AIBU not to give my DD (16m) anything else for dinner

[MeadowHay]

She's a fairly fussy eater and often only eats certain components of a meal. This evening she went to her high chair, signalling hunger, and cried the whole time I was heating her dinner (leftovers). I gave it to her and she picked off a few chunks of a veg she likes (it's a soup) and refused to eat any more and threw a huge tantrum. She has eaten this soup fine before a few weeks ago but she is getting fussier and fussier as time goes on. I absolutely do not want to reinforce this by making her an alternative dinner and then having to continue doing this when she learns she can get away with it. But I feel awful at the thought of her going to bed hungry with her being so small.

More of a WWYD really.

Op if you stop comparing your baby to your relatives and just view this as a completely different thing you might find yourself less stressed.
Just because they are fussy eaters does not mean your baby will be.she is her own person developing her own tastes.

My policy at that age was to offer something else but make it super boring - weetabix, toast, etc. So it’s not a treat for not eating dinner but not going to bed hungry either.

She’s not old enough to understand consequences and cause and effect.

@Jellybeansincognito very true! Even though I'm fairly sure I'm doing all I can, i still feel guilt. I still worry about him, and also in moments of selfishness (!) worry that it reflects badly on me as a parent when others notice.

Should have added "this too shall pass" to the list, because it will!

I’d offer a yoghurt and batten down the hatches for whatever bug she is brewing!

‘ Lovemenorca

Op
You will come across this thread in a few years and you will shudder that you ever thought you’d send your 16 month old baby to bed without a proper dinner because she was fussy at dinner time’

^ she gave her baby dinner which her baby picked at and didn’t eat.
Of course she’s not starving her child or contemplating starving her child.

Goodness me.

As some others said, a bit of porridge to reassure you she's not going to bed hungry

I spent so many childhood meals being given food I didn't like and being made to sit their till I ate it. It was horrible. Make mealtimes relaxed and when she is older let her help cook. My 2 eldest went through very boring phases, now they eat nearly anything.

My DS1 was fussy and ate very little from day one of weaning. I was absolutely tearing my hair out by the time he was 18 months.

He's now 4 and a half and I look back and wonder why the hell I got so stressed and made my life (and his) so difficult. So what, she doesn't fancy soup? Try something (simple and boring) else. It's not a big deal. Personally I don't like most vegetables so I understood how my son felt when I tried to get him to eat them. To be fair, he's helped me as much as Ive helped him because I wanted him to see me eating veg!

DS hasn't magically outgrown his fussiness and still has a relatively small repertoire of things he likes, but he can tell me what he likes now and we work together to get him trying new things. Give this stuff time and don't make it a big deal, making a drama out of it just stresses everyone out and makes mealtimes less successful not more.

Have you ever been hungry but had to wait and then by the time you get your meal you’re over it and not hungry anymore? What i mean is if that she was crying with hunger whilst you heated her tea perhaps she just got ‘over it’. Try giving her something as soon as she’s sat down, oatcake, fruit etc to spur her appetite. Children’s needs are pretty immediate and if she’s over hungry perhaps the only things she’ll eat are the things that are ‘best’ to her

@ Disfordarkchocolate that’s 2 different issues. No body should be forced to eat a meal, and being given something you don’t like all the time isn’t great either.

Op hasn’t done either of these. She’s given something to her child that her child has happily eaten before, her child has picked bits out they’ve wanted and left the rest. This is ok- baby led weaning, isn’t it? Letting them pick what they want to eat.
That doesn’t mean if they’ve not eaten to your liking you have to feed them breakfast before bed.

Sometimes we’re just not hungry, sometimes we don’t want something and that’s ok.

A 16 month old is old enough to understand what she needs to eat.

My 16 month is the classic 'used to eat everything, suddenly fussy' and I'm trying not to stress about it and do the division of responsibility thing. What I find tough is the advice to include something I know he eats at every meal - there isn't anything he always eats that isn't sweet that isn't pasta! It is literally day by day that he'll decide whether or not he eats, say, rice. On the plus side that does also mean he'll sometimes try something I'm not expecting (he ate peas tonight, which were the only vegetable he outright refused to touch when he was weaning). The 'include something you know they eat' seems to be maybe be geared towards older children with fixed preferences - I don't know how to do it with a child whose preferences I can't predict at all?

