Should I give him dessert if he doesn't finish main course?!

[Zinger]

This seems such an old-fashioned question: 'If you don't eat your greens, you can't have any pudding'! I certainly DON'T want to give DS (6.5 months - on solids for 2 months) the idea that his main course is a penance to get through in order to get to the good stuff. It's just that up till now, when he's stopped eating his savoury solids, I've assumed he's no longer hungry so have ended the meal there. The other day I left him with my mum and she gave him his fruit and yoghurt even though he didn't finish his main course - and he scoffed the lot! Since then I've been doing the same (I'd hate to give him less food than he wants), and I'm finding he's eating significantly bigger 'puddings' (especially banana) than main courses. This doesn't seem like a good thing! I don't want him to ultimately start holding back on his savoury food and 'saving himself' for the sweet stuff (though I know it's too early for him do be doing anything so calculating!). I'm thinking long term here, really - any thoughts?

it could be teething too, my dd went off savoury foods when cutting teeth, preferring the cooler yoghurts and fruit mixes I made, but since about 17 mths she has eaten anything and I pudding has never figured on her menu unless she has wolfed down dinner and is looking for more.
At 7 mths when she had been weaned a few weeks, I never offered anythign after dinner at all except a boob feed...
We don't have pudding as a family so she would get her nose out of joint later on!!!

with dd (2.5) and ds (8mo) it has always been my goal not to make dinner a big deal. I hated being told about 'starving children in Africa' , can't get down from the table until my plate is clear etc etc and I'm determined not to put my children through that. When I serve up dinner, I suppose I mentally consider what I would consider 'enough' based on what else they'd eaten today in other meals & snacks. If they eat that much then I'll ask dd if she wants any more and offer her some fruit or a yoghurt, if they don't then it doesn't get offered. With ds, he gets fruit or yoghurt if he either eats all his main course or if he hasn't had any other fruit during the day or if I think he's low on dairy. Very vague I know, but as long as they're eating a balanced diet I am too tired to worry too much about it!

IME, babies are significantly keener on sweet stuff than savoury (breastmilk is extremely sweet). My dd2 (7 months) is the same -- won't eat more than a couple of spoonfuls of savoury stuff, but will snarf an entire banana in one sitting.

My policy (and it worked with the older two kids who will eat pretty much anything I put in front of them) is to offer one thing per meal, and if she doesn't eat it, I just accept that. I'm reluctant to offer only things I know she will eat, for just the reasons you state, even though she is on the small side. She's not going to waste away from one meal to the next, and eventually she has to accept that there is more to food than banana porridge.

I think it's very easy to get too hung up on how much babies eat, and they pick that up amazingly quickly. Nine years down the line I can stake my mortgage on the fact that with very few exceptions, visiting schoolfriends will refuse to eat most perfectly ordinary foodstuffs (which are generally greeted by vocal 'yuk' noises), and demand turkey dinosaurs instead.

Don't go there.

My ds2 - 8 months - started off like that. You'd have thought I was poisoning him. I don't know if you're making your own food, but I found that just adding tomato puree increased his liking. Also things like Sunday lunch, add a bit of apple for a sweet flavour. Ds2 is now on savoury food and will eat pretty much anything. I even gave him sandwiches today because I needed to go out.

Good luck.