20mth eating habits causing arguments

[Fanty]

Hi
Just looking for advice on my son´s eating. My husband is worried but I am not so would apreciate some unbiased opinion.

My son eats cereal or toast and yoghurt every day for breakfast.7.30 every morning.
Lunch is at nursery (we live in Spain so big emphasis on fish and bread)
I insist we eat together every night at 6.30pm in the same chairs (to instill routine and social eating)...He gets given what we have, normally fish or stews and the odd sunday roast but he plays with it and never finishes his portion and when he is finished i let him leave the table and we pay him as little attention as possible until we have finished eating. I do not want food to become a battleground in our family - but it is - between me and his dad!! If he really doesnt eat much he gets a yoghurt for dessert.

I think he is pretty good on food and that my husband is worrying uneccessarily...he eats Fruit (LOVES kiwis apples bananas strawberries) all the time and is v good on vegetables and chickpeasm fish and pasta.
Wont eat cheese
Only just starting to tolerate meat
Obsessed with bread and yoghurt - he normally eats 2 adult pots a day is this too much?

Should I still be pureeing his food? He has 20 teeth so I dont bother, just make sure its tender enough.
How much bread is too much? He eats prob 3 slices a day.
Is he normal????
My husband thinks that he eats too much bread and yoghurt, that I should be pureeing his food, a route I dont want to go down as they are given purees at school, and if he can crunch through apples on a daily basis, he can eat anything!!

Sounds pretty ok eating to me. 6.30 is late for supper for a toddler who has been at nursery all day. My DS 21 months is too tired for a proper supper. He gets a big lunch with meat / fish, veg etc, and supper is toast/ sandwiches, fruit, yoghurt and cake if he is still hungry. I agree with you about not allowing meals become a battle ground. We rarely have family meals. DS and I have breakfast And lunch together (with DH at weekends). DS has supper about 530 while I have tea and toast to keep him company. DH and I have a nice child free supper at about 830 once DH has put DS to bed at 8.

How old is your DS? If he has not had purée before, I wouldn't introduce it now. But it is a quick easy way to get nutritious food into a tired baby. DS doesn't really have purée, but I do make some very sloppy food for him (fish pie with all the bits very tiny and lots of sauce, spag Bol with tiny stars instead of spaghetti and put the sauce through the food processor).

Sounds similar to my 16 month old. I never pureed his food and think it is utterly ridiculous to puree food for a 20 month old! They can eat finger food from 6 months.

Yoghurt - depends what kind it is. Children's yoghurts tend to have loads of sugar so I would only give one a day, but if it's plain yoghurt or greek yoghurt then fine. They need about 350ml of milk/yoghurt/cheese still at this age.

Typical day for ds is:
Breakfast - cereal and a banana
Snack (at nursery) - fruit, toast, milk
Lunch (at nursery) - pasta, chilli con carne, fish pie etc
Snack (at home) - cheese, raisins, milk
Dinner (at home) - similar to nursery lunches, plus a yoghurt or fruit

Sometimes he eats loads of dinner, sometimes not much. If he doesn't eat his dinner he'll have a piece of toast or banana instead, and he has a cup of milk before bed anyway.

do you dice up his portion of the family meal? I wouldn't puree at the age he's at now, but maybe chop it up small. I.e., my ds 25m won't eat a slice of roast pork but will eat it chopped into small bite size pieces with a dollop of sweet potato mash. I think it takes them ages to eat what looks like a 'proper' adult meal with all the items seperated on a plate. the diet your LO is on sounds good - a HV told me that you have to look at a toddler's meals over the whole week rather than day by day to get an idea of the nutrition, as many factors can stop a child eating one meal and wolf down another! don't forget their tummies are still really small and they really don't/can't eat lots, a small bowl of stew could be about 3/4 tablespoons for example, which wouldn't fill up an adult.
typical day for my 25m old is still: breakfast, toast and peanut butter or marmite and 1 weetabix/milk. Lunch: cheese or egg sarnie, or sometimes pasta; with half a banana, fruit smoothie and yoghurt. Dinner: something along the lines of:pasta with tomato and veg sauce and diced meat or fish pie/lasagne/shepherds pie/stew, yoghurt, milk, biscuit. Snacks: raisins, water, breadsticks, crackers, banana. :) best of luck

Thanks guys! Have decided to

1. Feed him at 5.30- and let him sit with us at 6.30
2. Cut down snacks and ignore the urchiny lurking at the fridge
3. Stop worrying.
4. Wean him off the yoghurts, he is getting a sweet tooth by the way he salivates ( literally!) over kiwis and apples.

Thanks Fanty