Help with 2 year old eating?

[Sillymummies123]

Hi all,

Our second child (DD) is proving a bit difficult to feed.

I'm afraid we do have "meal times" and largely expect our children to at least try foods on their plate (we don't pressure if they're clearly having a sensory issue or whatever with the food), and we serve mostly familiar foods with good previous. We like to keep mealtimes fun, and are largely pretty loose with healthy snacking- fruits always available, not that they ask for more than a piece of two between meals (a satsuma and an apple is around 75 cals so I don't think they're filling up, and generally they'll eat less if they opt for berries).

Our son is autistic, and so we've already created a really low pressure meal environment. Generally they're invited to the table to eat (always run, shouting "yes!"), but if they're not ready we don't push (they're never not ready, anyway).

Our DD is proving tricky to feed. She objects to food, picks around the edges, doesn't eat much. For example, today we had melon slices and half a bagel. She picked the butter off the bagel and ate a melon slice. She then started shouting "more melon".

Now, we don't cook to order, but this "ILL ONLY EAT FOOD X AND NOTHING ELSE AND ILL THROW MY PLATE ON THE FLOOR AND SCREAM FOR HALF AN HOUR IF I DONT GET IT" is becoming a daily occurrence. She can quite happily refuse all food if she doesn't get FOOD X , and then has a hungry meltdown and tantrum until she is distracted about 30-45 minutes later.

We are calm. We reiterate that the food that she has is [insert dinner]. We don't cave, so I'm not sure where this utter strength of conviction is coming from, but we're a few weeks in now.

Now, I imagine comments will say "well she isn't dead, so she's obviously getting food from somewhere" and to that i answer that she attends childcare most of the week, and eats the lunch we pack for her - the childcare provider doesn't cave to demands and give more than what we allocate.

Any advice for dealing with her? Mealtimes are becoming a tiresome time, where we, and our noise sensitive ASD child, who has now taken to wearing his ear defenders at the table, listen to our DD eat perhaps "the peas", not eat the rest, ask for more peas, be directed to the rest of the food, scream, throw plate, get help picking it back up, be put back to the table, ask for peas, and so on and so on.

In todays culture, its very hard to know whether someone who gives only an emoji is in the "they should eat it all" or the "they should be able to graze as they please" camp. I am in neither

Is it? Many feel that child led feeding - food at a child friendly table that allows them to get up and down - is best. I don't, and I don't have time to do that, but I think it's harder to mess a child up that everyone seems to think, and so I don't think that the method above is that bizarre, just not one I'm willing to adopt.

We can argue further if you want to, but it seems like we have the shared opinion that set mealtimes is best?

I'm sure everyone who's asked this would say "good", even if their diet is a mess!

Omnivorous, but not meat heavy at all. Very varied. I'm very gut biome focused, so generally aim to have a huge variety of plants. I enjoy cooking though, and am fairly inventive, so while I provide familiarity as best I can with some of the foods on the plate, I try to introduce new things (that's where most of the "just try it, you don't have to have it all" comes in. If they're refusing their favourites, haven't eaten for hours, clearly just want to play, I tend to encourage them to eat more, which tends to work).

My current hyperfocus food (I wouldn't inflict in on my kids, but both have tried and are fairly indifferent) is burmese tofu made with a variety of soaked legumes.

I wouldn't say their diets are boring, or that I push too much new food on them. Its more that my DD seems to eat one of the things in the meal, and then demand more, and refuse the rest.

Yeah, all fine. Do you think its best we just stay consistent, let her feel the result of not eating (hunger), and wait it out?

If it's only been a few weeks (as much as I know that feels like a very long time when every meal is a drama), it wouldn't be unreasonable to just keep holding the boundary a bit longer and see if she comes round, if that's what you'd prefer.

That said, I'd do two things. Firstly, I'd treat throwing the plate as mealtime is over. She helps you clear it up and away, rather than back to the table. I'd warn her of this beforehand, and I'd probably allow her to get it back quite quickly at first if she was making an effort to calm herself down or saying she wouldn't throw it again (because I want to encourage the attempt to manage her emotions/do the right thing, even if not particularly successful). I'd probably also bring snack time a bit earlier, and a bit more substantial, if she does basically skip a meal to avoid subjecting everyone to excessive amounts of hangry toddler.

On the other hand, I'd generally let her have a bit more of what she wants from the main meal, assuming some is easily available, especially if she's a young two. Certainly no short-order cooking, but cutting another slice of melon, making another slice of toast, giving her a bit of anything left in the pot. At just two, we were still very much following DD1's lead on this (and still are for DD2, who is one and a half), as long as the variety is there over a week or so (harder if she's only ever going to want to eat one food group, though). At some point between two and a half and three we started talking about needing to eat a variety of foods to keep us healthy, give us lots of energy, etc. and started pushing her a bit more on the variety at a single meal, but even then, it's eat a bit of something else, then you can have more X (and if X is veg, we're pretty lenient – unless weight gain is an issue, it's pretty tricky to eat too much veg). It's a balance between what is practical, managing food waste, and letting her listen to her body, but it does also take quite a lot of drama out of mealtimes.