DS 20 months wilfully starving himself - help!

[DonInKillerHeels]

We are very worried about our DS 20 months. He is pretty much refusing to eat the vast majority of his food, is losing weight, and producing pellet poos and concentrated wees. He is very independent and wilful (which in the long run I think is a good thing) and will not let us feed him. He is also bright, and by bright I mean he has been talking in sentences since 18 months (I want toast, I made poo, etc) amongst other things.

Please help us! He just will not eat what is put in front of him at dinner/lunch and just plays with it and throws it, and he usually won't eat replacements (e.g. toast) once he's rejected his dinner/lunch either. He is also clever enough to be able to find "hidden" vegetables/bits of meat and throw them out of his plate.

He usually eats his breakfast (weetabix or porridge) and he will usually eat apples, melons, any kind of soft fruit, baked beans and toast with butter or marmalade. And he will drink formula in the morning and evening (though not milk). But I really don't think that's an adequate diet and it certainly doesn't have enough protein in it.

Should we take him to the doctor? He weighs less now than he did two months ago, and he has really shot up height-wise in that time too.

Morning!

Yes I would take him to see your GP. Could be teething?

I've heard at this age their sense of taste changes, foods become quite bitter. I'd keep doing what you're doing, heis eating something so don't worry too much!
Also, don't worry too much about him losing weight. Like you said he's growing up rather than out! Take him to GP for your own piece of mind :)

Yes, it could at least in part be teething. All his first molars came in at once, and he's still unbelievably dribbly.

We've just checked the weight charts, and he is actually on the 50th percentile. Although he's above the 75th percentile for height, his proportions have always been that way - slightly tall and slightly thin - so perhaps we should worry less. But he really is rejecting everything at the moment (only ate half his weetabix this morning, and only because I mixed blueberries in with it).

My DS has days like this, yesterday he just grazed at his food. Not finishing anything.
Try and give little and often. When my DS is being fussy I always make sure I have nibbles in the fridge for him. ham and cheese, bananas, pears, tomatoes, rice cakes...

If you're worried go and see GP :)

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Also buy a copy of "How to Get your Kid to Eat...But Not Too Much" by Ellen Satter.

If mealtimes have become a battleground (have they?) then you have to change the mood.

Hi, sorry you have this stress but please try to calm down and collect your thoughts. If your son is refusing food it is probably either to do with teething/illness or because you are so stressed about food you have made meals a nightmare. He is not 'wilfully starving himself', he is only 20 months.

Get your HV round (if they are sane) and get his weight properly assessed. How much weight has he lost? How many centiles has he dropped? If he is only 2 oz lighter and has grown loads and is very healthy, this could mean he is just too busy/not in the mood to eat right now. If he has lost a lot of weight and is becoming unhealthy, that means something else entirely.

There are loads of issues in your posts - 'he won't let me feed him' - so let him do it himself. 'He only ate half his weetabix today' - maybe he wasn't very hungry? 'He is clever enough to find hidden vegetables and pick them out' - this is normal and is about a child exercising choice and if you make a fuss you will put him off food even more and turn it into a battle.

If he is constipated/dark wee you need to offer more fluids as a priority.

My sister's daughter developed a serious eating problem in part caused by trying to force her to eat, she was so worried but the worrying made it all worse. I found Dr Sears had some good advice as they had loads of ideas for fussy toddlers.

The specifics I used with my occasionally fussy and always fairly skinny DS2 were:

7 meals a day (he ate little and often, still does, just how he is)
Nibble trays
No alternatives at that meal because another meal coming soon
Let him feed himself
Limited fussing about table manners etc if the objective was to get food in
Try to make meals fun
Healthy snacks on the move (sweetcorn in the pushchair, sarnies on my knee on bus)

It depends on a lot of things whether you should be concerned or not. He is definitely not starving himself if he is having 2 bottles of formula a day, plus his breakfast (weetabix or porridge), apples, melons, any kind of soft fruit, baked beans and toast with butter or marmalade. Apart from the fruit and butter, all these contain protein. He may not be eating the propermeals you put in front of him because, with all this stuff, he is actually not hungry. Also are your proper meals quite large, as this can be quite daunting for a child. And trying to feed him if he is already independent doesn't really help.

How much weight has he lost? Is it just a little bit, or is it significant? Most babies do get longer and leaner between 1 and 2.

The thing I would be more worried about is the concentrated wees, so do make sure he drinks plenty - either water or very diluted juice.

Best bit of advice I was given for my fussy eater was to kep a food diary over a week instead of daily.

I was very surprised that what she ate over a week was quite varied and was mostly good food.

