Worried about DD lack of fruit & veg....

[auntyspan]

My DD is nearly 18 months old and will not eat any fresh fruit or veg. Her stools (sorry if tmi) are becoming quite pale and I'm desparately worried.
Veg - I'm mashing it up with cod / chicken etc and she eats about 3 spoonfuls and REFUSES to the point of screaming to eat anymore. I've tried steaming it a bit and giving it to her as finger food, cooking it as normal and giving her fish fingers etc. She just doesn't eat it. Fruit is even worse. I did the smoothie thing which worked for about 3 days and then she found a lump that hadn't been whizzed up, and screamed the place down. She now refuses to even take one mouthful.
I'm really at the end of my tether. Do I go down the vitamin drops route?
I think it's to do with several things - she's weird about textures (like DP ) so if she comes across anything new she spits it out. If there is something like a mash, and there's a random lump in it, again she screams like a banshee and spits the whole thing out, and refuses anymore.
Please help me!

forgot to add you can change the amount of sugar to your taste.

Mine quite like the stewed fruit - although much more if it is topped with crumble and custard! But I do wonder if I am really pandering?

Have made a chicken & vegetable risotto with red, green and yellow peppers, onions and carrots all chopped to the tiniest degree (gotta love Pampered Chef food chopper) so crossing fingers DD will give it a go tonight. I figure with them all being sweet vegetables and each piece as small as the grains of rice it's gotta be in with a shout. If not I'm giving her a greggs sausage roll and a fruit shoot!

Result! She woke up famished from her nap so gave her a small bowl of it and she just wolfed the lot down. She normally picks peppers and carrots out and chucks them on the floor. Will post the recipe when I get a few mins.

yes please do!

I don't measure anything unless I'm baking so apologies for the rough estimates.

1 yellow pepper,1 green pepper, 1 red pepper, 2 smallish onions (all chopped to tiny peices size of grains of rice - something like the pampered chef food chopper is ideal for this)
1 carrot (grated)
2 small cups of rice (I used basmati as it was all I had in)
1 cooked chicken breast (chopped into small pieces
1 organic chicken stock cube (obviously salty so optional but I think it needs it)
a slug of milk
a large handful of grated cheese
4 garlic cloves
slug of olive oil

sweat off the onions and garlic in a slug of olive oil til onions are clear and soft, add peppers and cook for another few minutes stirring frequently to prevent sticking. Toss in uncooked rice and stir through well. Add stock cube and as much water as you think the rice will easily absorb (can always add more if needed so be conservative with that). Continue to stir frequently as rice cooks and about 5 minutes before rice is fully done throw in chopped chicken. When all liquid has been absorbed chuck in a slug of milk and large handful of grated cheese to make it nicely creamy. If your kids like peas &/or sweetcorn these are nice thrown in too, if frozen chuck in about same time as chicken.
Makes easily enough to feed 4-6 people I'd say.
DD's having another bowl of it as I type!

Reading all the fussy eater threads with interest and trying not to get too emotional and defensive about my DDs eating (probably indicating I am "over anxious" - not sure if I'm "badly informed' or have "somehow got into bad habit").

DD1 nearly 4, always been a bit funny with food (days hardly seeming to eat a thing, then just as I'm getting worried days where she wolfs everything down) she's gradually got more 'fussy' - refusing to try anything new, seeming to announce every day that she doesn't like things she's always eaten (this month mashed potatoes,chips, egg yolks, cooked carrots...). I'm dedicatedly following all the advice - we all eat together, no fuss if she doesn't eat etc. etc. One question though please... how do I encourage her to try new foods if I'm not supposed to be talking about her eating. How do I not let it sound like nagging. Struggling with this... any advice please.

