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AIBU?

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Original poster

To go against the "expert" advice

152 replies

halandpeeno · 26/11/2021 18:31

I have a 3 year old, I thought he had grown out of the terrible twos but instead he has redoubled his efforts.
Every mealtime for the past year (at least) has been the same.
He takes one look at whatever we give him and says 'I DON'T LIKE IT'. Variations on this are 'I'M TOO BUSY TO EAT' and ' I DON'T FEEL WELL'.
The general wisdom is to ignore, not to make an issue out of it, still give dessert (normally yoghurt) or just give toast. We have done all of this.
So now he sits in front of the food and straight away says 'NO I'LL JUST HAVE DESSERT' or 'NO, TOAST PLEASE'.
Toast and yoghurt are his favourites so of course he is delighted that he can say no to his food and have these as alternatives. If we don't give him these we are up all night with a hungry child.
This happens if he is eating with just his brother or if we are sitting down to a family meal, which we do regularly. We model good eating habits, we praise, we ignore the bad behaviour. It has started to get to the stage where we won't even sit down to the table or will try to fling the food across the room.
Where the hell do we go from here?

OP posts:
Notlostjustexploring · 26/11/2021 20:07

BoPeeple

Bonkers, maybe, but it's probably no more bonkers than the lengths many of us have gone to to get their child to sleep as a baby, or get them out the house in the morning. You do what you have to do and every kid is different.

ToykotoLosAngeles · 26/11/2021 20:08

If you just keep taking food away uneaten you get a child waking up at 2am hungry which is what happened to us last night.

LucySullivanIsGettingMarried · 26/11/2021 20:16

@MistyFrequencies

I'd just feed him toast and yoghurt. He will grow out of it. As long as he's getting fruit, veg etc at other meals then toast & yoghurt for dinner isn't the end of the world.
I'd do this, too.

My two youngest were both very fussy when younger and would often end up having some toast and chopped fruit instead of a meal

LowlandLucky · 26/11/2021 20:17

Stop making it a battle, allow him to eat toast and yoghurt but point out that unless he eats the meals you make he won't be having cakes, sweets, biscuits or ant other treat. Walk away and leave it at that, he will soon get fed up of just toast and yoghurt.

User0ne · 26/11/2021 20:18

He's 3.

You decide what food is available. He decides how much he needs to eat. If he's hungry at 1am dinner can reappear.

Pinkyxx · 26/11/2021 20:19

I had similar with my DD who has a will of iron. It got that she was eating toast and chicken nuggets, literally nothing else. I was initially told ''let her not eat'' / ''don't pander'' / ''she can go to bed hungry!'' etc I really disliked this as I felt I was making a battle out of food. It did not work, she would point blank refuse, went 3 days eating only toast as I couldn't bear not to give her something. In the end we had some help from a wonderful child psychologist who gave me the following strategies:

  • introduce new foods along side the food they like and will eat.
  • the ''deal'' is they try the new foods & give it their best shot but no pressure. They eat it or they don't.
  • No reaction whatsoever to their response to the food.
  • Keep offering options & new foods.
  • Involve them in cooking & shopping, choosing meals.

I thought the advice was bonkers at first but I have to say with time and patience it worked. It's a control thing with kids like this, and a food struggle is a very dangerous battle to engage in so you have to work with the child.

I worried so much that she wasn't getting the nutrients etc but looking at her now, she's more than made up for it. Did take till secondary school to truly kick the picky attitude though!

godmum56 · 26/11/2021 20:21

@User0ne

He's 3.

You decide what food is available. He decides how much he needs to eat. If he's hungry at 1am dinner can reappear.

I am an adult now....this would never have worked with me. On other eating threads, i have seen it described (by adults who had it happen to them) as abuse.
Calmdown14 · 26/11/2021 20:23

Is the expert advice really to still give them toast and pudding? Mine would never eat if they knew that!
Do you help him eat? While by that age they are of course capable of feeding themselves, I do find that if it's something they are not immediately taken with, and they are tired, helping with the first few spoonfuls works.

I am mean and old fashioned though. If it's food they do like, they eat it or there's no alternative. Or at least I set them a 'eat one potato and two pieces of chicken if you want this yoghurt'.

I've been known to put the pudding on the table when they are being awkward. I thought pudding was there as the bribe! Certainly is in my house. Turns out I've been doing it wrong 🤣

Figgrow · 26/11/2021 20:25

@godmum56

I'd take away the fun....just dish up yoghurt and toast without discussion or comment. Don't ask him what he wants or put out a serving of what you are having for him and if he is too busy to eat then leave it where he can get it and get on with dinner. I believe that there are liquid vitamins? stir some into the yoghurt.
We did this, after weeks of going through the same thing we just gave toast straight away, sure enough he would soon be asking for some of our dinner. After a few days we said ah would you like your own plate of x and have toast another time, and he was fine after that. All children are different though of course, and I think trial and error mixed with luck is usually the case!
Indecisivelurcher · 26/11/2021 20:25

Main meal at lunch time, toast, yoghurt and fruit for tea?

OldSoho · 26/11/2021 20:25

Offer toast and yoghurt (safe foods) alongside everything else. Slowly, he should become interested in the other food.

And if the yoghurt is kids fromage frais or similar, swap for full fat plain yoghurt.

RB68 · 26/11/2021 20:27

Santa Cam

SickAndTiredAgain · 26/11/2021 20:29

@User0ne

He's 3.

You decide what food is available. He decides how much he needs to eat. If he's hungry at 1am dinner can reappear.

