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?