To just stop offering DD breakfast and lunch?

I wouldn’t stop offering it.

A 3yo not eating for 24 hours is something I would be concerned about but it may just be how she is.

I would just offer picky bits - cut up toast, fruit, veg, cheese, meat, yoghurt etc.

Obviously you can’t force her to eat but I’d sit her next to you whilst you eat yours and encourage her to try bits but not put pressure on her.

You can get fun cutters that might help.

No. You shouldn't stop offering food to your 2 year old...!

Just pick things that can safely go back in the fridge for another time.

has she had a blood test? My son developed anaemia and his food intake and variety used to narrow and shrink the more anaemic he got, until all he would eat was plain toast.

how are her energy levels.

That said another friend of my daughters would only eat potatoes, cheese and apples from ages 3-11, hewr father apparently was the same as a child, although they now eat a whole range of things.

How does your son eat now?

So you'd rather your kid starve than eat?

If it is IS ARFID (not afrid) then the first rule is feed them what they eat, because food/calories IN is more important than a healthy diet. My DS is 19yo and i've been dealing with this since he was 11mo and self weaned off milk.

Trust me on this.. you're going to have to get over this 'healthy eating' idea very quickly if it IS ARFID. You feed what they'll eat and support with a multivitamin.

She might do wheb she sees other kids eating theirs
I remember my 19 year old going through this ,he would eat plain bread and cheese slices and that was it
Things improved when he started nursery
But he remained quite picky as a child
He will eat anything now!

Just want to add Some days eats well and other days won’t touch anything. My DD is like this (other DC isn't) and still is at 14. It makes meal planning a real pain!
She also eats the contents of a sandwich and leaves the bread, 80% of the time eats the pasta sauce but leaves the pasta. Next time will eat two bowls We ended up in a phase where we would cook a joint of meat (beef, gammon, whatever) and she would have some of it for breakfast. She also still rarely eats "breakfast" foods for breakfast - but if there's left over pasta or couscous salad in the fridge she'll happily eat two or three portions. Overnight oats or olives in yoghurt are ok. Sometimes she'll only eat a tomato.

You've said yourself that she sometimes goes overnight and until dinner with no food. Do you live in a universe where the hours work differently or something?

Is her father around?

You can’t do that 😊

Try different food with her.

When my two eldest children were little, they went through the same thing. I stopped offering them food until about 4pm, by which time they were hungry and always ate a good dinner. After about a week I just started offering breakfast and by three weeks they were back to eating 3 times a day. I think it stopped us getting into a power play situation. Also in those days snacks were not a thing.

I worked with a man, 23 who never ate a thing until 7pm, only drank water. I wouldn't worry.

What have your GP/HV said about this? My friends's DD would only eat a handful of things, now being assessed for ASD and professionals said it didn't matter if she ate coco pops 3 times a day as long as she ate something.

If you are worried about UPF, you can buy ham joints directly from your local butcher and cook them yourself, it isn't difficult. You can boil or bake ham joints.

It tastes much better than the supermarket stuff as well.

@turkishdeelitee If your daughter is mainly eating quite salty foods that may be making her quite thirsty, and she may then be filling up on drinks / liquids (which is blunting her appetite later on for other solids). It may be helpful for you to keep track of exactly (solids and liquids) what is passing her lips each day (and over the course of a week) to see.

The milk she has after dinner, is that a large amount, is it full fat? Does she have milk overnight? Or first thing in the morning? Do you still breast feed? Might be worth working out exactly how much calorific content she is getting from milk or other drinks. (Eg does she have juice or smoothies at all, as that can be quite energy dense).

Can you try using incentives - like a sticker chart? Can you try introducing her (in a basic / age appropriate way) to food groups, and maybe make a laminated chart (of a plate) that she can stick on the different food groups when she has them, either during a day or during a meal? Other approaches include trying not to worry about the composition of different meals, but to keep track of what they are eating over the day or the week, to see if it balances out and they are getting enough energy.

