15 month old not eating!

[MarianneM]

My daughter has been very difficult about food from the start. We used to give her lots of different things to try every mealtime when we were weaning her as we were paranoid she wasn't eating enough solid food, maybe this made her fussy. She goes through phases of eating well and then hardly anything except bread or plain penne pasta or something like that.
She was recently ill and now will only eat bread, cheese, yoghurt and raisins, sometimes grapes. We cook her a nice homemade meal every day, stuff like pasta with tuna and veg sauce, homemade beef burgers and mashed potato, fish cakes etc. All of which she has eaten before, but not now. And she is not ill any more.
Do you have any advice to give? Can I let her go hungry if she won't eat her meal? I feel bad letting her go hungry but am reluctant to let her have her way and only eat bread and cheese. I feel that letting her get away with it will be a recipe for disaster and that we will have a battle in our hands forever!
I feel so disheartened as I was so determined not to raise a fussy child. What can I do?

At 15 months my dd survived on milk, raisins, dry cereal and the odd mouthful of food. Like you I was tearing my hair out with worry. At 20 months she was hardly any better with me but would eat at nursey so I suspected power play. I forced myself to put down the lovely homemade food on her try, eat my own or drink a coffee and simply remove her from her place when she had finished and threw the food in the bin, or put it back in the fridge if possible. If nothing got eaten then so be it, nothing until the next alloted snack or mealtime.

She is now almost three, still eats next to nothing for days on end. If she finishes a complete meal a day I regard it as a sucess. She is very tall and slim and perfectly healthy. She is on self imposed atkins, she chooses not to eat the pasta potato rice etc I put out but eats the protien and the veggies. I keep putting it out though, one day she'll eat it. Now she is older I make her throw the leftovers in the bin and she oftern then goes back for more knowing I am serious.

I am amazed at how little they can survive on, try not to worry too much and just keep very calm, once she sees you upset about it it's game over.

Give her fruit shoots to make sure she's getting enough vitamin C.