AIBU to not offer an alternative if toddler refuses a meal?

[yorkshapudding]

I have an 18mo DC who until recently has always been a very good eater. She has always eaten whatever we cook for her and enjoyed a wide variety of foods. Now all of a sudden she has started to refuse meals. There doesn't seem to be any obvious pattern as sometimes she'll eat well, sometimes only a few mouthfulls and then there are times she won't even touch her meal, screaming as though I am trying to assault her when I put a plate of food in front of her!

She's physically healthy so I am assuming this is a phase she's going through in her development where she's pushing boundaries and trying to assert her independence. Having done a bit of research we've decided that when she refuses a meal we won't offer an alternative, just take it away without making a big deal of it. My friend visited yesterday and looked horrified when DD refused her lunch (homemade veggie soup which was previously a firm favorite) and I didn't offer her an alternative. She thought it was "cruel" and said I was wrong to deprive her of food when she's too little to understand why. It made me feel awful and now I'm questioning myself.

Am I being cruel and unreasonable to manage her food refusal in this way or is it my friend who has it wrong? I just don't want her to get the idea that if she refuses a meal she will get something she potentially likes better as surely if I do this the range of foods she eats will get narrower and narrower?

I expect most of the people saying offer alternatives are those with mysteriously fussy children. If it isn't eaten dont offer anything else until next mealtime.

I think you are spot on.

I've had friends who offer other meals, cook separately and bend over backwards for their toddler to eat. Two now have pre teens who literally eat no veggies except "hot chips". One has rotten teeth. Both won't eat anything not smothered in sugar/tomato sauce. The parent describes this as "picking her battles" while I describe it as "child neglect".

Spoiling is a form of neglect and food gets put into the same category as sleep school and medicine - it's necessary for mum to give you these things.

Oh and the kids who were expected to eat everything (within reason) have no food issues. Eat almost everything.

NO, no normal healthy child will, willingly starve themselves when there is ample food available, Don't turn meal times into battles, sit the toddler at the table & place the plate in front of them, once everyone else has finished eating , take the plate away (20 minutes is a reasonable amount of time) let them get down & go play, put the meal in the fridge, if they come asking for food then put them at the table and place the now cold food in front of them, if they complain about it being cold explain that if they had eaten it earlier it would have been warm, if they refuse to eat it let them get down and put the plate in the fridge again, repeat as many times as needed, your child will not die if they go to bed a few times with out dinner, they will learn to eat what is there or go hungry, you must not get angry or fight with them, make the exchanges as calm and matter of fact as possible, don't turn the dining table into a war zone. Serve breakfast the next morning and repeat the process if they refuse to eat that, the point of the lesson is that there are no alternatives , if you give them chips and chocolate later because they missed having dinner they will NEVER eat the dinner you serve, they will hold out for junk food rewards for not eating their meal.

Yorkshapudding, I believe your friend has it wrong- She was probably punished as a child by being sent to bed with no dinner, I was often punished this way sometime it was because there was not enough for all 6 of us, my mother considered me to be fat (i wasn't) and said it would not kill me to miss a few meals, that is cruel, there is a difference between deliberately refusing to feed a hungry child & refusing to be manipulated by a 2 year old, there are times when little kids simply are not hungry, but you know the difference and you know that if an alternative to a set meal is offered then you will be cooking 2 or even 3 different meals every night, even now all mine are teenagers & older if they don't want what i am cooking they make their own, you are not a galley slave, you are not being a bad parent by teaching your child boundaries and setting fair limits.

No I think it's fine. DS2(2.7) will go through phases like this - he still has milk before bed, so I won't withold that from him, but he doesn't get an alternative, no. And if he refuses to eat his dinner then he doesn't get dessert if it's a dessert day.

Yesterday, DS2 had a milkshake mid-morning as we'd been out shopping - this meant he wasn't hungry for lunch until around 3:30, so that's when he had his sandwich. I wasn't going to make him sit with a sandwich in front of him for hours just to stick to some randomised schedule. He still ate his dinner too (which just happened to be an hour later than usual owing to activities).

I agree that if a child is hungry, they will eat; and that if they are running around with bags of energy but don't wish to eat then they'll be fine if they don't. I think it's a general mistake to offer alternatives if they decide they don't want what they've been given, so long as what they've been given fits with what they actually like to eat.

For e.g., I wouldn't give either of my DSs fried mushrooms to eat because they don't like them, can't bear the texture. I wouldn't make DS2 eat olives, because he doesn't like them (whereas DS1 loves them). But if it's food that they do eat, or a new food that they need to try, then they have to eat some of it if they're in an eating mood. If they refuse, then they go without.

no alternative...just keep the meal on the side. An hour later they sometimes want it. Or they it more at the next meal. My Dcs have passed this stage and now enjoy a wide variety of food.

We tried this at 18 months. Very rapidly we got to the point where DS would only eat yoghurt and bread. So we went for the 'that's what there is' approach. Worked just fine.

I read an article on how much children need to eat - it seems just one tablespoon per meal per year of age is enough. I think sometimes we're expecting children to eat too much! I have one grandson who was a terrible eater, if you looked at him the wrong way he wouldn't eat anything, so his mum left the meal on the table and he came back for more later. I didn't think that was a good idea (not that I said anything of course), but there were never any battles and he's now a healthy 12 year old.

Just to balance out the anecdotal generalization...DD was given alternatives and eats pretty much anything while I have two adult friends with severe restrictions on what they will eat despite an 'eat what's given or Steve' attitude by their parents when they were young. Perhaps children are very different from each other, there are many reasons they might not eat and different approaches may work at different times and for different individuals.

And just for fun: my grandmother was in a Catholic boarding school when she was young. One day she was served green beans which she did not want to try, the nuns said nothing just cleared away her plate. At the next meal the beans re-appeared, this continued for two days until my granny took a mouthful when the plate was replaced with something else. She never touched green beans again in her life!