Giving them their dinner again at 1am? Getting them downstairs, wide awake, probably cold at this time of year, to heat up food? This is my idea of hell. Night feeds were miserable enough when all I was doing was breastfeeding in bed.
supremelybaffled · 26/11/2021 20:29

As a few have pointed out, the "Here's your dinner - eat it or go hungry" does not work in some cases, because some children would genuinely rather starve than eat. I know, I was one of them. It can often be due to the texture of food and sensory issues, and it is not the child's fault.

OP, please do some research into ARFID (avoidant restrictive food intake disorder) as it is uncommon, but at least it is a recognised issue now.

Explosionsinthosedays · 26/11/2021 20:31

I also think the advice on this thread is mostly bonkers and it's easy to see why we're so behind the French on diet and weight issues in children.

vera16 · 26/11/2021 20:42

Parents can clearly tell the difference between a bout of fussiness and a genuine dislike of certain foods. So I would hesitate to say that refusing to give them toast after they refused the fish fingers they've been happily eating for the last 2 years is going to give them long term psychological issues.

SickAndTiredAgain · 26/11/2021 20:49

Is the expert advice really to still give them toast and pudding? Mine would never eat if they knew that!

The advice isn’t to give pudding in the sense of ice cream and cake I don’t think. And obviously this is just some experts, there’ll be hundreds of different experts with different strategies that probably all work to varying degrees with different children.
I think the thinking behind it is not leaving a small child hungry when they can’t understand the association between not eating at dinner and being hungry in the middle of the night, and not turning meal times into a battle.

So for us, fruit is pretty much always the dessert. And it gets offered regardless of how much dinner DD eats (she’s 2.5). So tonight I made chilli, and I knew we had a banana she’d be offered afterwards. As it happened, she ate the chilli, but if she hadn’t, I would have offered the banana anyway, and left the chilli on the table because from experience she sometimes does eat some of her main after some fruit even if she’s absolutely insisted she won’t. If she doesn’t eat it, I could take the main meal away and not give fruit, but I’m not sure what that would achieve except for a hungry toddler who then hadn’t tried the new food and got a taste for it.
There are plenty of meals she’ll now wolf down having not wanted anything to do with them the first time they were served, but trying some after she’s had some fruit and then the next time it’s served she’ll have a bit more, and then it will become something she’ll eat as soon as it’s put in front of her. It works for us, it wouldn’t work for everyone, but she’s a pretty good eater (at the moment!) so I’m not fussed it people think it’s an odd way to do it.

I will say that we very rarely have a really sweet, treat like pudding except for at Christmas, and birthday cakes. On those occasions, no we don’t give a slice of cake as her dinner if she’s not eaten.

BendingSpoons · 26/11/2021 20:53

What is he eating at lunch? Could you swap your meals around so he has a more nutritious lunch, when it matters less if he doesn't eat? Possibly even swap your breakfasts if you can, to remove toast etc. Then you can 'save' toast for dinner.

Are there dinners he does like? Can you rotate them for a bit? Pizza, fish fingers etc to break the toast cycle.

Catrina123 · 26/11/2021 20:54

We had this a bit. I tried to cook healthy versions of what my child would eat rather than forcing 'controversial' food. Like he hated tomato based pasta sauces, but if I used cream cheese instead that seemed to be fine. I also continued to blend a high veg sauce into shepherd pie etc or blitz loads of veg into pizza base sauce so he was getting enough veg. Or when he was watching telly I'd take in a homous and chopped veg or fruit 'platter' and quietly leave it (with no fuss) so it didn't then matter if just had toast for dinner. If something he didn't like I'd say no pudding/bed time snack until he'd eaten at least 4/5 forkfulls of dinner. He was often so resistant bit did usually eat it after a lot of coaxing and sometimes he'd get up and leave the room. I'd then keep it, so if he was 'starving' before bed, he couldnt have anything more appealing until he'd had his 4/5 mouthfuls (not so nice when cold! Ha!)

He now is older and actually pretty good and will eat most things. So I wouldn't stress too much....

Catrina123 · 26/11/2021 20:58

Another trick, is make sure he's not too hungry when it's dinner time. That often resulted in mega meltdowns, as my son was so hangrey there was no reasoning and once a meltdown had started there was no coming back from it. Got to aim for a good level of hunger but not starving hungry....

WeDidntMeanToGoToSea · 26/11/2021 20:58

Sirzy and Pinky are spot on.

It's a wrong and very dangerous approach to make food into a battle for the upper hand with a tiny child.

julieca · 26/11/2021 21:03

If I had been given fruit and toast for every dinner I would have been delighted. I certainly would not have got bored.

I agree with those who say you need to try and take the emotion out of this.

Dragonfly909 · 26/11/2021 21:03

A lot younger so can't talk but she gets her point across! - our 16 month old will usually only want yoghurt for dinner. We now start by giving her some yoghurt straight off, and when she's finished that we tell her it's all gone and offer her real dinner. She will often then eat bits although it is hit and miss. Could be worth a try?

LaurieFairyCake · 26/11/2021 21:07

Shit yoghurts - masses of fruit - maybe they do a veg yoghurt? Grin
Shit bread - loads of seeds

Or wait til the arsehole grows out of it - not many 20 year olds are still only eating toast and yoghurt

DeepaBeesKit · 26/11/2021 21:15

How is his weight?

Assuming there's nothing else amiss here, health wise etc, you need to go Ellyn Satter division of responsibility.

You provide the selection of food you are happy for him to eat, at the appropriate times etc, it's up to him to eat it.

Offer small quantity of accepted food alongside other things at mealtimes, but not enough for him to just constantly fill up on that.

It sounds like he is in a bad pattern though, you need to be prepared for a long game to break some of the bad habits.