Stickers (as in if you try x food you get a sticker, if you eat all of x portion of food you get 2 stickers and when you have collected 10 stickers you get your choice of present y or z), games, puppets, anything.. Mix new food in with familiar food. Invite friends round who like the new food and use them as role models or have a prize for the child who can name and sample 3 different foods (one from each plate and stick vegetables on one sandwiches on another cheese or whatever on another). Do the food olympics. Get dd involved in preparing food esp do things like make pizza faces, make patterns with vegetables. Jacket potato boats with cucumber or carrot stick sails. Use dips. Make up a special lunchbox for dd (I sometimes reuse those cardboard things you get given at play centres sometimes) with various sandwich shapes and little tubs of things and go on a picnic. My dds love picnics and no mess to clear up! Get dd to choose stuff for you to eat and feed it to you. Have a fairy tea party (invite favourite toys and make proper invitations) and use a doll's tea set with loads of little bite sized portions. Grow your own (my mum buys my dds ready grown tomato and strawberry plants for their birthdays. They love love love to pick and eat) or pick your own fruit and vegatable.

There's a big, big differnece between encouraging with a happy, smily voice and lots of fun and jokes and nagging with a cross, worried voice.

And if none of the above work move on, talk about something else and try again another day.

I should go into business shouldn't I?

Thanks for the ideas/ I have tried quite few of them - we dod stickers for a very short while but she really didn't care about getting the stckers and I felt that marked a 'low' point with my making a big deal of it so abandoned them and went back to 'not mentioning it'. I often make faces/boats/flowers etc out of her food and she loves it but carefully moves anything she doesn't eat to the side. Also loves packed lunches/picnics but again looks for the things she will eat and leaves the things she's decided she does't like anymore.

Sorry to sound negative. I will read through your list again and try to play up the fun side of food. The 'pick it and eat it' idea I think is one that could work - it worked last year when she ate a strawberry for the first time. Only problem is I treied to grow various veggies in my garden this year and they all dies (useless gardener, not enough time, too many slugs). DD1 was really disappointed too . Felt worse! Maybe we could go to one of those PYO farms...

By the way yes maybe you should write a book

The key with stickers when they're little is to stick them on a chart with a target in mind. So choose a present you know your dd will really like (a new DVD or toy or a trip with you to somewhere she loves). Make the target number of stickers realistic and achievable (maybe just 5 stickers to start with). We've used these loads of times with dd1 (who is now 5 but we probably started when she was younger than 4 (with things like sitting at table, going to bed nicely, even wiping her own bottom at one point and currently putting her own shoes on every day for a week) and almost every time we've done it she's not only achieved the target number of stickers (and tehrefore the present) but she's maintained the good behaviour.

The other thing is don't expect a miracle overnight cure. Changing tastes and attitudes takes a long time (a life time). It's an ongoing thing just like teaching your child good manners or how to share or how to be nice to her friends (my dds are currently being vile to each other and this is our current big project as well as the shoes).

LOL that your two big projects are not being vile to your sister and putting on your own shoes. The many-splendoured joys of parenting...

A good friend of mine is currently working on eating with cutlery and not pooing in your pants...

By the way my DD1 is not vile to her sister and always puts on her own shoes! So maybe I should be grateful for something

Sorry to post here again but I've just had teatime with DD and wonder if anyone has any more advice. She had pasta with bolgnese sauce but only ate the bits of plain pasta - wouldn't touch any sauce or sauce-y pasta. She always loved this sauce when she was younger. I tried to encourage her to eat the sauce as well but even with a happy smily face/voice as soon as you start to talk about it she gets really upset and angry.

My question really (rather than just having a good moan) if she gets upset (which she does straight away) should I continue to try and encourage her despite the tears or should I just let it drop? I know I don'y want mealtimes to be unhappy times byut i feel like if I don't mention the possibility of her eating something other than plain pasta or bread I'm 'giving in'.

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I would agree about vitamin drops in the short to medium term.

I do this with mine when I don't feel he's had enough nutritious food.

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Hairy toe - Ive had phases of this with mine too. I found that he would eat everything the childminder put before him for a while but was impossible at home. This phase passed and he started to refuse things she had always given him too! I agree about eating with other kids though and I do know worse eaters than mine. One in the family who lived on milk tinned soup and chips for years!! Older than me and still around though.

