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18 month old fussy eater

4 replies

slowlygoingbonkers · 29/04/2012 23:16

Dc3 is an extremely fussy eater. He will only eat fish fingers, spaghetti bolognrse and toast. We have tried blending stuff, hiding stuff in other food etc with no joy. He won't even attempt to try other foods.
We have tried spoon feeding, finger foods, leaving him to it with bowl and spoon and feeding off our plates and still no interest.
Has anyone got any advice?

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Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
exoticfruits · 30/04/2012 07:19

Don't give the attention over it. Eat together. Serve the food, eat your own. Take it away without comment, don't even comment if he eats it. Don't give snacks except having fruit available, don't give alternatives. He won't starve. He knows that you are anxious and grateful if he eats anything so there is no need for him to change his ways. I admit it is difficult when it is your own DC and impossible to hide that you care.

slowlygoingbonkers · 30/04/2012 08:19

Thanks, this is all new to us despite him being our third. Our older two devoured everything we put in front of themSmile
Suppose this is our punishment for being smug about thatGrin

OP posts:
brightonbleach · 30/04/2012 08:42

it seems that quite a chunk of kiddies go fussy at this age doesn't it? then alot of them slowly try other foods over the following year. My DS (2 and a half now) was the same, and has very slowly expanded his list of what he will eat, is still reluctant to try new things but is alot better than at 16-22m when he literally seemed to stop eating. Any fuss or attemts to 'help' him eat resulted in complete meltdowns, he wanted to do it on his own and not be coerced. I had to force myself to calm down about it, kept a food diary of what he was eating so that I could see what was going down well and it did help, I was advised to look at his intake over a week rather than a day. Any tension was immediately picked up on and rewarded with the lips clamping shut and dinner ending!!

He always liked alot of milk though, so I started adding fruit smoothies to the lunchtime milk (sugar-free just fruit ones from asda) so that he got a portion of fruit in his drink, we still do that now ("milkshake please!") as he likes it. I stopped giving inbetween snacks for a while so he would be hungry at mealtimes. One snack that is good is the goodies oaty bars, plenty of goodness in them. It can take a few times of putting a new thing in front of him for him to try it (20 wasted fishfingers at least before he picked one up, now he likes them), so don't get disheartened - apparently this is quite normal. He would always spoonfeed himself weetabix no matter what, and porridge, he seemed to like how it stuck to the spoon when he was 'littler' and now he just likes it. Peanut butter is good on toast, as it has loads of the 'good fats' they need for growing, worth a try? mine took to that straight away surprisingly. Do you make tomato sauce for his spag bol? you can blend in a blender: red pepper, onion, carrot, small garlic clove; add this to the saucepan of spag bol sauce and I can almost guarantee you he won't notice it as these veg blend seamlessly into the taste of this sauce. I often add soft cheese to pasta sauces near the end of cooking. will he eat mash with his fishfingers? if so (and its worth a few days of having a dollop on the plate as he might try it after a week or so!)! you can make a mash from several veg, potato/sweet potato/butternnut squash and swede goes down well here :) and then you get quite a bit of goodness into him in one meal. Baked beans actually count as one of your five-a-day and some kiddies love em! If he likes finger foods have you tried doing triangle soft wholemeal bread sarnies, like at a kids party - mine likes soft cheese, grated hard cheese and marmite, egg mayo, tuna mayo sometimes, mashed banana, even mashed banana and advocado. Mine likes a picnic lunch and a hot dinner like lasagne, its taken a while to get to that stage though and of course yours is still quite little so don't be too hard on yourself Brew

exoticfruits · 30/04/2012 18:08

I think that it helps if you have 2 older ones who eat well- it at least gives a good example. Sensible advice from BrightobBleach. Just try being laid back- they pick up on body language and he will know that you are anxious and use it to get what he wants. (this isn't a conscious thing).

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