Help me please! 3 yo still drinking from bottle

[Chipbutty67]

I’m absolutely desperate for any and all advice about 3 related issues. DD is 3 1/2 this month and is driving me to absolute despair!!! The three related issues we have are:

1. She still drinks from a bottle!! I can’t believe I’m this parent, and I’m usually quite firm with discipline but I can’t seem to take away the bottle because;
2. She’s incredibly fussy with food and will eat a very limited variety at odd times; including
3. Will only eat at home after a massive song and dance, with me only, so won’t eat a bite at nursery or won’t even eat breakfast before nursery if we don’t have a leisurely hour to eat. In desperation I will then give a bottle with milk and pediasure so she is at least not starving at nursery, hence my inability to wean her off the bottle.

Although her nursery covers both breakfast and lunch, I have to drop her off late and collect her early just to feed her. Nursery have tried everything (offering favourite foods, giving her a toy at the table) but she won’t budge.

To top it all off, she’s an August baby so will be in Reception next year! I am panicking she won’t eat all day and am considering applying to delay school entry just because of her eating habits!!

I’ve tried to be relaxed and not make food a ‘power struggle’ but am so stressed I usually end up shouting at mealtimes, which is only going to make things worse in the long run.

I’m really scared to take away the bottle and find that she doesn’t replace the milk intake with food and her weight plummets. Even worse, she’ll only have the bottle in my lap, as she plays with my hair, and this has become her self soothing ritual. If she’s very upset (injury, illness), this is the only thing that calms her. I’ve tried replicating with cuddles and a book, cuddles and a song but she seems to want the suckling to calm.

AIBU to ask for every bit of advice I can get? I feel an absolute mess and failure to have let this get so out of hand.

Really interesting to see the range of views on this! We have a slightly fussy eater, but not as fussy as yours - exactly the same age too. The difference is that he eats well, if from a more limited range of foods than I would like, and in a range of circumstances.

Our situation was different but there are two mantras which I find helpful. One for me: it's your job to offer them good food. It's their job to decide whether to eat it. And one for out loud: that's fine if you don't want it but there isn't anything else until the next meal.

In my limited experience, food issues are often about control. Once DS realised I wasn't going to battle with him for that control, things were smoother. I would not pretend that I was as serene about this as I would have liked. My child was going to eat really well, you see. Not be existing on Ella's Kitchen under 10 months pouches at the age of 20 months .

He still has a bottle. Definitely a comfort thing. He is only allowed it first thing and last thing (with teeth cleaned after, obviously) and we encourage him to choose a cup but don't fight it if he wants the bottle. We have started casually suggesting that if he stops drinking from them and leaves them out for the milk fairy, then she might bring him a new toy, but he's not currently biting.

Have you ever tried a different setting? Carpet picnics, eating outside, that sort of thing?

It does sound like there is more to it than wilfulness if she won't eat at nursery. DS was the run of the mill little blighter who was beyond fussy at home but ate everything at nursery/childminder's...

Op can I ask if you eat with her? could you be projecting any food anxietys you have on to her ?

@ForeignnessAlert she loves to cook/ bake w me but will never eat the end result

My son is 4 in June and has a “bot-bot” at bedtime for comfort. He’s an amazing sleeper but has to have this. I’ve started putting less and less in so really he’s only having about half a bottle but I didn’t really think it mattered - it’s not a hunger thing though and he is huge and eats anything and everything (from vegan to full on carnivore!) while being very fit and active and loves sports... I don’t care if anyone judges me about bottles so you shouldn’t too. I doubt our kids will be having bottles still when they head off to Uni or wherever, so don’t sweat the small stuff and don’t guilt yourself out x

However if there ever is anything I cook or present to him that he won’t eat, he just goes hungry. I don’t make a fuss, he just knows he eats what he’s given and that’s that! Maybe I’m lucky or maybe it’s because I’m quite strict about it, either way I don’t care if he has a bottle still for comfort at bedtime x

Please, please don’t be ashamed of the bottles. Infants can still want to suckle up to the age of 7. It’s really ok and she will grow out of it. You are putting yourself under so much pressure

Hi OP

My daughter is 5 - she still loves her bottle with milk in. I put it in the fridge in the evening, she gets up earlier than I do, goes and gets her milk and chills with it in bed till I get up.

She won't do it if others are around, even my mum and I have to hide the empty bottle when we have visitors in case they see it.

She just loves it and I checked with the dentist - there is no harm so long as it isn't at night after cleaning teeth.

