At what age do you say "you'll eat what you are given?" (If at all?)

[Elmo311]

My 15month old DS has just rejected the meal we have offered him for dinner. By rejected I mean he literally picks it all up and throws it on the floor! Whilst making eye contact, and displeased sounds! We don't react to this.

After these rejections we end up offering him something else for dinner, which he will then eat as he has certain food preferences.

Obviously I wouldn't let him go to bed on an empty stomach, but I also feel like I'm making a rod for my own back for the future!

Would it be unreasonable to keep offering the same meal until he eats some?
What have others done?

I'm aware this isn't really an AIBU but I've tried to make it one
I just really would love some advice on how to deal with this ?

Thank you

Ooh Cressida I might have to steal that line

Do you give him a lot at once? Could you give him a little bit and see if he eats it? (If he chucks it you haven't lost so much). Sometimes if it's a full portion they get a bit overwhelmed with it. If I give my little one half a cup of milk she'll drink it, and have another half. If I give her a full one she'll hardly touch it.

So if she doesn't eat the dinners, do you just leave it and not offer anything else?

I did exactly that. I did make sure to give a slightly larger snack or extra milk the next time they were due something. They were young enough not to figure that out

I've always gone down the route of "this is our dinner, choose the things you like" and left them to choose. They're both very good eaters and I think it's partly chance and partly the fact that when they did the throwing-food-about thing I quietly cleared it away and moved on from the mealtime rather than begging or cajoling.

I always put food out that I know they like, I get them involved in cooking and it seems to have worked so far. I wouldn't battle with a toddler, though, because it is soul destroying.

Also you mentioned ketchup, I personally would avoid things like ketchup and other high sugar/ high salt condiments or foods. They will get used to the taste of sugar and salt and not find other food as satisfying. We have never given them anything like that e.g baked beans etc, as I think if they are eating those foods regularly, broccoli just isn’t going to cut it! So we’ve totally avoided those sorts of things. But we don’t eat them ourselves so it’s just happened that way.
Also, as much as possible, eat together, and eat exactly the same thing.

No pudding (can just be fruit and yoghurt) if not enough dinner eaten, I would then assume they just aren’t hungry. If I sense they are just being difficult, I will say no bedtime milk if dinner is not eaten. If it’s something new and they genuinely might not like it, I will offer an alternative.

I don’t want to make food a battle ground but if I simply offered a ‘plain alternative’ like rice cake or bread in the event it wasn’t eaten, they would never eat the food. As with most things, for me, it’s about balance and informed judgement.

I wasn't allowed to be a fussy eater. Mother's mantra was "eat it or go hungry". So I grew up eating whatever was put in front of me.

I still think that's the way to deal with it - so long as it's reasonable food within whatever society you live in (I'm thinking things like whale blubber in UK, wittetchy grubs anywhere but Oz)

At 15 months they are still getting a fair bit of milk, no? So I wouldn't worry if a meal is totally rejected.

In fact if a child does not have dietary restrictions or behavioural problems I am of the opinion that it is totally fine to let them choose how much to eat even if that amount is "none at all". But it is frustrating at this age if it causes them to wake at night through hunger.

What I tend to do with my 1yo is make dinner something that I'm fairly sure he will eat, even just rice pudding as a failsafe, and keep lunch for the more experimental stuff. Also with toddlers watch out that dinner time is not so late that they are tired, because they become quite fussy about food if they are tired. With DS1 I had a rule of thumb that dinner needed to be at least 2 hours before I started bed, PJs, book etc, if I wanted him to eat a decent enough quantity to stay asleep. Any later and he would just pick at food.

Parents take a child refusing food so personally. Its very hard not to react when you have spent ages lovingly making a nutritious meal. It's not. It's just them learning about taste and texture. Do not make mealtimes a battleground because this is what makes things worse. Offer small amounts of various foods, find out what s/he likes. Praise when they eat, ignore when they don't. Chat normally at the table, don't make it all about cajoling or pleading. If they put it on the floor just pick it up and put it back on the tray. If they put it on the floor again remove it. Always put something on the plate that you know they will like. Don't extend mealtimes. When a meal is over, leave the table and clear up as normal. Praise if they have eaten, ignore if they haven't.

Do not overload the plate, I see toddlers with so much food they don't even know where to start. They are more likely to eat if it's less and they can ask for more. If possible, serve the food on the table in dishes so they can help themselves, rather than just present them with a plate of food.

Despite all of the above some children just don't enjoy mealtimes but you have to remember it's not about you. My oldest ate everything I gave him until the age of 10 and gradually his diet became very restricted, he is now 20 and still fairly fussy about what he eats but adding new things all the time. My youngest eats everything and anything.

Most food issues are as a direct result of table battles. Try (as hard as it is) to stay calm and not make it more of an issue.

@BertieBotts He's refused milk since he turned one so he only has water now. I'll try what you've suggested.

Thanks for all the comments so far! I'm learning a lot and it's helping me very much!

If mine didn't eat they just got bread and a banana as an alternative when they were younger. Now they don't get anything. However that's only happened once as they are both great eaters. Not sure what I'd do if they weren't. Probably carry on with the very boring alternative.

The throwing food/things on the floor is normal (a schema) and may not be because they don't like the food.
Offer a small amount. Then offer more when the first lot goes on the floor.

Personally I'd always offer something different if they don't like the food. When I've tried not offering something different with my 3 year old he'll just happily go to bed hungry, and wake up all night because he has an empty tummy. Pick your battles...

