Help, my little girl won't eat

[Hannahsmummy2016]

Hi everyone I'm after some help/advice please...
So 2 weeks ago we were at my parents house for dinner, my mum choked on a small piece of pastry and my 5 year old daughter got so hysterical that she made herself physically sick 😔 her dad and myself managed to calm her down eventually and thought we had reassured her that her nana was OK. My mum was totally fine once she had managed to dislodge the bit of pastry. So we thought everything was OK and our little girl had forgotten about it. Fastforward a week or so and she has started not to want to eat her dinner, to this morning where she was upset again and hasn't wanted to eat anything all day 😪 I feel like the whole thing has traumatised her to the point that if you so much as cough she jumps because she gets such a fright that it's happening again. What I guess I'm asking is does anyone have any experience of this and how did you make your little one realise that its ok to eat. I don't want to phone the doctors if there is no need to but I'm just so worried about her and especially as its the week of Christmas too. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated xx

Not exactly the same but our DD went through a phase where she decided not to eat, we were so worried and never got to bottom of it as to why but this is what we did. Make sure you're putting no pressure on at all, super relaxed about whether she eats or not. Offer things that are easy to eat so yoghurt, soup that sort of thing, her favourite food if she seems ok with yoghurt etc. Spoon feed her / help her get things in her mouth if you need to but super gentle to build confidence. Hell if you need to break out the chocolate, a few days of bad diet won't do lasting harm.

I suspect she'll get over it given time and probably hunger but it might be a worrying few days.

I guess what I'm saying is aim to build confidence and offer lots of reassurance. If it helps offer her to sit on your lap at mealtimes.

Hi @mattyandmummy thank you so much for your reply. Did you find that these things worked with your little girl? I'm going to try them today with her and see how we go. She is currently nursing a small petit felous yogurt that would normally be gone in seconds is taking her about 10 minutes to eat 😪 xxx

Yes it did but it didn't happen overnight, it was probably over a week she started to improve. I think really what drove it in the end was hunger (breaks my heart to say that).

The other thing we did was leave out a plate of snacky things - raisins, little bits of cracker to nibble, basically little things she could eat one or two of without it feeling like a meal. We have a little person table and chairs in our living room and we put it there and just mentioned it in an offhand way a few times a day.

Best of luck, I'm sure it'll be ok long term x