To ask what you do when your child won't eat what you prepare for them?

[Seekingsense]

Do you not offer anything else until the next meal, offer a boring alternative, bribe them, or give in a give them food they want? Does it work for you?

I'm having trouble with 2yo DD's meals.

Today's lunchtime offering was a ham, cheese, tomato & red pepper omelette (made into a smiley face). DD has eaten this before. Today, she decided she didn't want it and just kept screaming "Yuck, I want an ice lolly instead." After about 30 minutes of screaming I managed to get her to eat 6 mouthfuls by promising her a mini milk ice lolly if she did. I feel like somehow, she 'won'.

In the past I've tried the 'take it or leave it' approach with no other offerings, except fruit/carrots etc in between meals. DD left it, kept whining for Frubes and cheese strings, left the next meal and then was hungry and wouldn't sleep so I ended up giving her toast in the night.

Tell me someone has cracked this problem and can tell me what I need to be doing.

I think it's a combination of made and born.

I think a lot of children with tendencies to fussiness get worse if it is handled with too much pandering.

On the other hand, there are children who have issues around food which would result in them being under nourished if left to their own devices, despite having been parented the same as their siblings.

My 2yo DS is a bit fussy but loves yogurt. If he refuses his food, I don't force him but put some yogurt on it and spoon him that bit first. Sometimes all the food has to be served in the yogurt, at other times he takes the food off the spoon without it. This week he has become obsessed with dry rice krispies. I put some on his omelette yesterday and he enjoyed it all.

Don't know if it's ideal but it generally gets the food into him without much fuss.

Ha Norwegian, just picturing yoghurt on omelette .

Can I ask any of the people with children who won't eat an question please.

Has your child ever started to lose weight because of it?

The reason I ask is because I have friends who stress about children not eating, non of these children are by any stretch of the imagination skinny. This could of course be because they are 'made' to eat.

you put yogurt on all his food?
weird.

She's only 2. I don't think they understand at that age that if they don't eat what's infront of them they will moss a meal.

As long a smile age something I'd not make a fuss, I'd give them something like banana or yoghurt afterwards.

If they complained of being hungry before the next meal I'd give them something small but healthy. I certainly wouldn't let a 2 year old go hungry.

As long as they ate something

The great Toddler Taming book starts its chapter on fussy toddlers by pointing out that it takes between 41 and 60 days with no food at all to starve to death.

I would ditch all the exciting snacks at home (agree that she can learn that at Granny's she can have X, but not at home) and stick to fruit, breadsticks etc. If the snacks are dull, then meals might have more appeal. Keep it regular - so if she has a bad lunch she'll get her usual snack at 3, or whenever, but nothing before or extra.

I read a lot to DD, still do at age 4, it's an easy way to get a few more mouthfuls in. Second vitamins too, takes the pressure off a bit.

One thing that helped a lot was her starting nursery at age 2, 2 meals a day, 2 (then 3) days a week - she's not bad there at all.

DD just isn't that interested in food (like DH). I have rarely heard her say she's hungry, doesn't often ask for a snack (though she's a milk monster and she loves chocolate - but we don't have it at home much). Some children just aren't.

arethereanyleftatall I offer my toddler a choice because it works

And when you have two - and they both want different things - will you make both meals?

If my DS won't eat dinner he can have wheetabix instead, if he's hungry he'll eat and if not then he doesn't

Some days I do give in and try something else but then everyone has those days!

Trick is that we don't have much snacky food in the house anyway so it's not there for him to ask for

Just thinking aloud, but I wonder why hunger is seen as such a bad thing these days. Obviously I don't mean dangerous third world levels of hunger, just ordinary hunger that I would expect children/adult to feel at times during the day. In that a child comes to you and tells you they're hungry it seems to be more normal to give them something to eat than to tell them to wait until meal time.

I had this with my youngest, who required a high fat diet due to SN.

