The curse of Potato Smiles.....

[bidefordjon]

Hi

I haven't really posted here before but having had IMO yet another bad food day.

Our 3 1/2 yo son has gotten to the point where the range of food eaten at home is fairly restricted. At nursery he pretty much eats anything apart from puddings, fruit and salad. We find it hard to believe some days but have no option but to believe the nursery nurses who were there. Our main problem is the weekends.

Breakfast isn't a problem as he normally has an adult sized portion of porridge.

Lunchtime is can sometimes be cheesy toast but is currently beans with toast or spaghetti shapes with toast. Used to be sausage rolls but won't eat the sausage now so have stopped those.

Evening meal generally has to be 'Smiley Faces' with beans or spaghetti shapes. He used to always want fish fingers or turkey numbers but he's obviously fed up with those now.

We tried doing him the same meals as us but he refuses to eat it. Roast dinner, spag bol, chilli (even though he eats both those at nursery) are greeted with "I don't like that".

We can't go out for picnics/days out as he won't eat sandwiches.........

We read about two routes to take:

1: Let him have what he'll eat and he'll grow out of it. He's eating after all.

2: Give him what we are having and if he doesn't have it then he waits until next meal. (Tried it but worry about him not eating.)

We chose the first one as it seemed the easy route and "hey, he's eating....." But are starting to worry we've created an even bigger problem for the future.

I'm sure it's a common problem. Any thoughts/recommendations?

Thanks all. There's comfort in knowing we're not alone......

Merry Christmas!!!

A bit of an update......

We've started with the 'this is it, eat it or go hungry' method and today was a success.

We had a roast meal today and he had the same as us on his plate. As expected he ate his potatoes but he also ate some roast chicken and picked up and nibbled some carrot........not much but he did try it.

Compared to previous attempts that is an awesome effort that we can build from.

Good news OP.

I went for option 1. From age 2.7 ish DD went through a phase (despite doing BLW and her eating everything as a baby and young toddler) of only wanting sausages. So that's what she got (including vegan ones for a bit of balance!) she very slowly re-expanded her repertoire from there- thinking about it its an extension of BLW they guide what they want to eat. Now she rarely wants sausages and will generally eat what we're eating but often at a snail's pace ( I had an epiphany the other day and realised she's always been a slow eater she used to feed for an hour as a baby and even when older her breastfeeds where never under 40 mins).

At other times I cannot be fagged with seeing her not eat much or eat at the pace of a sloth and then declare how hungry she is later and try to climb the kitchen cabinets so I do her what we call a snacky tea and she gets a plate of all different food groups and its a massive success. For example: one apricot, one sandwich or wrap (generally cheese, ham or marmite), 3 cherry tomatoes, 5 olives, some lettuce, a yoghurt, a slice of buttered soreen. That way DH and I can occasionally have a later and adult meal that we enjoy instead of 'I don't like it!'

DD, now just 4 has acknowledged recently that I never make her anything horrible and we go through the constituent parts Joey style. So Spag bol: pasta- good! tomatoes-good! carrots-good! Etc.

just a thought about the sandwiches have you seen the sandwich cutters which cut shapes like dinosaurs or cars ? Think lakeland have them ! My ds wouldnt eat sandwiches until i got the dinosaur ones which he loved and would eat most fillings as long as they were dinosaurs.

Hi everyone, sorry to hijack but what age do you think method two is appropriate or does it matter? Having a similar battle with DS who's 18mo and is only interested in fruit /dried fruit /sweet snacks. He ate porridge this morning though. Eats almost everything regularly at nursery.

Not sure if he's too young for 'eat it or wait til the next meal' and I worry about him going hungry. I don't think I should be pandering to it though.

You need a combination of both approaches.

Serve meals which contain at least one thing he will eat and the rest is whatever you are having. Don't show emotion about food. Just serve it, take away when done, don't cajole to try some, etc, just leave him to it. He will (hopefully) eventually start trying new things. Don't praise or make a big deal when he does, though.

My sister told me of another one which is, say they won't eat vegetables. Give peas everyday for a week and by the end of the week they will eat peas and so on. Haven't tried it but it could work.

Just tried a meal with raisins, he tipped them into the food then threw the bowl on the floor. He's now whinging and hungry. Not really sure what to do now?