Help! Extremely picky 2 year old

[Cbow23]

Hi, i am at a loss! My 2 year old is picky eating like extremely. I’ve tried everything always. I’m not a lazy mum I cook fresh meals every day we don’t eat freezer meals more than twice a month some months never. All he will eat is ready brek morning for breakfast and supper for his tea and then he snacks all day long but won’t eat fruit or veg he says it’s yucky I have tried showing him that I like it and it’s nice and I’ve even got my other son who is 15 to do it as well. He won’t eat normal foods his diet used to consist of ready brek toast bananas cheap crappy pizzas with hardly any cheese no other toppings but he won’t even eat them now. And then crisps rice cakes and other crappy foods. I’m at a loss I had such a big gap between both my kids and when I started weening him he ate everything without a second thought and now he doesn’t like the feel of thing or the texture and sometimes he won’t even try things. Please tell me I’m not the only one to experiencing this. I mentioned it to his health visitor on his 2 year review and she said he will grow out of it and that because I give him multi vitamins ellaola unflavored sachets he’s fine but something is telling me to keep pushing we have the doctors tomorrow but from pervious experience I no they aren’t the best. If anyone has dealt with this please tell
me how you coped how you managed and how you got help! Thank you in advance and sorry for the long post put it’s hard writing it all down.

I could have wrote this when mine was 2. He's 3.5 now and still the worst eater. He's on the pathway for assessment though so has lots of sensory issues with many things. Is it just the eating that's a problem, if so I think it's pretty usual that they get picky at this age. Hopefully someone comes along who's dealt with it and knows how to change it

Thank you so much for the reply. Please don’t take this in anyway other than intended but he’s always been so forward with his speech learning and everything else I have no issues other than his food and that he’s poorly with flu/‘cold quiet often. I put him into nursery recently to see if snack time with other kids would help him (seeing them have the different foods) but he just doesn’t interact at nursery with snack time. I completely understand that kids have stages but he’s been like this for 6-8 months now and the health visitor just wasn’t interested in what I was saying.

It’s a totally normal (anxiety inducing/frustrating) stage. Here are some things that helped me out of that stage with mine:

1- Don’t make mealtimes a battle or a show. Sit down together, eat the same thing. If he refuses the meal, calmly tell him “eat what you want and leave what you don’t”. Then don’t mention food again. No bribery, no cajoling. Also don’t make a big thing about it if he does try the meal. The aim is for zero fuss/drama over food.

2- Limit snacks. If he snacking all day then he isn’t hungry enough to try his meals. I’m not saying starve him but if he’s asking for a snack at 11am, say “lunch will be ready soon, if you are still hungry afterwards you can have that snack”.

3- Involve him in cooking and baking as much as possible. It’s baffling but a toddler night refuse a lovely home cooked meal but will try each ingredient raw.

4- Get him to serve the dinner/put it on their own plate. Serve meals “family style”. Allow the toddler to scoop out your portion and their own. It puts them in control. Again, no bribery, no fuss, no pressure.

5 - Try “fun” looking meals. For example, Make the food into a smiley face or fashion a mashed potato volcano with peas/sweetcorn as lava rocks, broccoli trees etc..

6- If he does eat something new, after the meal casually (and only once) mention you are proud he tried something new. Mention how new things can be fun and we’d never know what we like until we try it.

7 - Hidden veg is your friend. Blend it into sauces, hide inside ravioli, pastry etc.

8 - Remember even the least fussy eater on the planet still has food they don’t like. Don’t force feed anything. If he has really tried it and truely doesn’t like it then it’s ok to offer something else.

Our fixing the fussy eater routine looked like this:

Breakfast - Something “safe” that the toddler would eat or has asked for.

No snack.

Lunch - Family meal that is “new” to the toddler. Revisit something they used to eat but don’t any longer. Or something they eat at nursery but not at home. Think of something they are likely to enjoy if they tried it.

No snack (unless the toddler is now an unbearable hungry mess, to save your sanity.

Dinner - “Safe” family dinner that there are likely to eat. Add a new food or two on the side. For example, have a “packed lunch “ but add a new fruit. This means they are not hungry at bed time and will hopefully sleep. A tired and hungry toddler is not going to be pleasant and will certainly not try anything new.

The texture and taste of fruit is variable. So it’s normal for kids to be weary of it.

Buy the baby fruit purées and an ice lolly mould. Get him to squeeze the pouch into the mould and put it into the freezer. He will think he’s having a dessert but really he’s having fruit, easy win and easy snack.

Try adding fruit into a home made dessert like an apple cake or banana bread . Bake it with him and let him get used to the fruit flavours. My son went from hating carrots to loving them after making a carrot cake. He will now eat them in a meal.