I was always so worried dd1 wouldnt sleep id offer toast before bedtime if she refused her dinner. It was a phase and it passed. Now she knows there is no more food if she doesnt eat.

If either of ours rejects dinner, they can always have plain toast with butter, yoghurt or fruit. This is non conditional. But that's the only offer.

Food throwing can be a stage and it’s not necessarily about fussy eating. I can’t remember specific ages, but for a while I didn’t use plates and put food directly on the high chair tray. And for a period I fed them on the floor on a scrupulously clean mat.

I have one extremely picky dc with oral sensory issues and one dc that eats everything. I genuinely don’t think we have anything near the kind of control that people think when they warn us that if we do this/that/give in/etc it will cause this issue or teach them a bad habit.

Yeah for mine the food throwing was more because she could I think. She'd always look at me first. I used to just make some extra as she'd eat some of it.

Feel free snuggy!

In general I'm a fan of the approach laid out in Carlos Gonzalez's book My Child Won't Eat!. His key point is that there is a division of responsibilities: your job as a parent is to make a healthy, varied range of foods available to your child, and your child's job is to decide what and how much to eat. He also favours a commonsense approach to allowing children to self-regulate and trusting that a healthy child will seek out and get what they need as long as you are making a decent range of foods available.

We don’t. Turns out dd’s Extreme pickiness is due to ASD. It is no wonder we struggled keeping her weight up when we tried to push her on food.

Reading this with interest! DS (14 months) usually eats pretty well, but he's not big on veg (VERY big on fruit, despite us doing all the 'get them used to bitter veg before offering sweet fruit' things when weaning) and occasionally will reject a whole meal. My problem is it feels quite random - apart from pasta, there isn't anything else that I would say he always eats, but there also aren't many things he has consistently, always rejected. I'm trying to do the 'at least one thing they like on the plate and don't make a big deal about what they eat' approach (we're trying to do the 'Division of Responsibility' thing - we give him healthy, balanced, almost all homemade meals, but it isn't our responsibility to see that he eats them, that's up to him), but how do you do that if there's a very limited range that you know they will eat (but a very wide range that they might eat - it's not that he has a very restricted diet)? Did anyone else have this?

If my DD didn't eat what i served up (we always ate together and same foods once weaned) then i took the plate away and gave her nothing else....tough love!
If she made a decent attempt, then fine, got desert.

I once thanked the lady who gave me this advice and she said "if only someone had told me! i've had a 'mare with my two because i gave in to them"

DD is 19 now, only really dislikes rice pudding, which is odd, because i never gave her that, not once!

I don’t think I’ve ever said they have to eat what there is....I have always been more that this is the food on offer and they can decide whether to eat it or not. If they don’t eat it there’s are no other options. No fuss, no rewards for eating just presenting good, wholesome meals three times a day from about nine months. No snacking (or at least rarely), no continuous eating and drinking.
We didn’t dish up on to plates usually but allowed self service or control by asking whether they wanted potatoes, for example. We also gave a strong message it was very rude and rather common to not eat whatever someone else had cooked for you, unless it was something you genuinely couldn’t eat. I think that holds true still.
I’ve one vegetarian but no fussy eaters.

We had problems with my Dd when she was 2, got very fussy, lost too much weight, health visitor put us on a Henry course, the advice we had was to make them sit at the table until everyone else finished, not react, and then clear away plates when the meal has finished. We were advised to give two healthy snacks during the day and then supper (rice pudding, cereal, porridge, bread and butter pudding etc.) So that she wasn't going to bed hungry, but to wait at least 30 mins after a meal before giving the snack or supper.

Mine would rather eat toast than most meals so I just offered weetabix before bed if they’d refused to eat meals. It’s not that exciting but filling enough that they wouldn’t wake up hungry at night.

I sometimes found that they’d eat off my plate so I used to let them do that just to get their tastebuds used to different foods.

I think they were about 3 before I got strict about eating their dinners. I do avoid things that they genuinely dislike though.

I have three DC, they’re all really good eaters and they ALL went through a fussy stage at around this age! It’s a power thing - he’s learning that he has the ability to say no - in fact it’s a key developmental step.

The important thing IMO is to not make a big deal of it. If you turn food into a battleground then it becomes a struggle of wills between you and him. Try to act unconcerned if he doesn’t eat it, as if you really couldn’t care one way or the other. I wouldn’t offer another meal but I would let him have some fruit or a piece of toast if he wants one so he doesn’t go hungry.

I'm sure they say something like if they reject food 7 times then they don't like it....I might have made that up

But I never have offered alternatives. A friend used to make a few different dinners so her fussy child as back ups in case they rejected dinner
Mine get dinner, if they don't eat it that's that. When they were babies I'd maybe give toast at bedtime to fill them up. But I did t give it as a replacement for dinner, it would be a few hours after dinner time so they didn't associate it as a replacement meal
My nephew (22 months) has started rejecting dinner and now asks for weetabix instead as my sister had been giving him that when he wasn't eating

If your child is rejecting food, you could try next time putting it with something he does like. For example if you give him carrots chicken and potato and he loves it but then you give him Salomon and broccoli and he rejects it, try next time giving broccoli with the chicken meal to see if he eats it and give salmon with carrot and potato
It could be tiredness rather than not liking the meal if it's more common before nap/bed time. If this is the case, could you give a main meal at lunch and a lighter meal at dinner?