Is 2.8 too young to send to bed without tea?

[whenskiesaregrey]

Apologies in advance for such a long post about basically a toddler being a pain with his food...

Background... DS has always been an awful eater. He is just so slow, and to be honest, I just don't really know what else I am meant to do now. He is slow no matter what he has for his tea, whether it is a proper dinner or a picky tea. Something he will eat properly (as in less than an hour) one time, will be a nightmare the next time. Nothing seems to work. We have tried sitting with him when he is eating/ eating our dinner at the same time/ eating our dinner in a different room/ cheering and dancing every time he takes a mouthful/ making the food look interesting (cut into shapes, arranged like a face, etc)/ paying no attention to him when he is eating/ giving him small portions/ distracting him while he is eating/ turning it in to a game/ etc. I can't think of anything else now other than taking his food off him and letting him go hungry. Eating time will either go one of two ways. Either he will eat hardly any of it, or he will start to eat okay and then just stop. We have sat for hours trying to entice him to eat. He doesn't have tantrums, he just doesn't want to eat. We can't bribe him with treats, chocolate, sweets, because he is just not bothered about them. Or they might get him to eat one bite, and then the next mouthful is the same all over again. No meal takes less than an hour to eat, even breakfast. Toast this morning took an hour and a half. A banana can take up to an hour. Sandwiches take about an hour and a half. So proper meals are even worse.

So, tonight I made him pizza with a cheese dip. Usually a dip is exciting enough to get him to eat a bit faster. So after an hour, he had had three bites of pizza, and had cheese all in his hair and he was happily sat singing songs and getting the pieces of pizza to dance around the plate. So I asked him to eat hurry up and eat his tea. Previous to this, I had 1. had a bite and said how nice it was, 2. said how exciting his tea looked, 3. fed him two bites of the pizza, 4. asked him to eat his tea numerous times. So I said to him if he didn't start eating his tea, he couldn't have his yoghurt drink he had been asking for. Not bothered. I then said he had five more minutes and tea time would be over. After five minutes I went over and tried to feed him a piece of pizza, and he said 'no mummy, I'm not eating any more.' I said to him if he doesn't try with his tea, then he will have no more food tonight, and no toys after tea. He took one more bite of pizza, and then sat there and refused to eat any more.

So he has gone to bed tonight after eating 4 pieces of pizza and a glass of milk before he went up. And I know he's not that bothered. He was bothered about no toys after tea though. And I have said to him tonight that if he doesn't make any effort with his tea from now on, then he gets no toys after tea and no more food that night.

I don't know what else to do. I feel so bad, because he is 2.8, but I am at my wits end with it. It is every meal time, breakfast, dinner and tea. It takes up huge parts of the day, and I'm at a loss.

AIBU??

Thanks again guys. This thread has given me renewed hope

he is not even 3 yet, there are far more interesting things to do than to sit at the table and eat at this age

what is the obsession with an amount of time to eat his tea. let him eat what he wants play a bit then eat some more if he wants too. maybe something lighter

as he gets older, he has more routine, he can eat bigger amounts in one go he will grow out of this

and no child should be sent to bed hungry because they have refused to eat when others think they should

Twofalls

My strategy is to emphasise table manners and sociable meals - and hope that good eating follows. Specifically, I eat with the DC, and no one leaves the table until everyone (including me) has finished. This means that shouting 'finished' doesn't speed up playtime.

I also do afternoon tea rather than pudding - to avoid food-wars along the lines of 'lick the carrot or you won't get pudding'.

I'm finally starting to see the light at the end of the food nightmares tunnel. Ds just wouldn't eat anything. He would live on fresh air alone interspersed with the occasional petit filous. After worrying I'd screw him up completely I backed off big time.

He's still fussy about what he'll eat, and eats a fairly limited diet, but at least he eats. I won't battle that one and one day he'll start trying new things. He's 4.6 so there's plenty of time, but backing off from him at meal times in a big way has really helped. And I never ever have a go now if he tells me he's hungry an hour after a meal. He'll quite often tell me at story time he's hungry so I offer him a banana, a slice of bread and butter or some cheese. No reprimanding him for not eating enough because I really feel strongly about him learning to listen to his body. Stopping eating when he's no longer hungry, eating a snack when he is hungry.

Dd is terrible at meal times, she'll sit for about ten minutes, just like ds did at that age (2.2) then dash off. Again, I'm making absolutely no fuss. If she comes back she can have her food. If she wants a yoghurt or some fruit she can have it. I tend to leave her food on the side after we've all finished and she grazes on it during the day and I really don't mind that at all. When she's older, we can then work on sitting at the table and finishing a meal, but for now she's still just such a baby.

My sister has this bonkers idea that a 2 year old can sit at a table for 30 mins-1 hour eating a meal. Their attention spans just aren't that long, they're not interested in talking with you, they want to run off and play. I'm sure I'll get some disapproving comments about that, but I feel quite strongly about it. I was brought up by a mother with a big food complex, meals had to be eaten (and what was eaten was tightly controlled - no sweets or treats ever) so I developed terrible eating habits. I want my children to avoid that and respond much more naturally to their bodies need for food.

My DS is 2.5 and not a big eater. My DD 13mo eats more. DS is not actually fussy, he just doesn't eat that much (and I probably let him snack too much between meals as well). Three bites of pizza wouldn't be uncommon to be honest and the amount he eats seems to be quite random.

We try out best to eat together as a family. He sits there until he's certain he's finished or we're all finished (I'm slowly starting 'you have to wait at the table until everyone's finished but not quite there yet). I figure that he's clearly healthy and he'd eat if he wanted to.