She won't be doing this when she is 15, 20, 25. I can't see anything wrong with letting her have a little comfort.

On the flip side:
I had a bottle until I was 4. It was made of glass. My mum didn't want me to have it and in a fit of frustration (I know how those feel now), she smashed it on the stone floor. I have been unable to drink milk since. Makes me feel sick.

Re eating:

My DD is fussy, but not as much as yours. Whatever you do, don't give her a packed lunch. She will soon start eating at school if she is hungry. Let the teachers battle it out with her.

Mine eats all sorts at school but when offered at home makes a fuss. It is boundary testing. Offer what you are offering and nothing more. If she doesn't eat, she will be hungry. Then the options are a piece of fruit and wait until next mealtime.

Have you tried cooking together?

Sorry op I have no idea re the food issues, but I did have a child who still had a bottle at night when she was 3. She never had a dummy or any sort of comfort she just loved her “bot bot” to go to sleep. It ended when dp had enough of my softly softly approach. (which was just to give her the bottle) We were on holiday and he said no to taking any bottles, she’d have to put up with it..and she did.

Her teeth are fine, and my friends dd has a dummy and is 5 that she is so embarrassed about. It happens, but it is important it comes to an end! I think if they won’t wean themselves off you have to get tough.

@converseandjeans I honestly just bumbled through. I was a remarkably unfussy child so I never got it at all. I used to bribe her with a yoghurt or ice lolly - but my younger 2 were on the chubby end so this was a poor tactic in the long run! I had years of ‘one more forkful’ and to the others ‘stop when you’re full’.

I never forced her to eat anything or made her sit with it cold. I felt that would really put her off and food should be a joy. I also made sure 2 meals a day were things she would eat and that some of the family meals were things she definitely liked.

But, you know what, as she has grown up - it is clear some of this is her preference. She actually has a palate for spicy food. So any bland or fatty foods (think roasts and stews), she still dislikes.

She was never going to love meat and went veggie a year ago.

She’s still a snacker, who stops when she’s full. So big meals are not her thing.

But she did stop troughing the warm milk about a year into school!

The only thing I have wondered is whether I should have offered a multivitamin.

Having been a "fussy eater" myself as a child it basically came down to always being fed food I didn't actually like.

When Ds2 turned fussy at 2 I resolved that I would always try new things at lunch time as then he would always have a dinner he would eat.

As he got older I would literally put 1 teaspoon of rice and 1 teaspoon of mild chilli in a bowl, fed the rest of us chilli, I told him when he ate that he could have whatever he wanted (usually a wrap with chicken/ham/philadelphia) that way there were no arguments over food and he was still exposed to new textures and flavours.

He is now 13 and eats lots of different foods, Thai, Indian, Chinese, Mexican etc.

Bottle wise, your daughter knows you always back down, so at some stage you have to stand your ground over it. Decide on a date, count her down to it and then bin them and give her milk in a cup instead. She might want to pick one out as part of the process. But once you put that mark in the sand, you can't go back.

My just-turned-three year old has just given up the bottle before his third birthday. Gosh I expected it to be a fight, but I was very lucky in that we went on holiday to the US for three long weeks, where he hardly napped and was so tired at the end of the day he didn't need the comfort of the bottle to sleep. So I stopped offering it. He asked for it a few times once we got back, but happily, saying no with a brief explanation was enough. That was quite painless, never expected that I must admit.

He is also a very fussy eater, and I am still having to spoon feed Weetabix to him or else he'd not eat anything with much fibre. He had a bad bout of constipation before we restarted spoon feeding. He won't feed himself wet/soggy things and won't even touch vegetables, so I do want I feel is right, despite the judgement. He is skinny, so I'd rather not chance it. I give it to him with loads of milk/yogurt so I can sleep at night re calcium, but it's so hard to reconcile with the fact he consumes nowhere near as much milk . He only likes chips and strawberries all the time. A few 'sometime' foods. Most foods are just no. Definitely a sensory thing with him. I give him a multivitamin most days too (he eats that with no problem as it's a sweet )

But he's got a sharp mind, and is naturally very curious so will try different things. I am hopeful we can get to a better place with his eating 😄. Keep trying mum

You decide what she eats, where she eats and when she eats.

Your daughter decides IF she eats and HOW MUCH.

Try and repeat that to yourself, don't get stressed and remember--she won't starve herself.

Like a prior poster I tend to try new stuff for lunxh with my twins and then dinner is old faithful as I like them to have full tummies before bed.

