please share with me your feeding toddler nightmares to help me gain a little perspective.

[barefeete]

DS is 22 months? old and refuses point blankly to eat any vegetables or meat or any hot or cold food that is presented to himwhich isn't a banana, pineapple, orange and peanut butter, Marmite, toast or, very occasionally, Philadelphia cheese. He also eats most dried fruits, sometimes yoghurts and, funnily enough, spaghetti hoops! Other than that he refuses to eat most other foods.

I have tried everything to get him to eat a more varied diet (i eat with him for most of his meals and have lovely chats and ignore all non eating behaviour, i don't offer any alternatives and if he says he has finished then as long as i have finished he can then leave the table no problems, only fruit as snacks, no snacks after 3pm, only water and no juice to fill him up!!!) and all have failed. He is so so so stubborn and just refuses to eat the food. He can be really hungry and sits down to eat, plays with the food and transfers it from the plate to the table and then gets down without eating anything and acts as though he has had a nutritious healthy full blown dinner and has the energy to match!

My main problem now is that he is loosing weight (1lb in the last month - is this normal?). His cothes are now hanging off him and today he was so so hungry that he was physically shaking as he put the food in his mouth. This really upset me and now i just don't know what to do. i don't fight with him at all ever about it but i feel like i have lost a battle. I just want him to be healthy and happy. I also would like if at all possible to have a child who eats a varied diet maybe not now but someday!

barefeete- just reading the thread properly - DS also went through a "no gunk on the pizza" phase - generally taking the form of him sitting in pizza express poking at the edges of the pizza and stating that he wanted a "bread piece". He's now fine with it.

I know everyone says that you should just offer food of different types - but I found that (i) DS was incredibly stubborn and quite capable of going without eating for a couple of days or more, and losing weight; and (ii) the effect of this was to upset me so much that the vibes probably put him off his food.

So I remain of the view - keep offering new stuff, but with a base level of stuff he will actually eat.

we do seem to have weekly faves - last week pineapple, this week mango (which he hasn't eaten for ages!) and then a month ago would only eat bananas. Now he asks for bananas but refuses to eat them when i give them to him. i had a ton of frozen bananas for smothies in the freezer! Luckily he loves banana cake and banana smoothies or milkshakes.Forget the cerel bars i would die to get hold of some proper rice cakes and bread sticks. my stash are running out and the rice cakes (horrid to me but sometimes all he will eat) here are full of salt. We get bread sticks every now and then but only when waitrose sends over a shippment of imported food stuff. We get our beans and hoops this way too.

do you think it is bad to put a bit of chicken into smoothies just so he eats it without knowing. my DH is all for this but i just can't bring myself to do it for some reason - mostly the yuck factor but also i feel like i am going behind his back and will loose his trust.

Does he still have milk? My ds is 3.1 and still has a cup of milk morning and night. On days when he doesn't eat too well I make the evening milk a bit bigger. Just so I know he's had a dose of protein and fat if nothing else. Similarly if I'm worried about carbs I offer the carbs I know he'll eat for a meal or a snack. Doesn't stop you sticking to your guns about eating the same as you/what you choose... he doesn't know what you're thinking/planning.
HTH & good luck.

I didn't know you could put bananas in the freezer and use for smoothies. Great idea, my DS is always asking for one, then he takes one bite and says, "nuff".

How do you make the smoothies then? Bit thick today, sorry, never made smoothies. Great way of getting them to eat vitamins.

Don't know if I would put chicken in one though, sounds a bit yuk.

Chicken smoothies do sond hideous but i don't think you would taste it with all the banana. I make smoothies with 1 slightly defrosted banana, a teaspoon of honey, 1 cup of apple juice sloshed on top (or any other juice i have) + sometimes kiwi added chopped up or blueberries or stawberries aor pineappple etc etc. then whizz it all up in the whizzer. If i make a milkshake i do the same but substitute the apple juice for milk.

Ds does drink milk and at the moment asks for it all the time which is very unusual for him but fine with me at the moment as he has never been a big milk drinker and NEVER got a full pint into him in a day.

bananas in the freezer do go a blit blank when left out but i find them fine in a smoothie or in banana cake.

macmama i am sure that ds will say that to me too when he learns to say more than 'bob' or 'muck'!

legelalien - i completely agree with you. please remind me of this when i next flip out about his eating. i tend to do this every now and then and need to be reminded to chill out!

