Should I still be feeding a 2 and a half yr old?

[Purplehonesty]

My ds is 2.5 and pretty much at most meal times I end up feeding him his food or nothing gets eaten.
He will eat maybe half his breakfast and seems to enjoy it but other meals are a real battle with him refusing to eat and me spooning it in!
He eats the same food as us and he is not overly fussy he just can't be bothered to eat.
What to do?? Do I keep on feeding him and battling or is there a better way? it's so exhausting and I want us all to enjoy mealtimes!

My D.D 2.3 is the same. I just keep feeding her as I want her to eat! Have watched other threads about this and it seems that they all end up eating independently when they're ready (usually due to nursery / school) so i'm not getting too stressed by it (yet...).

Personally I'd put the meal in front of him and if he doesn't eat it, say nothing, don't fuss and just eat your own meal. If he's hungry later, offer the meal (reheated), toast or fruit. Eventually I'd have thought he'd pick the food up and eat. He won't starve

He doesn't need spoon feeding but as long as you're willing to do it, he doesn't need to

Will he eat finger foods? What about toast slices, cut up carrot, cucumber slices, bread sticks, rice cakes, cheese fingers, crackers etc.

I did most of my meals as finger food for a while which helped, although my child was younger (even chicken can be strips, potato in bite size pieces...)

They might make less sense to him that you feed him?

Thanks guys. Yes he does like finger food and we tend to do that a lot in the summer but it's been so cold that we've been having soups and stews etc. He likes pasta but not meat.
You are right tho if I keep feeding him he will keep letting me!
Thanks

Hi, my DS was a lot like this. He's now 3.4 and will feed himself, but I reckon if I offered he'd still prefer me to do it! To be honest we went along the lines of leaving him to it while we ate and then when he'd had the meal for long enough we'd take it away. Caused a few tears at first but he was never going to starve. We never made a fuss of it hough, just tried to keep it calm and it didn't take him long to work out that he had to do it himself. Even now, he doesn't often seem 'hungry' at mealtimes. Sometimes he is and tucks in with gusto, but other times he'll sit there and just not seem bothered by it.

As with you, he's not being fussy - its food he likes and has had before, but I think some kids are more bothered or hungry than others.

You could try offering to help less, and see how it goes. Ultimately a few days of eating a bit less are highly unlikely to do any harm. At the end of the day, as long as your offering food they can eat it if they're hungry. You might find that after a day or two they get hungry enough to do it themselves.

If after a few days you're still getting concerned that they're not eating enough you can always start helping again.

I guess the other thing is to be sure that your little one can actually do it themselves? Maybe just make sure for those first few days that they are the sort of foods that they find the easiest to eat?

Good luck though

Thanks for the advice biscuits. He def can feed himself and does it really well when he wants to!
I think I'll do a week of his favourite teas and leave him to eat it by himself.
I think he just wants to be playing and meal times just get in the way.

My ds is like this, we hand over hand spoon feed him and now he's doing it independently. Only took a month. Just don't feed hims yourself and he'll get the confidence to do it hopefully.

Oh that sounds just like my DS! I just wish he could get the idea that I don't really want to spend 2 hours watching him push his dinner around the plate and that we might have other things to do!

The thing is though, since we've got a bit tougher on it he has gradually improved and is actually getting ok at it now.

I have exactly the same issue though with getting him dressed. He can do it perfectly well, in say 5-10 minutes once he gets going, but he'll do nothing for the first 20 mins (or often much more). I am yet to find the right 'incentive' to encourage him to crack on with that so every morning we have the same thing where he faffs about until I say I'm going downstairs and then he gets a bit upset and then once that's over he's downstairs fully dressed in 5 mins! I just wish he'd figure out that we'd all be happier if we cut out the nagging faffing!

Mind you, then he probably wouldn't be a 3 year old if he'd figured all that out

Lol are they brothers??? We have a dressing battle every morning and night. Now we play hide and seek in his room and put one item of clothing on each time he finds me! Which is fine at bedtime but when I am late for work it's less charming!
Singing a song works well too and he joins in. Not much use to you tho if he is dressing himself. I saw supernanny use an egg timer and make into a race which seemed to work really well!
I just fed him his supper which was what he had chosen but he couldn't be bothered to do it himself. Starting in earnest tomorrow with more finger food and less mum intervention!

It's hard and takes time, can be frustrating but he will eventually give in :)

Well today was a good start, he ate all his breakfast by himself and had a picky lunch so he ate that fine. Tea was a very lazy pasta and sauce affair and he ate 3/4 of that too. He asked me at each meal to help him but I said no you are a big boy show mummy how well you can do it.
Good start!

Great progress! :)

An impressive start! Mission 'get dressed without making it a huge drama' starts here tomorrow. Gulp.

Purple - good start :)

The key now is not to cave in when you feel he hasn't eaten enough!

Just take it away when you are finished yours (as long as he's had a reasonable time to eat) and don't make a fuss. Don't nag or cajole or it will become a power struggle.

He will learn to eat properly/quickly/without fuss and he wont starve :)

Good luck biscuits. Ds is just helping
Himself to a bowl of dry cheerios with his milk. He had a very long 3 hour sleep this afternoon (very tired mummy fell asleep too and so he didn't get woken as usual) so bedtime is going to be a bit later.

Yes eggs I was tempted to 'help' with the pasta at the end but I just asked have you had enough and he said yes, so I took it away and then he ate all his yoghurt very quickly!!

Think the key is not to make a fuss or even any eye contact that they could construe as pressure. Just very nonchalant...has really helped with DS.

Cereal eaten well this morning, I took it away when he said he was finished. Soup and lunch was refused point blank so it went in the bin and he had a pear.
Here's hoping open chicken pie goes down well at tea.
Biscuits how did the dressing wars go??

God luck with the chicken pie Purple . Sounds delicious though - if DS doesn't want it, send it this way

Dressing went ok this morning. Few tears, but got on with it in the end. Just have to stick to my guns!!

So I'm thinking if I can teach him to eat and get dressed, nothing should be a challenge right? I might teach him to ride a unicycle next week

God luck? Good luck perhaps...

Well done biscuits that's great.

We have had a relapse with eating, sleeping, getting dressed and tantruming this last 2 days which I think all stems from lack of sleep. Argh!!
Sleep training tonight and I had to go up three times before he got back in bed. So progress.
Let's hope once the sleep is sorted we can sort the rest.
I think starting playgroup has put him all wrong!
How have your last couple of days been?

Ah slow and steady wins the race purple - there will be ups and downs but you'll get there. I bet they get a bit when they realise we're going to consistently stick on something

We've been doing okay. Maybe a marginal improvement in the getting dressed time. I'm terrible though for finding excuses as to why 'today is a bit different'

I'd probably recommend doing one thing at a time. Maybe sleep training first?