My 5yo DS is underweight. All kinds of advice needed please, he seems worried...

[Silverthorns]

My DS1 is five and a half, tall at 4 foot 2 and weighs 3 stone 4.

To be fair, his dad is very tall and thin, so it's in his genes to some extent. But when I picked him up from school he looked a bit under the weather - he quite often gets these dark circles under his eyes, so when we got home I gave him some liquid iron and a vitamin tablet, then I weighed and measured him, put his stats into the bmi calculator on the NHS website and it said that he is on the border of red = underweight. We had a chat about it and he seemed quite worried and initially said "don't tell my dad".

I think we've got things straight now, and he told his dad himself, so we had a chat about the importance of actually eating his tea rather than fannying about dancing and squirming and doing anything but eating.--

He's a vegetarian but immensely fussy and "goes off" staple food from one day to the next. I've got issues because of being stood over as a child at mealtimes so I've tried not to do that, but to be honest, I think I need to be stricter in getting him to stop arsing about and actually eat his food.

Any advice/tips? I think I'm going to start getting him to eat scrambled eggs/eggy bread for breakfast instead of cereal, and to maybe just focus on feeding him stuff that I know he will eat, rather than trying to get him to have what we have without success. I'm guessing if I stick to pasta, rice, cheese based meals, maybe give him hot chocolate with full fat milk at suppertime? And make sure he has a multi vitamin daily?

Is he a vegetarian by choice? If not, maybe you could feed him stuff like burgers and sausages sometimes?

Stopping being a vegetarian not an option. It's not really part of the issue.

Try increasing the calorific value of his meals, grate cheese into things, use butter etc. Make sure he's getting plenty of protien as well as carbs, it's easy to miss when you're veggie.
I looked after a boy who was veggie & had a high metabolisim, menu planning used to keep me awake at night! Dairy was my best weapon & pastry. If he's a faddy eater try involving him in preparing food, that way he can have some input.
As long as he's not aneamic & getting a varied diet I'm sure he'll be fine, some kids are just skinny. If in doubt ask to be refered to a nutritionist.
Good luck.

Thank you nannyn - good advice! I can relate to the sleepless nights over menus, I seem to end up cooking different meals for four people and angsting over whether everyone's getting the right amount of nutrients...

Having said that, this will teach me to take what DH says on faith. Turns out DS1 was only 3'11" when I measured him, putting him into the healthy range after all. He is very skinny though so am still going to try and feed him up a bit.

Typical!! Sounds like you're doing all the right things anyway so don't give yourself a hard time. They don't tell you about the life time of stress & worry at antenatel classes do they?
Happy cooking!