At every mealtime, give him the healthiest mix of his fave foods plus a spoonful or two of whatever different healthy food you are having. The list you gave sounded pretty reasonable, really - it includes fruit, protein, carbs etcand there were at least four things on it... Pickiness is a stage. My DS dips in and out of it, won't always eat a meal, won't always eat the veg part of a meal, but then the next week he'll have changed his mind... Remember that peanut butter on toast and a bit of fruit or veg (tinned, dried, frozen, whatever) is a reasonably balanced meal and at his age I'd let him eat mostly what he wants because he needs food intake as much as anything.

madamez - you are right he does need the food intake more than anything. He has started to eat dried musli with dried apricots in and raisons so that is good for breakfast. Thanks for your input. lie i said before sometimes a little perspective to refocus and carry on is all you need. but when you serve toast and peanut butter everyday for 6 months you start to think - what am i doing!

DD goes through these periods of refusing food once in a while (rarely). I let it pass the first time. If she continues to refuse veggies/meat/etc the second meal, she doesn't get anything else.

Personally, I believe (1) a kid needs to have a balanced diet over the long term (i.e. can't skip vegs/meats/fish for months), and (2) no kid dies of self-imposed hunger (i.e. she will eat the good food when she is hungry enough)

Skipping a meal can do wonders for a kid's attitude towards food.

If your DC likes pasta, one way of sneaking good stuff past his sensors is to cook tomato/courgettes/aubergine/onion together, pass it through the blender, and use it as pasta sauce. Kids love it!

I'm so pleased I am not the only one with a picky eater like this. DS used to eat everything from weaning to 18months, from 18m to 2yrs9months he will eat

• Toast (white or brown) with butter/jam/honey/cheese/peanut butter
• Most fruit fresh or dried
• Crackers and cheese
• Pizza
• Chips
• Sausages and hotdogs
• Burgers in buns (burgers have to be small and flat)
• Cereal of any kind
• Crumpets
• Noodles (the horrible instant kind)

We tried just giving him what we ate and he too suffered (was upset, slept badly, lost weight). I think he is too young to understand and just senses the tension, so we now just give him what we know he will eat and don't make an issue of it, and put some of our food on his plate too. I make sure he has the best variation of what he likes I can find (say good quality butchers sauasages, or 100% beef burgers, 'real' cheese, etc), and try not to let it bother me.

Neither of us are picky eaters and we never have the same evening meal in a fortnight so I don't know where he gets it from, and I am really hoping he grows out of it. He also finds it hard to sit for a whole meal, but on a busy day when I'm childminding he loves to sit with all the other kids at the table. Think this is the link to good eating at nursery and school tbh rather than the actual food.

My 2 and a half yr old has been fussy since he was about 10 mths old. He goes through occasional short periods where he eats loads and tries new foods and I'm always astounded and really, really happy - then he goes through awful stages where he hardly eats a thing and regards all foods with disdain bordering on disgust. Generally though, he falls somewhere at the 'fussy' end of the spectrum. At the moment only eats:

Sausages / veggie sausages, occasionally meatballs or cut up burgers (no other meat)
Pasta - plain, or with various combinations of grated cheese, cheese sauce, tinned tomato, jarred pasta sauce, canned tuna - this is my saviour and he ends up eating pasta most nights
Yoghurt
Banana, pear, apple, grapes, raisins, fruit puree pots (no other fruits)
Sweetcorn (no other veg)
Bread/Toast w/ butter/jam/marmite/honey, bagels, currant buns, biscuits
Baked beans, spaghetti hoops
Rice cakes, crackers
Chips
Milk, fruit juice, water

I have also made a mini breakthrough by getting him to eat rice twice this week.

I generally try not to stress about his fussy eating, but it is quite stressful, let's face it. I have been known to get quite tearful around friends' chioldren, who will wolf down a huge plate of broccoli and ask for seconds!

The best you can do is to give him what you know he will eat, try to introduce new foods every now and then, and try not to worry too much about him (providsing he is healthy and dveeloping well). I also make a rule of not giving him too much junk (just the odd biscuit) and finding the healthiest options among the limited range of foods he will eat (e.g. I get whole-wheat crackers, granary bread, wholefood baked beans, natural yog w/ fruitpuree rather than sugary yoghurts etc etc).

Good luck. You have my sympathies.