarian toddler very picky

I am vegetarian and have brought my children up vegetarian. I have never read such rubbish in my life!

He is only 18 months old. He doesn't need to eat huge quantities. He is picky but so are lots of children at that age.

Let him have the things he likes - eggs, cheese, yoghurt, milk, fruit, veggies and cereals if he will take them, and try the odd new thing. Organic baked beans were a good, quick snack for my two when they were little. Pasta sauces with hidden veggies (ie basic tomato pasta sauce with cooked veggies - blended before being served) also went down well.

I am a bit concerned that you think spaghetti hoops and/or a waffle would be a good fallback if the parents weren't against UPFs. Annabel Karmel does a good toddler veggie cookbook which is full of good ideas. I still use some of her recipes now. There is also a good River Cottage book on veggie cooking for toddlers.

This thread is weirdly and slyly judgemental.The fact the child is vegetarian is neither here nor there. The issue is he’s become picky about food.

Find out what he eats at home and try that, OP. If that doesn’t work, try basic meals, and if that doesn’t work, try making the meals visually exciting. Tedious but it worked for a picky eater of mine. I made faces, animals, etc. Also, keeping foods separate can help when children go through a stage of fussy eating.

It is never a win when you attack someones SaG but you do you ! The op is supposed to be a up on child development her jumping on vitamin.deficency is a bit of an over reaction.

The poster was right question as it makes no sense for a childminder not to know that kids can be fussy eaters. I mean, I knew that when I was a child myself. I’m sure most adults are aware, certainly ones who look after children. Not sure what SPaG has to do with anything.

If you’re going to be snarky at another poster, it’s always best to ensure your grammar, punctuation and spelling is on point.

Some people are so narrow minded and uneducated it scary.

How many kids will only eat chicken nuggets and chips?!? Won’t touch veg, won’t eat dairy … this is such crap!

Yeah because kids that eat mean are never picky 🤦🏻‍♀️🤣

What tosh

My child eats meat, we are vegetarian, but we weren’t confident we’d get her diet right so she eats meat half the week. She used to eat a wide variety of foods but refuses to eat things for months at a time and then suddenly loves them again. It is pretty normal!

She loved chickpea curry and black bean chilli, now won’t touch them! I just roll with it - sometimes if she won’t eat dinner I will do a sort of carbonara where I just crack egg and cheese on pasta and cook it all together, used to throw in peas and sweetcorn but now put veg on the side. We cook rice noodle with egg and have a few veg on the side too! There’ve been days she’s had oat crackers, cheese and cucumber after refusing dinner. The main thing is not to make a fuss, if you can sit nearby and eat a little of the same food it may encourage him. I tend to talk about the veg and how interesting they look (broccoli/cauliflower- little trees) which encourages her. Sometimes I make a game of it - splitting open sugar snap peas and doing the voices of the peas begging not to be eaten. Cheesy black bean quesadillas could be an idea, cauliflower cheese or some kind of butterbean in white sauce dish. If he is allowed tofu that could be an idea too - my daughter loves tofu! Cookies and Kate website have a recipe for a sweet potato burger which my daughter loves. Cheat days we get the crosta & mollica flatbreads, put on some mutti pizza sauce and sprinkle on mozarella with some mushrooms, red onion and goats cheese. We eat mostly unprocessed but she did try waitrose vegan sausages this am and loved them!

I'm a life long vegetarian and now vegan but it's a total myth that human bodies lose the capacity to digest meat after not eating it for a while. Especially for a toddler who would be very adaptable to introducing meat.
What often happens is people have gastric distress after reintroducing meat and assume that means they have lost the capacity to digest it but it's not the case.

So ignore the idiots that suggest adding meat like it's gods gift to nutrition (honestly, how dumb can you be). If you fed him meat then you could make him seriously ill because the body doesn't always retain the ability to digest it. Regardless of the ethical question it raises. Pickiness can be all sorts of things as a previous poster has suggested and sometimes they can be due to deficiencies, put that part on the parents to investigate.

The basics of a vegetarian diet are protein comes from sources like tofu/soy, eggs, seitan, beans, legumes, cheese, nuts, seeds and vegetables. These also cover fibre, what you have to be more aware of is the grams of carbs for every gram of protein ratio, as it can be (but isn't necessarily) higher than directly swapping meat.

What you need to do is determine what is driving the fussiness. Is it flavour or texture?
Are there any swaps you can do - like increase protein by changing the yoghurt to greek yoghurt (like Fage) or even soy yoghurt?
Can you make yoghurt based dips that he'll eat (Mediterranean cuisine is great for recipes) these may go better than hummus which can be grainy and serve that with grapes, toast sticks etc?
Egg meals are great, doesn't matter if they're his daily lunch. Can you add in things like mash potato into the omlette?

Then there's experimenting with the sauces, see what he likes as a flavour and then what you can add to it to help improve nutrition. Blended lentils or beans make great thick sauces, if he'll eat mac and cheese, can you blend some butter beans into the cheese sauce? Or half the pasta and add butter beans?

Then it's the usual trick of hiding veggies in.

If he's gone off lasagne, deconstruct it to see what flavours or textures he's gone off. If you're using quorn instead of mince, try a different protein source.

He doesn't know meat textures and flavours so you don't need to use substitutes or flavour things that way.

Good luck and just keep experimenting.

I didn't think you were going to sorry, I was just picking up on the mad advice from a couple of other people telling you to do that! It sounds like you're doing a fab job and I can see why it's frustrating.

Totally agree

I hope you don't work with children!

I'm glad you're not minding him.

Honestly

I would ask the parents to provide a meal for dinner that you heat up to see if it is you or the food.

Absolutely DON'T DO THIS! These parents are paying you to care for their child and a vegetarian diet is part of that agreement.

Fussy children won't be more likely to eat something if it has meat in it. The idea that flavour has to come from meat is bat poop. There are so many other sources of protein available.

Meat eating omnivore children can be fussy eaters too. Sometimes it's about texture, sometimes it's taste, sometimes it's just about asserting themselves.

If he's having egg on toast or an omelette for lunch with fruit and berries and yoghurt, that's fine. That's normal, nutritious, balanced, and not UPF.

Keep talking with the parents, share the recipes you used for the old favourites. I can see how it feels frustrating and wasteful but keep offering other things. As for the anaemia suggestion - eggs are a source of iron!

Don't pressure him, eat together so he can see you enjoying the food alongside him, get him involved in prepping the meals. I'm sure you'll be doing this anyway!

Have you been childminding long? 18 months is a really normal age for food refusal and fussiness. It's a normal phase. If they're pooping well, drinking plenty of water, growing, full of energy etc then there's nothing to worry about.

I'm not veggie, my kids aren't veggie. I haven't got a horse in this race other than to say you really mustn't go against the parental wishes for his diet. If I knew a childminder had knowingly fed a vegetarian child meat I would remove them from their care and report it. It's a matter of trust. Same if it were a relative looking after the child.

Well if you tell them he hasn't eaten dinner that really is up to them.

You need to chill. He will eat what he will eat. If he's not eating a lot they will have to give him more food later. You're making this more of a stress than it needs to be.

Don't be so bloody stupid. She's a childminder, she can't give a child meat against their parent's wishes.

I imagine he's malnourished, the poster who suggested mixing meat in might not be far off the mark, you could add some flavour (meat) without him noticing if it's mixed in sauces, I'm not suggesting you feed him a steak. No 18 month old should be on such a restrictive diet unless there are allergies or other medical reasons for it.