There is absolutely no time for us to start making second proper dinners anyway - we eat between 6 and 6.30 and start bedtime at 7 - so it's cereal or toast in our house if he refuses every part of dinner. If he eats just a bit we let him crack on with that.

I wonder from the description if she was just too hungry if that makes sense or too hungry/too tired. DS1 was a monster at this age for that - he'd get too tired to eat and then be too hungry to sleep properly.

I agree with SleepRegression about giving her something immediately while you warm her food.

Include something you know they'll eat is essentially just code for saying don't try to offer them totally new stuff all the time. It's rare for there to be no safe bets at all (although this can totally happen as my DS1 was that way) - I'd just make sure that there are at least three fairly different components to a meal and then let him have as much as he wants of the one(s) he wants. That is what we do anyway. Difficult when there is only a set quantity e.g. leftovers. But DS2 is so much easier to feed than DS1 ever was so I am much more laid back this time, easy to say - not easy to do especially with your first.

I very much doubt soup would fill her up anyway.... offer up a ham sandwich, far more interesting and filling imo

Whenever my son didn't like a meal I would smash up a banana and mix it in yoghurt. He would get yoghurt anyway. So this way I felt like he was getting something filling without feeling like he got an alternative! Did you offer toast with the soup?

That makes sense, thanks Bertie! The 'safe bet' list seems to be getting smaller and smaller - it used to be all carbs but now it's just pasta (and potatoes, once an absolute favourite, now seem to be entirely off the menu). Dreading the day he first refuses pasta!

My two year still will suddenly turn his nose up at something I know he loves.
I don't choose to starve him as punishment if he doesn't fancy it. I simply make something else.

Either cereal, toast or a sandwich usually. I've on occasion gave a tin of pasta shapes which he wolves down.

Until he can hold a clear conversation with me I will not be enforcing the eat what your given rule.
There might be a reason for them not eating it and it's not a very young childs fault for not being able to tell us that reason.

Also - while I'm getting advice (sorry to hijack the thread, OP!) - any tips for a 16 month old who hates sitting down to eat?! He started crying when we put him in a highchair so we switched to a booster seat but it hasn't really helped - he clearly wants to wander about eating but leaving aside trying to instill good eating habits, that's also just not safe. He is not, in general, a big fan of being still...

The last thing I would offer up is yoghurt! All kids love yoghurt. The general dietary guidelines with toddlers & children is that the only group to ever practise portion control on is dairy. Many children will, given the chance, just fill up on milk, yoghurt etc and kids out on nutrients they need in other foods.

If she has had the bread and butter she isn't starving. I would get her down from the table, then before bedtime give her something simple, savoury, boring but filling so she isn't hungry. E.g. a bowl of baked beans.

By not offering this up on the spot while she's sat in her high chair refusing the soup, hopefully you avoid her learning to reject meals knowing she'll get something different.

However good luck, the fussiness only gets worse. I found it helped to offer meals with 3 components, that way if they decide they suddenly won't eat one, there are 2 others to go at. Also don't expect them to regularly eat unfamiliar food. If you have a predictable menu of 7-10 meals covering a range of different starches, veg, meat, fish & dairy, and rotate through those you will probably find it is all accepted.

Mine was a nightmare from the word go. It turned out that he found meat disgusting. He was unofficially vegetarian, purely by virtue of refusing to eat the meat component of meals until he discovered vegetarians existed whereupon he became one officially. He’s been vegan for ten years now.

If you think about how you’d feel if you were really hungry and didn’t want the only thing that was on offer it might help.

mines fussy too - it’s so frustrating. If lunch isn’t eaten I usually give a yogurt and then a bigger ‘snack’ after their nap. If tea isn’t eaten they still get afters (fruit etc) and then I’ll give them supper (toast / bagel / cereal etc) before bed so not going to bed hungry. Our tea time is close to bedtime so if they’ve eaten full tea and afters - no need for supper.

