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16 month old only eats bread, fruit, cheese & yogurt

9 replies

Bullsbrook · 02/04/2007 09:14

Hi, My 16 month old has a healthy appetite but will only eat bread, fruit, cheese & yogurt. She was eating a tuna, pasta, grated veg & cheese sauce dish but has gone off it. If I try new foods she refuses to even taste it and starts crying and carring on. I am offering 10 times or more. She just won't try new things and it is a real battle to get her to eat dinner. I worry that she won't have a full tummy so I give in and give her whatever she likes as I don't want her waking during the night hungry. She still has one breast feed a day and that is at night. More a comfort thing. I would like her to eat what we eat and we are not fussy eaters and we eat anything. So I don't understand what is going wrong. Please can someone help I worry that she is not getting all the right foods for healthy growing. Thanks.

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Furball · 02/04/2007 09:19

do you plonk it on the high chair for her to eat herself? Or do you feed her? Cos, plonking cubes of this and that on the tray is usually a good way of getting them interested in other things as they can then have a good squish and smelll etc to learn what it's all about.

LadyMacbeth · 02/04/2007 09:19

Could have written this thread a couple of mths ago. My dd2 (17mths) went through this stage and wouldn't let me feed her.

Somtimes when she's like it I put it down to teething but usually it's just her flexing her independent streak.

One thing I do is carry her to the work top and casually feed myself some of the food saying 'yum' and more often than not she starts asking for some. So with her still in my arms I'll feed her some and that usually breaks it. Still feeding her I'll then out her in her chair and feed her the rest. It helps if I feed her straight out of the casserole dish - something about having 'our' food helps! Oh and make sure you make a big fuss whenever she does take a mothful - lots of clapping and smiling!!

BizzyDint · 02/04/2007 09:24

do you eat at the same time as her? does she see you enjoying your food? do you give her the same things you have?

midnightexpress · 02/04/2007 09:49

Echo what bizzydint is asking - might help to eat at the same time as her. Our DS1 (actually a good eater, generally) will eat ANYTHING that comes off our plate and will try all sorts if we're all eating together. Might be a pain to have to eat early, but may be worth it, even temporarily if it works? And agree that allowing her to feed herself might help, if she doesn't already. DS1 often refuses help but quite happy if he's spooning it in himself. Or trying to .

CoteDAzur · 02/04/2007 12:36

I might be publicly flogged here for saying this, but my (possibly heartless) opinion is that if DD does not want to eat what she has on the plate, than she does not eat until next mealtime. She is a good eater (has always been, not because of any discipline) but the few times she has refused to eat her food, I took her down the high chair and cleaned away the food. Five minutes later, she came asking for food and got the same dish, which she ate.

For what it's worth, my recommendation would be to start your DD on whatever you are eating (vegetables, meat, etc cut to small pieces) without any delay. She is not far from the age when she will start the tantrums, and it will be much harder to change her eating habits then.

When you are offering a new dish, it might help to delay her meal time for half an hour to an hour, so that she will be more hungry than usual. Also, a new dish works better when she is rested and happy (probably lunch) than when she is tired (dinner).

And if she likes yoghurt so much - assuming that we are talking about plain yoghurt here, why not put yoghurt on green vegetables and give that? It might sound unusual, but it is a very Aegean (Greek & Turkish) way of eating vegetables.

One more idea - When DD goes off real food and wants just bread time and again, I make pastries with spinach puree and rolls with sausages and cheese. The advantage over pastries you buy is that these have much more good stuff and the pastry is very thin. DD loves them. Just cut ready-made pastry dough into squares, put the vegetable puree in the middle, and close the sides. 25 min in the oven at 210 C. Yummy!

susie40 · 03/04/2007 16:58

Bullsbrook, don't worry too much about nutrition - my DS (who has sensory issues) has eaten that range of foods and very little else for 2 years now and I have been assured by HVs and a paed that he is growing fine and getting what he needs especially as we put vitamin drops in his milk and make sure that the bread is wholemeal with lots of seeds in.

Lovecat · 04/04/2007 11:46

Bullsbrook, you are writing about my dd!

At 15 months she went from being the baby who ate everything to the baby who would only eat 6 things (bread, fruit, cheese, yoghurt, weetabix and ketchup!)...

We did everything as recommended, ate with her, didn't react to her throwing lovingly- handcooked dinners away (grrr), tiny portions, never let her get stressed about it...

She's now 2.2 and has expanded her range to include fish fingers, chicken nuggets (the good sort), sausage rolls (is there a good kind?) home-made cheese pizza, spag bol, vegetable noodles and guacamole (if she's in the mood - otherwise it's back to the big 6!). She's meeting all her targets and it's more annoying for us than worrying because we'd like her to eat what we eat without having to go through sulks, tantrums etc.

I'm told my nephew only ate bread and butter for the first 5 years of his life - he's now a strapping 10 yr old who devours everything in sight, so there is light at the end of the tunnel!

Great suggestions, Cotedazur - I'll try that with the yog and pastry, she likes both!

Lovecat · 05/04/2007 13:08

Just wanted to say a big THANK YOU to Cotedazur - I tried the veg in yoghurt today and she ate half a big bowlful! She did twig that there was something in there that wasn't raspberries or mango (her usual additions to yog) and there was a bit of spitting when she encountered a green bean, but that's the first unadulterated (ie not deep fried or baked in a waffle) veg she's had in months!

Thank you!!!

Off to buy some spinach now for pastries...

suzi2 · 05/04/2007 13:22

My DS (20 months) has done this in the past. Oatcakes & dried fruit diet! Basically we just offer a healthy, balanced meal that we know he doesn't dislike and if he doesn't eat it, or excludes the veg then so be it. If I stress, he gets worse!

I find that eating food off his plate encourages him so I usually make extra to eat myself. Also, he prefers to eat for 5 mins then wants down to run around. I just lay the plate on the floor and let him pick away while playing and he eats more.

One thing I have learned is that it's good to offer things that you know they don't like. Firstly, it makes them eat other things off their plate and secondly, DS sometimes surprises me by eating the things that he has turned down for 8 months!

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