To just stop offering DD breakfast and lunch?

How does being tube fed work at home?

Don do that. My daughter was really sick for a few years. Stopped eating and lost weight. Drs wouldn’t listen till she lost wegoht

anyway she became severely anemic. Milk inhibits iron production.

lots of issues ensued .

Frankly they were talking rubbish. I think DS record was a week with nothing eaten even having all his safe foods constantly avaiable.

he is now tube fed for most of his intake

Health visitor/paediatrician? I would get some advice there op, not on MN.

People often overestimate how much children this age need. If she's still a healthy weight and growing in height, she's getting enough.

Often toddlers are given too large a portion and either a) get overwhelmed or b) start realising they can simply fill up when their favourite foods are offered. Often people are offering what seems like a "healthy" or "small" snack - a banana is a good example, that is easily enough to kill a small child's appetite for the next meal.

Try much smaller portions, and a central serving dish where she can choose & serve elements of the meal for herself.

And yet children have starved themselves to death. It was on BBC breakfast one day. Fussy eating is a very real issue. Some kids can’t eat.

Could you post your meal pattern @turkishdeelitee? Children need to learn from their parents so eating together and sharing food can be a good way to get them to eat

Someone once told me that a child will never starve in the presence of food. I guess always make sure there are things for her to nibble on around as and when she fancies it… not sure what else you can do. Good luck OP 😊

@turkishdeelitee

Would she eat something for breakfast if you included ham, OP?

I'm thinking perhaps sliced ham with a spoonful of scrambled egg. Plus a milkshake?

My friends child was like this. The dietician said give them what they want.

Its hard, but protein is needed and if that’s what she’ll eat, I’d go with it.

Is she on the same percentiles she has always been? That's what they focus on, one of my children was refusing full meals too, to the point that he dropped percentile lines and was referred to a dietician from the GP. It might be worth having her weighed by the health visitors so they can log and see how her growth curve looks like. My little one had to be on pediasure shakes for about 1 year until he went back to his percentile. He's now 4 btw and he's eating like never before! His appetite is great and he has a healthy diet, I did worry a lot when he was 2, it took time but got better. The dietician always advised me to keep offering even only for exposure (eg he used to refuse broccoli, but if I was serving them for dinner I used to put a small piece on his plate for exposure, no pressure to eat it). He didn't eat any for over a year and now he eats pretty much any veg! Dietician advised that if he refused full meals I could do small snack plates with lots of choices and small portions which he would find more manageable. It's so stressful to see them refusing food, but it did get so much better for us, I hope it resolves soon for you as well!

Edit to add: don't know if anyone mentioned it or if it's helpful, but there is a brand called "naked" I think, that makes ham, sausages, bacon etc with no nitrates/nitrites and things like that.

How do you make your own ham? (Gammon tends to have nitrates etc).

Thank goodness you have the common sense to see that for the insanity it is! Some people, sheesh!

No new advice that you haven’t already had (omitting that bit of toxicity).

Do NOT do this. Dear me are people still doing this? How very ignorant. Foolish advice.

Has she always had a small appetite and is there anything else going on at home OP?

@turkishdeelitee

When will she start pre-school, OP?

What are the arrangements for food there? Do they offer food themselves or do all the children take something from home?

I wonder whether she will decide to join in with having something to eat if the other children at her table are eating.

Exactly. This is what I am saying.

Why would they be having a laugh?

I don’t get what’s funny about that suggestion.

This is why I asked the op about her own eating, I agree with you

If you don’t get your dd to eat enough, her brain will not be nourished, which in turn means she will not be able to learn effectively and she will not grow as she should and therefore be at risk of stunted growth. She may also suffer from behavioural issues. This lack of intake is particularly worrisome for such a young child.

Eating safe foods, rather then nothing is the safest option for your dd’s long term health. With dd, as she only ate 3 meals, I used to batch cook in advance, measure into little pots and freeze them. It had to be prepared in a specific way, so bolognese sauce with no lumps. That worked really well and I found it much easier to just do this as a toddler rather than try to force foods on her. It is very demoralising to not know if she will eat what you’ve made.