But here are days when whole meals go in the bin and I try not to stress about it - take a deep breath and be kind to yourself

Sounds like she uses the bottle like breastfeeding rather than just food. Children with extended breastfeeding tend to feed until age 4-7. Maybe you should look at suggestions for how to wean a baby off the breast at night, the approaches might be similar.

aquamarine some children do have genuine issues with taste as well as texture. I don't think people seem to be very tolerant on here! It's not always down to rubbish parenting.

gwynnfluff thanks for this. We don't make a fuss but a meal for a 9yo DS will consist of a small bowl of pasta with butter and a small toddler size yoghurt. I keep hoping he will get better. It is encouraging to hear that it does seem to improve with age.

Thanks everyone for your messages. I ageee, the guilt isn’t good for me or for her.

Ironically, her weight is bang on 50th percentile as it has been since birth and she’s very athletic (much more so than me). I think a lot of the problem is so much conflicting advice. My hv insists she’s fine as her weight is tracking and she eats ‘enough’ foods. My friends IRL are aghast when I say she still has a bottle. My MIL actually thought I was starving her and took her to a private paedriatician for blood tests!!! Which came back fine, thankfully. My family is very zero tolerance on fussy eating. I distinctly remember being forced to clear my plate as a child, so they view her as spoiled.

It’s makes every decision about food so loaded. Some days I know she’ll eat happily if I just give her bloody nuggets and chips but I wrestle with feeding her vs setting her up w unhealthy food habits for life

All the above is to say, thanks to everyone who shared ideas or your own experiences, feeling less alone in this is actually very comforting

I'll probably get flamed but I'd leave her to it. No one's doing it at 14, it doesn't matter when you give up bottles.

For context my three year old still has bottles. He's likely autistic spectrum and wont drink milk from a cup. He will drink everything else from one. He's allergic to actual milk and to soy and is a picky eater.

As long as he's getting fed properly I don't care whether it's from a bottle, plate, NG tube...

But I'm coming from the perspective of someone who's three kids have all had serious illnesses so...

For their third birthday each of our children received a special "grown up" mug (from the Disney shop featuring an appropriate character) and we told them that it was what three year olds drank from..... but we did give them a special re usable straw to go with it so they could continue the comforting "sucking"...... the bottles stopped overnight and were never asked for. Maybe you could try something similar?

Littledinoco has it spot on. My DD went through similar when she was 2-3yr old, refusing to eat and was underweight. My HV referred us onto a programme to support my DH and my behaviour and all the things mentioned in the pp above were what we were taught. It was called Henry, if you look it up at first I thought it was for overweight or unhealthy families but it can be adapted all round. I was so embarrassed at first to seek help and was convinced there were sensory/additional issues but it turned out to be almost all behavioural for us (not saying that is the case for yours but we were at the end of our tether and convinced we had tried it all)

Self serve - Put food in the middle of the table in bowls for her to help herself and not mentioning it at all, nothing positive or negative then after a period of time just removing it with 'tea is finished now'

Make them sit at the table with you, but with no pressure to eat. We had to use the 'reflection step' and make her repeatedly return the the table until everyone in the family finished our meal even if she ate nothing herself.

Introduce two small snacks and supper using the same method but try to keep carbs for main meal times e.g. fruit or yoghurt. We had reduced snacks and milk to try and make her hungry for meals but we were told her stomach would have adjusted to small amounts so little and often was best

No alternatives, if she doesn't like what you're eating just explain that's what you're having

No shouting, no begging, bargaining, just try a bit, you won't get pudding if you don't eat, mmmm this is tasty mummy loves it, you'll be hungry later if you don't eat now, etc. Ignore any comments about yuck, I don't like it, I'm not hungry, etc never respond, keep calm, Talk about anything except food (it's really hard!)

Get nursery on board, no more special attention, no taking her out early to give her tea, no alternatives for her (mine kept giving sandwiches when she didn't eat the meal and we had to put it in writing that we didn't want them to do this because their policy was never to leave a child hungry which while understandable undermined our work)

Increase activity/exercise. Our DD was lethargic and lacking in energy due to not eating so had started driving more rather than walking, didn't get out as much etc but the more exercise we did the more she ate so it was self fulfilling

Sign up family, my parents are old fashioned so hated waste, would hang over my DD encouraging her to eat, moving food around on her plate and it really stressed her out. Had to remind them before every visit, not talk about food or eating during our FaceTime calls etc

Get her involved with preparing food/baking/setting table even if she doesn't want to eat it herself.