I do remember a particular occasion being so desperate to get my child to eat that I covered fish fingers in yoghurt. It worked.

I used to get very worked up and stressed as not only was my child not eating but they were losing weight rapidly and it made my child more poorly. I would have cooked ten meals if they would have eaten just one of them.

However, with my other older DC's i was much stricter and had always only offered one meal or they wait until the next one. They were a bit about my change in stance but realised why.

Sometimes it's necessary to accommodate fussy toddlers - but I tend to be quite hard lined initially to establish if it's behavioural or not.

I don't offer alternatives (except occasionally at breakfast) and I don't offer yoghurt, fruit or plain bread if a meal is not eaten. DS loves all of those but we already find ourselves in a rut (especially a lunch rut, as we only have weekend lunches at home really, so have little food in the house). He is a good eater though, and I know he will eat at the next meal, or if he is a bit under the weather he'll have a few bites and have more tomorrow.

Today he tasted, but didn't really make an effort with, mushroom pate on bread, and cucumber. He then sat at the table for half an hour, playing with Duplo, and then I'd finished doing the washing/dishwasher so got him down. I asked him if he'd finished "yes", in the bin then? "Yes", so it went in the bin. Sometimes I'd bring it back at the next meal (I did think of that with this). He has cucumber regularly at nursery, and he used to really like mushroom pate but as I say we've been in a rut so it's maybe 2 months since we had it. He'd have happily eaten bread and cheese or peanut butter, or yoghurt or fruit, in fact he grabbed a pear from the fruit bowl but I took it away, but he had so little main he wasn't getting them.

We'll have pasta tonight and more of the pate tomorrow, it may be that he's just forgotten what it's like, or wasn't very hungry, but even when not very hungry he will like the taste of sweet stuff.

I would tell them if they don't want it I'll eat it, as it is delicious. I would ask any other family members who are present if they would like some, with a big wink. We would all make a fuss of eating it, even 'fighting' with each other over a fair share, all whilst ignoring the fussy one.

Then if there was pudding the person if they'd said they weren't hungry they would get a tiny amount.

kendodd that is, I assume, because you have good eaters and think it is down to how you've handled mealtimes?

I do have good eaters, although I have to say they are skinnier than most of their friends so maybe my bar is set lower than most on what I consider a good eater. I think this is partly down to me, partly down to luck.

Maybe they're skinnier because of all the missed meals though

I also think you have to look long term and ask yourself what you want to achieve. I want my dc to look back and remember relaxed, happy mealtimes and to have a varied, balanced diet and a good relationship with food. I don't want them to become anxious over food or force themselves to eat two peas so they can have dessert.

Far too much over-thinking goes on over this. It's just food. It's not 'good' to eat your dinner and not 'naughty' not to. Some days we are hungrier than others. Some days we fancy different things to last week.

Also, lots and lots of dc are fussy at some stage. I know it's not great but there are far worse things that could happen. If my dc grow up to enjoy food as an adult I don't mind a bit of fussiness as a child.

It tends to be parents of good eaters that say fussy eaters are made not born.

If its a new food the rule is it has to be tried and then if she doesn't like it she gets a basic alternative (usually pasta and sauce). If its something she eats then its that or nothing, no pudding unless the plate is clear, we dont do treaty puddings except at "big" meals so yogurt/fruit etc are there for anytime you're hungry, not as a reward.

motu why do they have to clear their plate? Shouldn't they learn to stop eating when they're full?

There was an interesting experiment done where dc served themselves. The portion they served themselves was quite a bit smaller than the one we'd give them.

Sorry, by pudding I mean, if after finishing her meal she is still hungry as can have some fruit or other snack. We don't require or encourage her to clear her plate, we don't do proper pudding except at special meals. I would only believe that she was still hungry if she had finished what was on her plate.

Very true about snacks. Not just children, adults too. We seem to be constantly be snacking.

Although having said that, children are usually starving after school and we don't eat until 6-ish so they have a snack then.