To go against the "expert" advice

[halandpeeno]

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?

@BoredZelda

The longer you wait to set boundaries the harder it will be because they become increasingly strong willed.

Or, they mature and grow out of it.

This.

They grow out of it, or the reason for the issue becomes apparent.

I would serve a slice of toast alongside the bits you want him to eat. Don't make a drama of it or insist he does anything. Just here's your dinner. Same for pudding. Serve yoghurt with something like fruit alongside. Make a point of discussing how nice the other food is. Professional wisdom according to what we've been advised, is that in time he'll try the other foods.

@Mojoj

I wouldn't give in. Show no weakness! It's exhausting, frustrating etc but I modelled my mum's behaviour - "if you don't eat what's on the plate, you don't eat".

And then op is up in the middle of the night with a hungry kid who still won't eat his slag bol or chicken pie.

My grandparents thought that I just wasn't hungry enough and feed me nothing I liked for four days.

So I ate nothing for four days.

My brother was similarly difficult to the point of hospital referrals: the recommendation was focus on a balanced diet from what he will eat, multivitamins and food chaining.

Now, as an adult, I am not really fussy: I love food, I love cooking. I don't think my mother would ever have imagined it, but the key thing is that meals were never a battle.

Well that was silly advice from the so-called expert. If you allow a child to always eat what they want then they're never going to get used to new flavours. Unfortunately this could take a while to resolve.
You'll need to find alternative foods that your DS will eat to break the dependency on yogurt and toast. Don't offer either of those again unless a decent amount of other foods have been eaten. Keep the foods you offer simple. Cheese, chicken, rice, peas, sweetcorn, apple for example. Offer a selection. A small amount of each. Allow DS to choose what he eats from them. Don't get bothered by what he leaves but praise what he eats.

Threenagers... so glad we're past that age!!

Some of the advice on here is bonkers. Take all the stress away from mealtimes/ food. Make your dinner, eat together and let him have toast but add bits of the dinner to it, on a separate plate if need be and encourage him to taste/ smell/ touch the food. Figure out whether bribery works, it could do at this age if no other sensory factors are at play. A box of Celebrations and if he tries the new foods he gets to pick one after dinner. No pressure or forcing, it's up to him whether he tries and has a sweet or whether he doesn't. If it works increase the amount of non-toast dinner he's expected to eat before he gets one. You've worked out that it isn't an aversion so you can work from there.
You can try having a conversation involving things he likes and the new foods, 'do you know who loves broccoli? Hulk! Do you know why Hulk's green? Because of the broccoli!' We told my dd that green beans were fairy beans and if she ate them she'd sprout wings briefly, fairies have wings all the time because that's all they eat but she'd get a little sprout of wings if she ate some and she did! Just general mealtime chit chat, if she didn't eat them she didn't and I'd just check dad for his wings and he'd check me, like it was perfectly normal adult dinner conversation.
What will he have with his toast? Peanut butter is good. What does he eat generally? If he has a range of food he'll eat but just not at dinner time it's not a sensory issue again. Either way, take off all pressure.

@halandpeeno

We have tried, he would rather go without and wake up at 1am with a rumbling belly. He will then keep us up happily for the next few hours. By that point, our option is, give him yoghurt or milk and he goes back to sleep or stay up with him. We tried from 10 days straight refusing to give in in the early hours until I just broke with tiredness and sobbed. I'd like to say I don't know where he gets his stubborn streak from but I know darn well that it's from me. I may sound flippant but I'm not, I am honestly at my wits end. His latest trick is to lie under the table and go to complete liquid, absolutely dead weight as he knows I have back issues and a cannot crawl under and get him.

The problem is your giving him an alternative. Firstly I appreciate how hard it is because I went through exactly the same phase. Give him dinner and that's it. If he doesn't eat it then he goes to bed hungry. If he wakes up at 1am, you take him to the kitchen and reoffer him the same dinner until he eats it. It might take a few nights but he will get the message. Also get him involved in cooking or in choosing meals for dinner. Make it fun. X

@halandpeeno

We have tried, he would rather go without and wake up at 1am with a rumbling belly. He will then keep us up happily for the next few hours. By that point, our option is, give him yoghurt or milk and he goes back to sleep or stay up with him. We tried from 10 days straight refusing to give in in the early hours until I just broke with tiredness and sobbed. I'd like to say I don't know where he gets his stubborn streak from but I know darn well that it's from me. I may sound flippant but I'm not, I am honestly at my wits end. His latest trick is to lie under the table and go to complete liquid, absolutely dead weight as he knows I have back issues and a cannot crawl under and get him.

You do realise he is perfectly normal don't you OP?

My grandson and his mum live with me. He is three and his behaviour is 'challenging'. It is tough, mentally, physically, it is relentless. He has so much energy and is so determined. He runs us ragged.
I could list all the antisocial things he does on here and would run out of paper.
When he is being stubborn and will not respond to your efforts to make him do things, try distracting him. Don't focus on the negative actions, he will feed off your anxiety.
Try doing new things with him, and break this chain.
Is there anyone who could step in and help you even if it is for a short time, just to give you a bit of breathing space?