I would recommend that you try this it might help you not to worry so much. Also if he is still having formula he will get good stuff from that. I kept Dd3 on formula until she was nearly 3 due to her selective eating

Good luck

He doesn't sound that bad an eater to me. Dd2 survived on sweetcorn, yoghurt and breastmilk until she was about 2yo, with occasional other food.

I wouldn't produce something I know they really don't like, but I'd not offer something different if they haven't eaten the first. They can hold out for something nicer if you keep doing that.

Even when dd2 started eating reasonably, she ate well alternate days, so we'd have a good day, then a day she wouldn't eat anything.

However at 8yo she eats anything in large quantities all the time, whereas dd1, who was a dream to wean and ate everything, now is incredibly fussy, and eats very little.

Thanks everyone for all this very helpful advice (and a slightly stern talking-to ) To clarify, he's been feeding himself since 12 months because that was when he decided not to let us do it. I certainly didn't mean we were trying to force him.

It's mostly DH who's worried, and I'll show him this thread. We're slightly less worried this morning because last night we went out to a Chinese restaurant with several other adult friends, and he ate two big veg spring rolls and several crispy duck pancakes and drank jasmine tea and tried chilli squid!

I think part of the problem is that he's a social eater and our house is so small we don't have a table so can't eat with him.

I find my 16 mo old will eat three huge meals in one day and then hardly anything for the next few. A food diary sounds like a great idea. Glad your DS had a good evening yesterday!

ikea

I sympathise - I used to have an eating disorder and had phases of being very stressed about ds's 'not eating.' Then I managed to step back and see that I was causing the problems I was worrying about - it's a horrible vicious circle that you can break only by trusting your child to know his own body and meet his own needs (and he does need to do this, and can, and will). My line is now that it's my job to put what I consider nutritious and palatable food in front of my kids at normal intervals, and theirs to eat or leave it as they see fit. No alternatives, no comments and certainly no fuss (though we do praise good manners and criticise the more outrageous breaches). We all eat together, breakfast, lunch and supper, and I'll sit down and have a cup of tea when the kids snack mid-afternoon. I don't see why not having a table means you can't eat together - you eat, so why not with him, even if you're all sitting on the floor? Go to the GP if need reassurance about underlying issues, but meanwhile, try to separate food and emotion. Toddlers don't starve themselves, but they can, and do, find ways of playing the power games that are developmentally necessary. You need to find power games he can play that don't wind you up, and stop participating in the ones that do.

ikea

Think you can even find wall mountable ones!

Seriously, we don't have room for even the tiniest ikea table ATM - we've tried! - though we should have when our extension is finished.

Do you have a coffee table? Get your cushions down off the settee around it, and sit at that. Id also have a big bowl of fruit that he can help simself to throughout the day, of 'picky' fruit such as grapes and strawberries, rather than anything which needs peeling or coring.

Also seconding the advice above which is to look at stuff over a week, rather than a day. My parents used to fret like mad with me, as I would go three days of barely letting anything past my lips then have a binge day. Not ideal, but after taking me to the docs they cottoned on to the fact that I eat what everyone else did, just not at the right intervals. They also used to make me stay at the table til my plate was clear, which imo, is actually rather brutal. Im hoping to go with a "well, if you are finished, stay at the table till we are and we'll all get down together" approach.

Oh, and now the weather is getting nicer, chuck a load of snacky stuff into a bag with a blanket and go to the park. Sit around eating and playing....try not to pair up stress and mealtimes.

seconding the idea of a 'food diary', I was also advised to look at what my DS ate over a week rather than daily, its amazing how reassuring it is to see it all written down. Their tastes do seem to change at that age, you have to try and stay relaxed around them however hard it may seem... my DS is 28m now, at 20m I felt like he just stopped eating full stop, he certainly went off things he had liked before and became more fussy and more independent by miles. we had to slowly introduce new foods/re-introduce foods he had liked and see what stuck. You can hide veg in a good pasta sauce if yours likes pasta? mine loves it thankfully so I can dice up onions, mushroom, carrot, red pepper into a tin of chopped tomotoes, add garlic and herbs and simmer, he loves that - i usually add a big scoop of philedelhia near the end of cooking so it goes quite creamy as well and grate cheese on top on the plate. You can even blend cooked veg in a blender and add it to a pasta sauce if they're being extra fussy about veggie 'bits' at the mo. In a shepherds pie veg/goodness can be sneaked in also, like grated carrot and onion into the tomatoes and mince mixture, and mash parsnip into the mashed potato topping... that kind of sneakiness plus any fruit they are willing to eat can make their 5-a-day achievable. Mine likes fruit smoothies and malt loaf these days as well. Finger foods are great if they're trying to be independent, even a fishfinger can be good! :) best wishes

PS Just wanted to add that I read that a big scoop of baked beans actually counts towards your 5-a-day!!!!