20 month old completely given up breakfast - help!

[bondgirl77]

Over the past month or so my DS has almost completely stopped eating anything at breakfast time. It started with swapping to wanting his bottle first (used to eat his breakfast then drink bottle afterwards) - I know he's not supposed to still have a bottle but he loves it so I can't bear to give it up yet. Anyhow, as he has recently become better with spoon started leaving it to him to eat, and at first this went well, he was spooning in quite a bit as I got myself breakfast and sat down to eat with him. Gradually though he has begun to ignore the breakfast, just drinks his bottle and then sits there whilst I eat. Have tried several approaches - gentle encouragement to lift spoon to mouth followed by lots of praise, talking about the day and not focussing at all on the food, offering different alternatives like toast, fruit and yoghurt instead of cereal, offering dried cereals to snack on instead of ready brek/weetabix and mashed banana. Not sure what to do - bit worried as know cereals contain good added vits, plus it was a good chance to get banana down him which he now seems to refuse at other times. anyone any experience of this? Just a toddler phase? Otherwise seems happy chappy.

He's still having the bottle in the morning then? Have you tried cutting down the amount of milk? Sounds like he's just too full of milk to want any breakfast.

DS did go through a phase of this recently though and he doesn't have a bottle in the morning. He just didn't seem to fancy much breakfast. Then some mornings, he'll wolf down loads. On the mornings he didn't want much breakfast, we'd just offer him an earlier (and bigger, if he wanted it) snack.

I'd keep doing what you're doing - offer a range of foods and keep it nice and chilled, and he'll probably pick it up again. Would he have something like a banana milkshake or a smoothie? Maybe he's just not into eating in the morning but would drink instead?

I've noticed that DS sometimes isn't too keen on breakfast if he's just had milk (he's 17.5 months).

I just go with the flow and don't try to persuade him. If he's hungry he'll eat and if not he won't. I usually try him a bit later and 9/10 he'll eat.

Try not to worry too much about it (easier said than done I know!). Adult's appetites change now and then, so no reason why toddlers should be any different!