Do the experts really say to give pudding or toast? To give in to your child? Fucking hell, no wonder he’s a nightmare. He knows you’ll give in to him, he’s playing you like a piano. My son once took 5 hours to eat a meal. He eventually ate it sat in the washing basket on the table. I didn’t offer him anything else in the meantime. He never did it again. Your son needs to know who’s in charge. And right now that’s him.

@ToykotoLosAngeles

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.

I've done this. And when DC woke at 2am they were served their dinner (whatever it was they rejected hours earlier). It was very tough and felt cruel, but DC now ears most foods and is always willing to try something new. It's really worth nipping it in the bud now. A child will not let themselves starve.

Would he drink a smoothie? My toddler DS is very fussy and eats very plain food but I know he’s getting all his vitamins blended up in a smoothie with berries and spinach etc. You can change the smoothie to contain different things, if it’s green call it “monster juice” or other silly names… my DS also helps me choose what to put in it and gets involved in food that way. It’s a totally different approach to my first DC who ate everything, but if he’s healthy and happy that’s fine. I’m going to just trust he will grow out of it rather than ruin the precious time we have together with endless battles and tantrums. You know your own DC and the battle approach isn’t working for either of you.

Whenever my one with ASD appeared to get too fond of a specific food to the exclusion of others, I simply stopped buying it so it couldn't be an option. Chicken soup is a memorable example of this.

"There is no more yoghurt and toast"

You eat what's in front of you or not at all. On the whole it had to be at mealtimes too else it wouldn't be there and there would be literally no snacks or treats (in the house at all if necessary).

Conversely I do also remember serving the same uneaten dinner up to DD everytime she complained she was hungry once. I've got a funny feeling it was when it appeared at breakfast the next day she eventually relented with a "this isnt going to stop is it" "No darling". (I think id even had to prepare a new portion although she didnt know that). She didnt try it again.

Both of them still have some sensory issues around food, if they can be easily accommodated sensibly they know I will (DD doesn't like some spreads and DS has a distinct preference for peanut butter sandwiches), so it isnt all a one way street. But if it becomes exclusionary then no.

Tbh mine woke up at all hours, as challenging as it was I would be dealing with that as a seperate issue.

Sometimes parenting is about being the stubbornest bugger in the room.

You cook him food. You present him food. You tell him no dessert if you dont eat your food. And you telll him that if he doesnt eat his food he'll eat nothing.

Then stick to your rules! As right now he KNOWS youll give in so of course he'll put up a fight and refuses. As he knows youll give him toast and dessert whether he eats his food or not.

Also if he refuses to eat his food at night. Present him the same food for breakfast

Stop enabling his behaviour op

A child will not let themselves starve.

This is simply not true. Some children would starve rather than eat a food that isn’t “safe”

@Sirzy

A child will not let themselves starve.

This is simply not true. Some children would starve rather than eat a food that isn’t “safe”

Sorry, but that’s absolute rubbish, and insulting to the millions of children worldwide who actually are starving.

OP, unfortunately you’ve let this get to a terrible stage by giving him what he wants. And now it’s a big issue. I agree with previous poster - this is going to take a while to solve now.

@Notlostjustexploring

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.

This is where many sleep issues come from too, though, and parents don’t realise they’ve made a massive issue of it until it’s too late.

All about the bribery with my 2.5 year old. Sometimes I hold the dessert in front of her and say 'once you've eaten your dinner you can have this' normally a mini milk or cupcake. Not ideal, but it means she'll eat nearly everything in front of her including vegetables. Bribery is the tool that seems to work for me!

My DD did this for a bit. I gave her an unappetising dry bit of crust if she woke in the night. When she realised she wasn't getting a lovely buttery piece of toast she gave up and ate like a normal person.

@BoredZelda

if you don't eat what's on the plate, you don't eat

My mum did this to me. It was the start of my issues around food.

Most issues around food aren’t about food at all, so I very much doubt this caused them. It’s a perfectly sensible approach that most of us in the 70s and 80s experienced and not all of us grew up with a poor relationship with food, so I strongly suspect there are/were other issues here.

A box of Celebrations and if he tries the new foods he gets to pick one after dinner.

!!!

My 2.5 year old doesn't have to clear her plate but she does have to have a proper taste (we call it a polite bite) of everything before she can have dessert. Sometimes it means she has one spoonful of each then dessert which isn't ideal but more often than not she will realise she likes it and eat more.

If she blankly refuses she doesn't get dessert and we will give her an alternative about an hour later (toast/porridge/weetabix) to fill her up for bedtime. I do this to try and disassociate it as being an alternative for dinner and just a bedtime snack so she doesn't really realise she's getting it because she didn't eat dinner.

I also make her sit at the table regardless of if she is eating or not, until everyone if finished, so being too busy or wanting to play doesn't matter.

I don't know if any of these methods would work for your LO? I know how frustrating it is when they don't eat though, it's so hard to know what to do for the best! Hopefully just a phase!777

It really isn't @BoPeeple

Do some reading about ARFID

@Lalliella

Do the experts really say to give pudding or toast? To give in to your child? Fucking hell, no wonder he’s a nightmare. He knows you’ll give in to him, he’s playing you like a piano. My son once took 5 hours to eat a meal. He eventually ate it sat in the washing basket on the table. I didn’t offer him anything else in the meantime. He never did it again. Your son needs to know who’s in charge. And right now that’s him.

Spot on.