Nutella for toddler breakfast

[FanofLeaves]

This is not a food bashing thread, I don’t care who wants to eat Nutella for breakfast in their own households 🤣

More just to canvas opinion.

Currently have a 3.5 year old who is pretty much refusing to eat meals. Nothing wrong with his appetite if offered crisps and biscuits, naturally, but I’m getting really stressed out that he’s not being adequately nourished. Seems to eat ok at nursery but he’s only there three days a week and they probably give them pigeon portions and almost certainly say he’s eaten more than I suspect he has. At home it’s mostly a shit show, I can’t seem to get anything proper into him. I’m trying so hard and doing everything I can think of and it’s really getting me down.

anyway so I’m having a crack down. Today we were supposed to be going out, nothing special just a trip out to the woods to mess about with his toy dinosaurs and an ice cream on the way home but it’s a beautiful day.

He should have woken up ravenous as he ate about 5 pieces of pasta for tea last night, so I asked him what he wanted for breakfast. Egg on toast, great. Make it for him and he won’t even look at it. I take it away, give him half an hour and try again. Same. So I’ve says until he eats either that or cereal or natural yogurt and fruit for breakfast we are not going anywhere. So he’s flinging himself about on the sofa sighing but refusing any offers of breakfast.

DH gets up, I briefly fill him in. Come back to him offering DS Nutella on toast which I have said no to and DS is now crying because he wants that. On the one hand, great, it’s food and we can crack on with the day but on the other, it just proves my point that he’s happy to eat what I regard as ‘treat’ breakfast items (and have no problem with but not in place of adequate nutrition) and is refusing regular food.

So would you just give in and make the bleeding Nutella on toast 🤣 I’m sticking to my guns but just interested.

And yeah it’s not a very exciting thread, but I have time on my hands now we are in a stand off trapped inside 😅

Literally not what I was saying. Purely meant they can work out ‘I feel crap and tired’ and link it to ‘I haven’t eaten anything for a day’ if you explain that to them.

It DOES seem to be a skin off your nose though @faerietales as you seem hyper fixated on spouting it again and again. There’s lots I will take on board from this thread, I’m sorry that the advice you’ve offered isn’t part of it. If you have your own issues around the way food was used in your household growing up I’m very sorry, but that doesn’t mean you have to try and catch out parents on threads and accuse them of giving their child a lifetime of disordered eating and punishment because they didn’t buy them a Mr Whippy or encouraged them to fuel up before they did a physical activity. Please seek your validation elsewhere.

I'm not sure I'm the one with hyper-fixation and validation issues here, lol.

I haven’t RTHT but I would personally take all expectations off, take a deep breathe and continue to offer 3 meals and one or two snacks a day without it being a battle. It’s extremely stressful when your little one won’t eat or is picky. I would get a health visitor or GP involved if you are worried.

Apparently 2-4 years old is the pickiest stage though.

Give your child something you know they’ll eat for every meal alongside new foods / foods they are hit and miss with.

Toast with a tiny layer of Nutella, alongside eggs and fruit for example

Let your child eat what they want then take their plate away without saying anything

Parents removing pressure can really help food anxiety, that’s why a lot of the time they eat better around others or at nursery / school.

I’m a Parent of a picky toddler!

They absolutely cannot.
Your toddler was unable to make that link. My 6 year old can't. My 10 year old can't. Sometimes I can't.
Humans are programmed to crave sweet. Young humans in particular. Telling them the science behind their craving will not change a thing.
You're going to end up furious with your toddler for not 'getting it' when it's completely beyond him to get it.
Healthy options only at home. Eat if you're hungry, don't if you're not. No emotion, purely practical. Ice cream is yummy and we sometimes have it when we are out, or at parties etc.

DS ate a can of custard for breakfast everyday for about 3 months at one stage. At least it was something and I wasn’t dying on that hill. He eats everything these days. This too will pass OP

I'd give him the Nutella but also give him a choice as others have said. I would also give a banana or something with it. He might not eat it at first but keep giving it anyway.

I completely disagree.

I’ve raised three children and they all understood this aged 3 or 4. It’s simple: ‘you need a full tummy so you have the energy to play’.

(For parents with actual kids: a good way of showing them this is when you fill the car up with petrol to make it go)

Wait, what?? You don’t even have kids@faerietales?

I think giving advice to OP in the way you are is way out of order.

What ‘research’ could possibly say with certainty that children are ‘damaged’ by this or that? And how can you spout this with no actual lived experience?