As she got older, her diet expanded and she slowly ate a wider variety of things. As she approached school she, I used to make a lot of picnics (picky boys) at home, that sounded exciting to her and I could try to add new things from time to time without risking the whole meal being rejected.

Sadly she now has anorexia and is again eating a very limited range of food. Her breakfast and snacks are the same ever day. Her lunch is one of 2 things. 5/6 days a week, dinner is the same meal. Is it completely nutritionally balanced? No but she alive, which I wasn’t sure of at one time.

A friend's son was like this. He just refused to eat when he wasn't hungry.

It turned out his digestion was a bit sluggish (no problems as such, he just took a while to process food) so he just felt full for longer, somewhat perpetuated by him drinking a lot.

Her GP, after many visits and weigh ins, sent him to a dietician, who just said he's happy, he's not ill and he does eat so why are you stressing?

He also suggested that her son was getting rather a lot of attention over it and pointed out that when she was worried about him not having eaten enough she had a bit of a habit of buying his favourite foods or taking him out for a 'treat'.

Basically, there was no motivation for him to change the behaviour because he was having a great time!

I'm not saying you do that, OP, but something to think about.

If I were you I think I'd try to chill out a bit, back off and eat well in front of her so that she is seeing healthy eating patterns and just see if it changes over time,

She might just be really in tune with what she needs and not really driven by what she wants , which is great.

DD never liked breakfast as a toddler/child and never bothers with it as an adult. I have to admit, I don't really do breakfast either - maybe a bit of fruit and a drink. If she is having a cup of milk at breakfast time, I actually think that's OK.

I would let her have a little bit of ham as she obviously loves it but just explain she can only have one slice a day as too much is bad for people. Maybe this is the breakfast food offered to encourage her to get into the habit of eating at that time of day. I don't think one thin slice of ham a day will do too much harm until she has grown out of this phase.

DD also had a small appetite and was a bit picky so I used to offer yoghurt, fruit, bread if she didn't want a real meal. She would normally eat at least some of these things and it was zero effort (and nothing goes off if it isn't eaten). She has a small appetite as an adult too, and I have to admit she might take after me there as well. Do you and your daughter's father eat breakfast and do you have big or small appetites?

Another thing that worked was the two choices thing. Don't say 'do you want lunch?' - she can more easily say no to that. Ask 'do you want yoghurt and fruit and bread, or a cheese sandwich?' or whatever it is. Try to include some things you know she likes. If she says no to everything, I would let her get on with it, personally. She will probably grow out of it and eating with other children at preschool may help.

If she is continuing to gain weight as she grows, you can assume she is taking in enough calories. If she starts to slip down the centiles then maybe it's time to talk to the health visitor or a doctor. But bear in mind your build and her dad's build. DD was somewhere down near the 0th centile for most of her life but is a naturally slim adult now and definitely not underweight. She just took after her parents.

Yes this confused me too. She said no snacks very early on and then later mentions snacks as part of the food offering

My 16 year old is being treated for ARFID. She was a picky eater when she was younger. My advice to you is try to make sure she eats regularly even if it’s food you think isn’t the healthiest. If her body/brain gets used to not eating it can get worse. The ARFID treatment team first focuses on weight restoration by any means, and the eating at regular intervals to retrain the brain/body for hunger cues. You might consider speaking to her doctor for support. As I’m sure you know eating disorders can be very harmful, serious, and difficult to treat. Who knows if she’s heading in that direction but again, my advice is to support regular eating ahead of any other food goals. Hope that helps.

I had a friend whose three year old seemed to live on nothing but two pots of plain a yoghurt a day for about 4 months,which felt like a loooong time at the time. As a society we tend to eat far more than we need, and we probably over-estimate how much a 3 year old needs. It's good that she is listening to her appetite and not eating when she doesn't feel the need; more of us would benefit from doing the same.

Eating disorders are very rare at this age, and like my pediatrician said, if you offer them a range of healthy foods that they like, and avoid the junk (which of course you do), even when it looks as if they're eating nothing it all balances out in the end. No healthy child ever deliberately starved itself to death.