Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

Please or to access all these features

Behaviour/development

Talk to others about child development and behaviour stages here. You can find more information on our development calendar.

Does this level of picky eating sound normal for a toddler?

1 reply

wonteatfood · Yesterday 23:29

My child is 2.5 and I'm just wondering if this sounds like normal toddler fussiness?
It's becoming increasingly difficult to get them to eat meals. I think the only thing I can get them to eat is plain spaghetti, chips, the occasional nugget, sometimes beans but rarely nowadays. Toast is hit and miss. They'll eat cheese and sometimes the cracker. Yogurts but only petit filous- nothing else will do. Sometimes I can get them to drink a smoothie carton. That is pretty much it. They will eat biscuits or chocolate or crisps but not pom bears or quavers- they have to be normal potato crisps. They still have milk in the morning and evening in a bottle as I'm too scared to change this incase they lose their main source of calories.
Some days they'll only have milk, a yogurt, some cheese and crackers and a few chips all day.
I know it's a normal age to go off food as they're not growing so fast, but this is every single day for months and months.
I'm not sure if it's relevant but they grind their teeth a lot- I've not completely removed his dummy for this reason. They'll put sand and stones in their mouth given the opportunity but again I tend to let them have their dummy on the beach as that'll disuade them a bit.

They're under speech and language and their language level is about a year behind according to the tick boxes.They throw up on about 80% of all car journeys of any length (over half an hour)- just mentioning incase relevant and it's an added reason why I'm worried about food intake if they're throwing up at least once a week in the car.
Sorry- this has become a bit of an essay!
I'm just wondering if this sounds standard toddler? I have very little to compare it to, and when I've tried mentioning to friends they say 'oh such and such has days like that' while their child polished off a plate of veggie curry and rice in front of me. I can only dream of my kid eating anything resembling a proper meal!

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
TinyMouseTheatre · Today 06:53

I was thinking it sounds within the realms of normal until you said they could go a day without eating.

I think given the speech delay, the possible pica and the reliance on bottles I’d be looking at ARFID.

You could talk to the Birmingham Food Refusal Service but in your position I think I’d be trying to get a formal diagnosis.

You could start by asking to see your HV and ask for a referral to a
Paediatric Dietitian.

I would also fill in both of these before seeing the HV and ask her to score them:

2.5 year Ages & Stages

and the 2.5 year Social & Emotional Ages & Stages.

Let us know how you get on Flowers

Birmingham Food Refusal Service

Home page for Birmingham Food Refusal Service

http://www.foodrefusal.co.uk

New posts on this thread. Refresh page