I have tried Pasta with sauce. It's a no. But he will have grated cheese next to it and recently tried tuna AND LIKED IT.

I nearly put an ad in the local newspaper.

So we are 1 up on omelette, shepherds pie (but special ones I make without the veg , pasta cheese and tuna, sausages & chips. Without the pasta & cheese it was 3 meals.

so thats 4 meals that will be eaten. I worry about the shepherds pie as it has no good stuff in.

I am very very unsure about the conflicting advice - to starve - or not to starve by giving toast. I have tried starving, it didn't work.

Eating around the table does work.

Its fukiing awful when your kid wont eat. I am making so many changes to DD's diet (6 months) today she had wholemeal pita and humous and for breakfast she had toast and nectarine.......Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Oh and broccoli is her usual food

i feel guilty of not cooking well if ds doesnt have it, as he's at nursery 9-5 wkdays, may b i dont even know what he likes as we are indians and do indian stuff at home

God b4 kids I never knew the food thing could cause so much anxiety. I'm really trying to relax but its hard sometimes. Thanks for the responses - I haven't time to post more now as kids/shopping beckon but i'll have another look later on.

God - I sympathise - I have just been through this with Ds2 who is 16 months. he started spitting everything veg or fruit related out.

In the end we had a slight pshychological war ...which I have won and he is now eating a bit more fruit (albeit mashed) and some veg if cut up into tiny peices.

He understands me well enough because when he spat things out, I just took him by the hand and said "no" very firmly. Of course he ignored me and spat it out again. SO, I took him out of the chair and put him in the playpen....OK, so you're not hungry....of course 10 mins later he's crying for lunch so back in the chair and offered the veg again. We went on with this for days, and he had to eat a little bit of the veg or fruit before he was allowed what he wanted...i.e. the meat...just like his father - a total carnivore! Needless to say we had alot of tears at which point I turned my back on him and did something else in the kitchen till he had stopped. I can tell you I felt like sh*T, and really guilty, but i praised him so much when he ate even a tiny bit of veg and in the last 2 weeks we have come on so much further. I'll probably get slated now for being too harsh.....

Yesterday he even ate a banana!!!!! ..mind you he was so hungry he would have eaten anything by then as we were playing at a friends and late for tea.

A friend of ours had a child who lost part of his tounge due to a horrible infection as a baby and he lived on peanut butter on toast for 2 years before he would eat anything else....she was up to high dough as you can imagine, but the nutritionist told her that no child will ever starve itself.

Does she like yoghurt? If so, I would do a day or two of plain youghurt as a pudding and then a little at a time start introducing a teaspoon of cooked pureed and maybe even sieved fruit so it's alost unoticable. Casseroles with the veg cooked very soft - would that help?

I really feel for you - it's so stressful. One thing I will add is that I stopped all snacks between meals until this was sorted out, so he came to the table hungry and got offered the stuff he didn't like first with the yummies out of sight. I was recently told that you need to put something new in front of a child 35 times before they will accept it.

good luck

We've had a good few days. Used a couple of those Ellas Kitchen pouches mixed in with pasta and peas, went down OK. Gone back to using fruit pots (those Organic ones) that she has with natural yoghurt mixed in. Again, gone down well. Made a point of sitting down as a family over the weekend and having breakfast and lunch together - definitely made a difference.

She still doesn't seem to eating all that much though. But what she is eating is good so I can't complain.

It's stopped stressing me out which again, I think has helped.

Incidently I was relaying the problem to MIL over the weekend and it transpires that DP ate nothing but cheese sandwiches until he was 5. It's amazing he's still alive really.

also made carrot, apple and sultana wholemeal muffins. She loves them and I give her a warm one for brekkie with yoghurt (not every day obviously...) Made a load of "hidden veg" sauce (so "hidden" when I made spag bol with it DP asked where the veggies were )

I'm going to leave the fresh fruit in its whole form for a while as she seems to have developed a "phobia". She has those organic fruit pots which under the circumstances, are better than nothing.