This works for us now - we’d got to the point where alternative dinners were being made and refused / thrown everywhere and I was worried that constantly offering alternatives straight away would reinforce not trying new things or things they’d previously eaten. Eating a bigger snack or supper a bit later seems to work as it’s been a break since the dinner table / any tantrums etc

Lisa my DD is similar. There is a list of things she will always eat but it's a very small list of fruit and cake and biscuits, basically. Which obviously isn't appropriate lol.

It took me about 4 mins to get her dinner in front of her from her first asking and this was at a slightly earlier time than we normally have tea. I get what people are saying about that but she did have half a banana and a few little spoons of yoghurt at 3pm and then this fiasco was about 5.40pm. So doubt she could have been totally starving. If I can I do often sit her down straight away with part of a meal but the problem is if I give her something she likes most first then she will eat that and then tantrum and refuse to eat whatever is coming next if it's something that isn't as liked as the first thing! And then ends up hardly eating anything in comparison to if I give her it all in one go.

Also I really think it's hurtful the few people who are using words like "punishment". That's not at all what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to punish her and I know she's not acting the way she is to make me annoyed or whatever. She obviously doesn't understand why I think it's undesirable for her to refuse to eat her dinner and scream that she wants something else, I get that and it's not about punishment at all. I love her and I want her to have a healthy diet and not to be a fussy eater, for her own health and for her own ease when she's older not having the restrictive lifestyle and poor health like people I know who are fussy adults. Its not about me being annoyed and wanting to punish her! I would have thought that went without saying but obviously there are plenty of people on here who are always looking to put other people down. I came here for advice and I received it for the most part, I have been listening, I did give her food as everyone said to, etc. There's no need be nasty.

I also find it strange the responses ice got here because whenever I go to the weaning section and people post about similar aged toddlers only eating cake and chips etc the replies are always the polar opposite - people saying it's your own fault and you should it give him healthy food and if he screams then so be it, he will soon eat it when there's nothing else (this is what my HV advised us to do when DD was 11m and didn't really eat anything except for fruit and bread - we decided not to though). I always see that attitude in the weaning subtopic and that's the opposite of responses ive got, so that's interesting.

Also personally I don't find analogies like "you might not fancy it" etc helpful as my attitude to food just isn't like that. Of course sometimes I don't fancy something but if I was having tea at my mum's I would eat what she made even if I didn't really fancy it. likewise if I was really hungry and the only thing available to eat I didn't really like, I would still eat it fine because I'd be hungry and just get on with it. We are vegetarian btw. But other than that i can probably count on one hand the things I don't like to eat and there is nothing I can think of that I wouldn't eat if I were hungry enough or out of politeness if at someone's house or something. So I really can't empathise at all unfortunately.

My 22mo goes through phases of fussy eating. And throwing her plate on the floor. I’m pretty relaxed about it though and just ask her to pick it up (even if she refuses- which is most of the time).

She eats bits of what we eat, I don’t make her anything special. She enjoys the novelty of having different tastes though, so variety helps. Won’t eat anything bland/white or cheesy sauces etc. She always gets offered a yoghurt after tea regardless of what she’s had. She eats almost everything at nursery- so as far as I’m concerned she’s getting a good balanced diet.

They regulate their appetites well and won’t eat everything that’s offered as it will be more than they need/they’re tired and can’t face food.

Please don’t upset yourself comparing her the other toddlers, she sounds perfectly normal and lots of mums seem to stretch the truth about sleep/eating etc to look like they have parenting nailed.

DD loves really tasty food, so salads with really tasty dressings are a hit. And if all else fails and she’s teething/under the weather a fruit smoothie pouch isn’t the end of the world.

DD is the same age - wouldn't dream of not offering anything else if she didn't eat what I'd given her (which happens regularly) they're still tiny and go through fussy phases all the time.