my kids only eat bread and yoghurt - am I a terrible mum?

[gb1]

My two lovely boys aged 2 and 1 only eat bread and yoghurt and I mean only. They were both difficult to wean (even though I hoped I'd get it right with the second one) and now we in this situation where they only eat two foods. I don't know what I've done wrong! We are a normal healthy family, and my husband and I eat normally, a wide variety of food, and its 90% healthy.

I've read all the books, tried everything - Annabel Karmel must be a millionaire thanks to me, but nothing seems to change their eating habits.

All my friends' kids seem to love fruit and veg, and to be honest, its getting a bit embarrassing to take my two anywhere. I feel that people must think I'm a terrible mother. I know I must have screwed something up, but I don't know what.

Are there other mothers out there who's children are similarly picky! I'm now at the stage where all suggestions would be welcome, but really I'd just like to know that I'm not the only one out there.

ds1 only ate gluten free bread, gluten free pizza and buckwheat pancakes for many years, with other limited foods coming and going. No fruit, veg or meat for over 4 years though. School managed to work quite a lot with ds1- and after a year began to make slow progress. Their key approach was to get ds1 to accept tiny amounts of new food. At the time he was eating a lot of ready salted crisps so they took one, broke it in half and added a tiny bit of baked bean sauce. Then they moved up to breaking it in half to make a crisp sandwich with one beaked bean inside. Now he'll eat casseroles etc, although sometimes needs a crisp sandwich to get going.

There is a specialist eating clinic at GOSH, they recoommend allowing children to play with food without (I think this is correct) pressurising them to eat it. So get a big bowl of pasta and hide toys in it. This didn't work with ds1 as a)he's uninterested in toys and b) avoids touching a lot of things but it can work quite well.

Ds3 (20 months) has just gone through a fussy sage - I just contined to offer normal foods and would frequently offer him some of mine- it was actually eating mine that got him back n track.

From age 5 to about 7 I ate nothing at all apart from marmite sandwiches, chip shop chips and bananas. I'm now 35 and healthy, and (when not pregnant as I am now) eat everything. I am the last of 4 kids and my laidback Mum's view was I'll eat when I'm ready.

I have a friend with an extremely fussy eater whose diet is almost but not quite as restricted as your children. I feel for her mother and all the anxiety it causes her, but really wish she would stop worrying what other people are thinking about it. We don't give a fig whether her dd eats or not, or what she eats - are never offended or shocked by it - just feel concerned for the upset it obviously causes. I would really like to tell her to stop giving a toss about what anyone else thinks and I would like to say the same to you. Tbh the most likely thought to be going through anyone's head is "thank heavens it is not me going through that". I really doubt people are judging you - if they are foolish enough to do so - sod them.

sorry gb1, cant help as my boys are the opposite. but my friend had similar probs and in the end, the 'i dont care, he'll eat what he wants' attitude helped. she'd always put out a diff variety of foods incase he wanted to try and now he'll come here and munch his way through homemade lasagne, citrus fruit salad and then some chocolate and flpjacks adn mroe fruit later. she makes no fuss now over what he eats and when. by tea time he is hungry again!!! as long as they are a helathy weight, then id chill, its not like theyll be doing this at 18yrs old!

cx

oh gb1 do sympathise.
Peer pressure works wonders, do they watch what the others eat ever and try that too?
When mine were like that I abandoned dinner table and we had carpet picnics/ chimps tea parties (yes we actually pretended to be chimps)as they had seen them in the zoo being fed cut up fruit on a plate. Bits of apple, currants, lumps of cheese, bananas etc. Did seem to work and mine were rubbish.
But I just tried really hard not to be too anxious.
Put vitamin drops into whatever they drink too.