It's not a case of 'ignore it'. It's a case of 'it doesn't actually matter how much he eats'. Seriously, there many other things to stress about. Obviously if I was concerned about energy levels or weight loss it would be a different matter but unless you have a reason to stress just try to take a step back and chill.

Use a timer if you have to use a timer but even that is regulating meal times. If you're not all eating together just take the food away after a bit (provided he isn't streaming 'hungry mummy, hungry' :) )

I think he sounds entirely normal. TBH unless he is dramatically loosing weight or was very thin, if he is just under 2 stone then it doesn't sound like he is I wouldn't worry. It's not like he hasn't eaten any of it. My DS was similar, he still takes ages to eat. He is in reception year now and still is one of the last to leave the table at lunchtime - very, very slow. He is 4.8 and 2.5 stone he is thin but I think it is fairly natural to thin out after babyhood. He was quite big 75th percentile 1-2 but I noticed from about your son's age he started loosing the toddler tummy.

Thanks all.

Well today we tried our new chilled approach. I asked him if he was finished after half an hour and each time he said yes, so I just said okay and that was it. For breakfast he maybe had about 3-4 shreddies and for tea he had 3/4 of a slice of bread and a few mouthfuls of soup. But for dinner he ate quite a bit more, so I'm happy with that. And for the first time in ages, we finished mealtimes at a reasonable time!!

This thread has made me realise that he doesn't really need that much volume in food. So from now on we shall go with the flow!

Good luck-I am sure taking away the attention will do the trick.

My DS2 was like this. I took him to the Dr and she gave me the best advice I have had - she said that if food was on offer children will not deliberately starve themselves. Missing a meal or 2 is no big deal in the grand scheme of things and if they are hungry they will eat. As long as he is growing and thriving, stop fretting as you will only wind yourself up.

That sounds like a much more enjoyable day .

Just wanted to add that my DD has now decided after a couple of months of doing the things I mentioned in my previous post that she no longer wants her stickers and will "just eat my tea like a big girl".

Excellent, glad it's starting to improve

Just to give all you ladies hope I had one of these ,he nearly drove me to despair although I had nonchalance off to a fine art .suddenly around the age of 14 I started to notice that he was trying a few more things .Last week we were away together (visiting a University) and I watched as he devoured a huge curry one day and Pizza and olives the next ....who'd have thought it .

P.S. we don't just live on fast food it was just that we were away!

Forgot to say he is 18 now!

Kids of that age aren't always hungry for a full meal, YABU and setting yourself up for a lot of unnecessary battles

SOrry! yWEREBU and now sound very NBU!

Blaming tiredness for my skimreading

I had a son who would eat anything I cooked and ask for more. When he hit two, his appetite shrank and he started to show signs of getting picky. Now, most foods I disliked when I was small were because of texture. My son is getting 4 molars, and definitely does not like "chewy" food as much as he used to. So it might be a sensory issue.

However, we started a sticker chart system when he was about 16 months old, and he gets a sticker for eating breakfast, one for lunch and one for dinner (as well as for tidying, etc). When his appetite changed recently, we changed the title of the stickers to "tried all of his breakfast", "tried all of his lunch" and "tried all of his dinner". That is, he has to take at least one bite of each item on the plate to get the sticker, and eat a reasonable amount of each one to get pudding. Honestly, how can you tell if you like a food if you don't actually taste it? I also told him that all the foods I didn't like as a child, I do like now, that sometimes people change their minds..... it's okay to change your mind, and if you don't give something a second chance, you won't be able to change your mind.

We never make a big issue over him finishing everything on his plate, whether or not he gets the sticker (99% of the time he does) or whether or not we have pudding. We really don't want to give him food issues. We always eat breakfast and dinner as a family, with no telly, radio or music on, and the focus is on spending family time together, talking. The food is incidental.

Just wanted to add that there have been a few times lately that my son has eaten like a bird at dinner time... I blame excessive tiredness, teething, low fever, etc... the next day he eats like a trooper at breakfast! Try to think about a child's nutrition over several days, or a week, instead of seeing every day in isolation.

sounds like today went really well! Great advice on this thread - stick with and you'll save yourself a lot of stress.

yay! Glad to hear you had a better day today. Thinking about this thread, my ds barely grew an inch between the ages of about 2.6 to 3.6, I think it was all brain development and no height iyswim, and that's why he didn't actually need that much in terms of actual bulk.

Fast forward a year and now he's 4.6 and he eats what I think is quite a lot. Today he had a bagel, a bowl of cereal and a banana for breakfast, out for pizza and ice cream with a friend for lunch and then I was just going to do him a sandwich for tea, but he wanted ravioli, followed by a homemade smoothie, a yoghurt and a satsuma. He was still asked for a piece of cheese at bedtime!

I think he's on a growth spurt!

I would totally encourage you to keep going down that path; offer food, don't comment, take away after half-an-hour. My dd2 also went through a phase of eating very limited foods, and very little amounts of them at around two. The thing that saved my sanity was to just put the food out on serving dishes, and leave her to help her self. Equally, if she only ate one slice of ham, so be it.

They do often go through a small appetite phase, my HV told me this and said it didn't matter as long as food wasn't a power struggle.

Keep going, his natural appetite may kick in at some point, he's clearly eating enough to be healthy and happy, and you'll find that once he goes to school/nursery with all the other children, he'll eat just fine (if not given large amounts of attention for not eating).

By the way, he may stay a slow eater though. My eldest used to take about 45 min a meal, we have now speeded up aged eight to 30 min, but even then she eats little breakfast in this time. You have to trust that children will take the nutrition they need.