Exactly. And aside from the fact that research is exactly that, and it’s impossible to prove results in most cases, this smacks of how easy it is to be a perfect parent when you’re not actually a parent 🤦🏻‍♀️

I fully understand why mealtimes shouldn’t be a battle, I don’t want them to be, which is why I’m trying to seek advice and strategise my approach. It’s not easy to keep emotion out of it when dealing with the health and nourishment of your own child, however much you know you should. We aren’t perfect as parents, we do our best, but cajoling a little boy to eat something nutritious so he can run around at the woods is hardly akin to handing him a lifetime of disordered eating because apparently ‘research’ says it will. The car/fuel analogy is a good one; we talk of it often, and he’s absolutely able to link that and understand, he’s not a bloody Maris piper.

They might be able to repeat it back to you, but no child waits to fill their tummy first before they go to play out of wisdom and self knowledge. They don't understand it on a fundamental level. Plenty of adults don't!

They also don't need a full tummy to go play anyway. Sometimes they seem to run on pure fumes.

They are creatures of instinct as they should be. The minute we start messing with their self regulation we start messing them up.

They need to be offered healthy choices. They need to choose how much they eat, and which of the healthy options they prefer at that moment.

And they can have an ice cream occasionally but it shouldn't be a reward to eating the less desirable option.

What adult isn’t able to understand the link between eating well and having energy?

’creatures of instinct’? Should I start letting him self regulate his own bedtimes, or whether or not he needs to brush his teeth, or stop reminding him to drink water? Asking him if he needs a wee when we are out and about and persuading him to use the loo before we leave the house? Where does it end?

Anorexia sufferers.
Millions of people suffering with obesity.
Countless more with difficult relationships with food and disordered eating.

You can't expect a 3 year old to understand he needs to eat healthy food to give him the best energy and to regulate his behavior accordingly. Adults, as above, can't.

You can tell him. And he can understand that mummy is getting angry so I better do what she wants. But there's no way he's going- oh, if I don't eat my wholemeal toast and egg then I will get grumpy later. Zero chance. He just knows what's yummy and what he likes best. And he also will have a very good idea of whether or not you'll give in eventually if he holds his ground.

You really cannot simplify anorexia in those terms. Or in fact, any eating disorder. You just can’t. And it’s wholly irresponsible to do so. Bloody dangerous to spout that kind of thing at parents trying to do their best and also completely insulting towards sufferers of what is a devastating and very complicated mental illness. I’m disgusted that you’d go there, frankly. and for what it’s worth, anorexia sufferers understand the link between food and energy, very well. They aren’t stupid.

Good god, this is why we have to remind them.

Eat the food. Clean your teeth. Revise. Save some money. Etc etc. They need to be shown. It’s not about punishment or control, it’s just teaching them to make the right choice.

This is permissive parenting at its worst.

Oh fgs.
I'm simply saying lots of adults find it difficult if not impossible to regulate their intake of food for best health outcomes. Your expecting your toddler to be able to do it is unrealistic.
It's your job to help him out by only offering healthy options, and letting him chose what and how much.
Punishing a child for not eating their breakfast is absolutely making food an emotional battleground, and even having Nutella in the house if you're not happy for him to eat it is your own poor choices. Make better ones if you want your kid to have a healthy relationship with food.

Totally agree. With every bit apart from- eat your food.

Instead- "Here is your dinner. Are you done? Then please take your plate back to kitchen and you can go play."

Since when did you need to have children so understand research around food? 🙄

Yes, exactly. Always offer healthy options but don’t turn it into a big drama if they don’t eat it all, or even any of it.

😂😂😂

You’d better tell all the childless researchers and academics to stop bothering I guess.

Argumentative PP 🙋🏼‍♀️ What you're failing to understand, as you don't have DC, is the difficulty faced by parents in practice when making parenting decisions. It probably all seems easy and obvious in theory but can be a whole different ball game when you are dealing with a real DC and your own complex background and a flawed and confusing world, especially in terms of the food landscape.

Op, you may wish to have a read of "Hunt, Gather, Parent" it's a book about child raising in other cultures. I wouldn't take it as a gospel guide. There's plenty in it I wouldn't follow but it definitely helped me feel a little more relaxed about parenting. It helped me understand that in many cultures children are left to regulate themselves much more freely and it can work in certain circumstances.

I’d love to see this research.

I wonder how they measured the ‘damage’ done?

Survey: “To what extent do you feel damaged by your parents’ use of food as a reward?”
Respondent: “Oh, lots” 😂

And I wonder how they measured the level to which food was used as a reward in childhood?

Is there a scale, like Moh’s hardness?!

Were researchers present as parents whipped away the uneaten breakfast?! 👀

To clarify, im not saying food should be used as a punishment or reward either. Neither is OP. But you do need to guide your kids to make sensible choices. All parents know that.

Like I said, all of my three were sometimes told they needed to eat a bit more of their meal, and they definitely were not given pudding if they hadn’t eaten their dinner. No drama, just a rule.

Interestingly, we never had any battles over food…

I never once said it was easy 🤷‍♀️