It took about 6 months to get on an even keel but what a difference, our DD is a healthy weight, eats a lot more variety of foods and honestly we're all so much happier. Having her little brother eating with us at the table once he was weaned has also helped as he's a slow eater so she often returns to food on her plate (because we now make her sit until everyone has finished) and also competitive eating with her brother!

Good luck, it's hard work and we still have to return to some of the principles when things slip but it's so nice not to have that stress

I was in a very similar situation with bottles when my DD was the same age, it was definitely a comfort thing. I tried buying a nice grown up mug with her name on for her milk but that didn't work. I eventually did a 'dummy fairy' sort of thing where we wrapped up all her bottles to give to new babies that need them and she never asked for them again! I was really surprised how easily she adjusted. Once she stopped drinking so much milk her appetite improved immediately so if you can get your DD to stop the bottles it may help with the eating

My dd had a bottle at 3.5 and it was getting to the point where it needed replacing. So I got a shoe box covered it in coloured spots, wrote a letter from Mr Tumble telling her a baby needed a bottle. Got her to put the bottle in the box at bed time and Mr Tumble a took it and left her a frozen dinner plate, bowl, cup set and cebebies magazine.

Would something like that work?

Milk is a food, hence if she fills up on this she can afford to not eat.

You need to take all stress out of mealtimes, go back to basics. Eat with her, if not eaten in 20-30mins, take the food away and don't offer more until the next meal (no snacks or milk either). If she does eat give her named praise, she will get a sense of well being when you do this (we all do). If she doesn't eat, do not say a thing, act like you aren't bothered, no attention positive or negative, any type of attention encourages the behaviour to be repeated. Mind and keep your face neutral as well, like it's no big deal whats so ever. She needs to learn that meal times are an enjoyable family time where you chat and have a nice time together (whether she eats or not). No distractions at the table (e.g toys/tv/screens etc).

See your HV incase she has sensory social/communication issues.

Watering down the milk until it's nothing but water can be helpful as can the 'bottle fairy' (basically same as tooth fairly - both of you hide all the bottles for the 'bottle fairy' before bed one night, make a really big deal of it (like santa claus) and in the morning she has a lovely wrapped up present of something you know she'd love; won't stop the tantrums but still helpful (if doing this make sure you throw the bottles out as if you give in she will have gone through it all for nothing).

Remember you are in charge and it's a fact of life to have boundaries, she needs to get used to this i'e as adults we have to go to work and pay bills, as a 3yr old we need to stop having baby bottles.

You didn't mention if her weight was okay? If it is then she is just getting her calories from the milk, which can make her low in other nutrients including iron.

Both of mine liked their bottles (with SMA in them) until they were 4 years old. They gave them up when they were ready but only had one in the morning and one in the evening. They ate and drank from cups too though. They just liked to relax with one at the end of the day. I also had a nephew that wouldn't eat and it was a sensory thing because he got wiped by his grandmother every time he touched something so one day after he was hospitalized we played with chocolate buttons and he got into a fine mess but actually started eating them too which was a first.

Hello OP, it sounds like my DD can time travel!

She stopped having bottles when she was 5 (I insisted when she started getting adult teeth!) - at 3.5 she was just about switching to getting the majority of her calories from food rather than milk. She was drinking a lot more than your DD, so I started watering it down.

My DD will starve rather than eat food she doesn't like - we've tested it. She ate absolutely nothing at nursery for the first 6 months (she went 9-2), and then would only eat the part of the meal she could cope with (e.g. just the pasta or rice; she still won't eat anything with sauce on).

She's now 6, and still a very fussy eater. Texture is the major issue for her - she'll eat Ella's 4 month pouches (though nothing beyond that!) but won't eat the fruit and veg 'whole' or unmashed.

What was weaning like for you? DD was very very unenthusiastic, and would vomit if I got food into her mouth. You can tell I've had fun. Just to let you know you're not alone.

My fussy eater has just turned 4 and after reading every book available on the subject I can honestly say they were a waste of money. Nothing helped. When he was little we would both end up in tears and he still wouldn't eat so I decided it was better not to get cross and have a happier if unfed child. However, he has just started to improve in the last month - eating more things at nursery (who have been known to make him toast if he didn't eat anything all day) and eating green beans and peas now and again. He even had seconds of curry at nursery last week and tried some sweetcorn. He will quite happily starve himself though if he doesn't like what's on offer and plummeted 4lbs in a week once when he was 1.5.

I would drop the bottle though - she really is too old for it. Use a cup with a built in straw instead or an open cup. Throw the bottle away so you can't be tempted to go back to it!