Parents of toddlers with eating disorders...

[OR101]

Probably the wrong place to post but looking for advice please.

My baby is nearly 2, since around 9 months, problems with food started to occur, such as completely dropped a meal time, refused to try any new foods since 9 months old. Only eats one brand of dinner (think shepards pie, cow and Gate brand, wouldn't eat shepards pie tesco brand) refuses any thing home made. No fruit, cheese, ham. Won't eat chips, pasta, chicken, veg, just basically anything.

Has porridge for breakfast,
Stopped eating lunch, will eat wotsits, so I offer that now because I don't like that nothing is being consumed from morning till night. I used to put all finger foods out. Which was eaten until 9 months.
And the one brand of dinner.

When I try to speak to people in real life, I get comments such as yeah baby's can be fussy, but just in my gut feeling it's more than just fussy. If anyone has had any thing similar with their LO, did it turn out to be an eating disorder? Is there any tips i could try? Even though I feel like I've tried everything. I am willing to try more.

Just a side note all other aspects of general development seem ok to me.

Thank you in advance x

@Gancanny you have suggested everything that I was going to suggest and written it perfectly.

I'm a paediatric nurse and have worked with a lot of dieticians and children with food issues and this is everything that they recommended. You choose the food and offer it to eat and they choose if they eat it. No pressure, no just try this or getting them to try a little bit. No offering alternatives. This is the hardest one to stick to because you just want them to eat something. The more you push food onto a child the more they resist and food becomes a battle. You often have to offer a food up to 20 times before a child even tries it, so keep offering new foods alongside the safe foods that you know your child will eat. Also try not to let them go for more then 3hours without food and if they refuse the food let them know that there will be no more food until the next meal and then stick to it.
Also a toddlers energy intake needs are lower than a babies and so the amount they eat naturally drops around this age.

I hope this helps as it can be so stressful when they are picky and refuse to eat.

The advice from @Gancanny is exactly the advice we had from our health visitor for our 2 year old who used food as control and became underweight.

Also to put out self serve food in bowls on the table rather than directly onto the plate. don't offer alternatives, after 30 min or so say dinner is over and take the food away.

Not to say a word about food during the meal and stay seated together. Be really strict with relatives too, my parents would stand behind her high chair and constantly fuss over her food, cutting thing up, asking if she wants more, saying how delicious it was, it was really stressful for DD and would ruin the meal.

Get them involved in food prep, even if they don't eat it themselves

Offer an extra "supper" of a food they will eat before bedtime (for us that was porridge, cereal, toast, rice pudding) so that she was getting the calories needed and also helped her body get used to larger portions of food

Took several months but eventually DD began to try more and more and eats regular amounts of food now. Now at 6 she is branching out to mild curries, halloumi, more veg.

It's so stressful when you're going through it, but hope this post gives you a bit of hope for the future that you will get through this

@Binny36 aw it's very hard isn't it. I would say from my learnt experience if you think even in the back of your mind it's not right, get help. I wish I had done it sooner now.

A support worker called me back and had no idea what to say, she agreed that's its not a typical fussiness and she said she can't work out if it's a behavioural problem or something else. Or if he just doesn't recognise hunger. She really listened to what i had to say and went off to speak to another health visitor and called me straight back again and said they would like to see him, weigh him and decide whats the best next steps.

Sadly there are no overnight quick fixes or easy answers but just having people listen and take you seriously helps massively. Hopefully the weigh in will be reassuring

Thank you for the posts leading me to read grancanny's advice. There's things here I haven't tried and I have not made a food diary which I will do from now on.

Thanks again for everyone's posts of their experiences and ideas to help, it's honestly helped me so much, I read them all. But most importantly I feel like I'm finally doing something to help him.

I’ve just seen the rest of your thread, I’m so sorry, it’s so hard isn’t it.

This is a marathon, not a sprint(as you’ve gathered by now).Until you have clear guidance, please do not think twice about doing whatever works for you and your family. Long term, whether you eat together, separately, standing on one leg is neither here nor there. As long as he is eating something, that’s all you can do. This is like worrying about what wallpaper to put up when you need to deal with the house subsiding. It’s nothing by comparison. Just. Let. It. Go. Your mental health will be better for it. As will his ..

All the other stuff you mention, the grubby hands etc. , this is so indicative of sensory overload/sensory differences, yes absolutely get cracking with a referral.

Glad the thread has helped, and keep posting if it helps.

My eldest at 2 would eat any fruit, yogurt and only one type of jarred pasta, no "real" foid. No sensory concerns etc I have to admit at my wits end I only offered them these foods but made myself nice smelling/colourful dinners. We are together and eventually curiosity got the better of them and the asked for my food, I took their bowl of jarred food away and gave them a bowl of what I was eating. It took a long time and was pretty wasteful but they eat most things now. I don't think there's a simple answer though, give a few different tactics a proper go and hopefully you will get there x

One of my daughter's is a selective eater. She was terrible as a toddler but we have fatally increased what she eats although still restrictive. I'd say try not to put any pressure on. Give safe foods but also our other foods alongside, this increases their familiarity and makes it more likely they will try it.

Thanks for starting this thread OP- I've been thinking it's just me who's been struggling and hating mealtimes with my 2 year old. I hate, hate sitting with him and trying to get something in his mouth- it can take almost an hour to get mine to eat a slice of toast. He's recently started storing food in his mouth without swallowing- something called pocketing which is driving me insane.

Mine isn't just going through a phase, sadly. He resisted food/new flavours as a baby too and just didn't show any interest in food. I hate to force food in his mouth which I feel bad about but if I hadn't, he wouldn't have eaten anything. I used to dream of having a baby who'd happily and willingly open his mouth when being fed. We exist on a restricted diet of a few key foods and mine refuses to try fruit, vegetable or chicken. He'll have anything that's wet and thick (pasta in tomato sauce) and yoghurt but only if I feed him. I come from a culture where mums feed the children so I'm lost between doing that and teaching him independent eating skills. Following this thread closely for ideas.

Ps. Must add, mine hates messy play and having his teeth brushed (I have to almost sit on him to brush his teeth) so I'm assuming it's a sensory issue in our case.

For the sensory side of things sensory bags (www.thechaosandtheclutter.com/sensory-bags) can help because they get used to touching the textures without the mess side.

Thanks for the link @Sirzy- these look like so much fun. I'll definitely be trying these.

@titnomatani Hi, I was feeling the same, this all started around 9 months for us. And also does the storing of food. There's loads of good advice on this thread, but the ultimate advice is to call GP/health visitors. Does he enjoy feeding himself anything or likes you to do it all? X

@OR101 hi I know this is a very very old post but do you have an update on your little one?

Hi is there any update please ?

The fussy eater dc I know through friends and family turned out to have food allergies and intolerance- I am also relatively fussy and have ibs - I would test for food allergies etc

Oh zombie thread sorry