Part of it may be about control - the eating of ham and insisting on more, but re du sing to eat other things. I have been in this situation before with dc - we have definitely tried to ‘gamify’ it a bit, so the get a small portion of their desired food, alongside some very small portions of maybe a couple of other types of food, and they can ‘earn’ some more of the favourite one by eating (or even just trying, one or maybe two - or three) the other things.

One thing I tried was keeping a visual chart of foods / meals that were liked - so if my dc was eating a meal or type of food that they liked, then I would take a photo of them sitting with the plate and smiling and showing a thumbs up, so if at a later date they say they don’t like it, you can show them the visual chart with all the photos of them doing thumbs up for all the food types.

Can you dress up mealtimes a bit and make them more fun, and get her to join in? Could you use finger foods to make a face on a plate, and she could choose what to put on there?

A final thought - if you daughter seems most keen on salty foods, (crisps and ham), can you try and find other foods that might give her a ‘salty’ hit - might she like small squares of toast and marmite? Or other things that are naturally salty? Maybe make popcorn with her (that is very exciting to watch, the corn popping in the pan!), then you could add a very controlled pinch of salt to it (much healthier than crisps).

Or try different type of crisps (like hand-cooked veg crisps), so that you can say to her - ‘ooh, this one is sweet potato, do you like that?’ And then get her to try sweet potato in some different ways (not just as crisps). And reward her (sticker chart or something else) when she does try new foods.

I’ve remembered another friend had this with her DS. One day I visited and he went to the child minder and ate nothing but olives and bottles of milk! He’s now a healthy 9 year old.

Just keep offering a variety at breakfast and lunch. Running around at pre school may make her hungrier. And if she’s got things she likes, eg ham, roast chicken and chilli, I’d offer at least one of those every day, alongside milk, water and fruit, so she always gets at least one decent meal of things she likes.

If it’s processed ham you are worried about how about buying a good quality ham/gammon from the butcher and cooking it in the oven yourself and slicing it thinly? I used to sometimes mix a bit of cooked gammon chopped thinly into pasta with cream cheese as something both my kids would eat!

@turkishdeelitee I think you mentioned your DD likes ice lollies? If so, you can make your own with crushed fruit or just fruit juice which will be slightly healthier than the ones in the shops. I did this when my (now adult) DC were small.

One of my DC ate fishfingers almost every day for a year at the age of 3. I can reassure you that my fishfinger child is a strong, healthy adult who now eats a good and varied diet. I hope that your DD will grow out of her ham and crisp diet soon.

Absolutely not. She's not even three yet - by no longer even offering her breakfast, you would just be setting in concrete what might otherwise be just a phase.

You've had some good tips and advice about how to deal with the issue, so I won't give any other advice, but the very worst thing to do would be to treat this as "just how she is" and stop even providing breakfast. And it sounds as though lunch would be next on the list as well. If she were 13, then maybe you'd have to accept that she wasn't eating breakfast, but at 3? Definitely not!

Offering and giving is the same in this context.

She isn't going "would you like a cooked egg?" And then not giving when DD says no. She's putting the egg in front of her and Dd isn't eating it.

I do agree with the posters who are saying, if she will eat ham, give her ham, @turkishdeelitee - UPF calories are better than no calories. The same goes for milk too - if she will drink it, give her lots. Will she take a vitamin supplement? If she would drink chocolate or strawberry milk, you could hide vitamin drops in that, maybe.

I don’t offer. I just give her meals. My DD is 17 she hasn’t changed. If I offer she’ll refuse.
She never eats breakfast.

If she isn't medically underweight I wouldn't worry. You've said the amount she eats varies eg she had chilli for lunch, then a roast for dinner. This is pretty normal at 3.
With regards to ham- I always cook my own- it works out cheaper and contains no upfs and much tastier- look up a recipe- it' very easy to do.
Try not to stress and keep offering small portions of lots of variety and keep back as many leftovers as possible to reduce hpw much you waste 😊

I was struck me by your rudeness too, OP. You are the one making things up. @Blondeshavemorefun asked you in her post if you offer snacks. She didn't wait for you to answer before offering advice because that's what makes threads tedious and you might choose never to answer. Either don't react or just point out you don't offer snacks. Personal attacks and namecalling are not mature responses.