refusing to eat !

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My 14 month old daughter has recently entered a new phase. Since we returned from a holiday abroad, shes started to refuse to eat anything I give her. She will say No quite firmly and push the spoon away, even things she used to love !

I know stressing out and force feeding isnt the answer as that will only make things worse, but my calm approach is becoming harder to maintain as time goes on. I've tried giving her small snacks rather than full meals, which works every now and then.

I'm worried that perhaps shes getting too much milk (shes on cows milk now and has 5 bottles a day-roughly 25-30 ounces a day) it sounds a lot but while shes not been eating I've been increasing her milk slightly so at least she has something ! I'm working on getting rid of the bottle and replacing it with the cup but can only manage to get her interested in using her cup at lunchtimes.

Help ! Any ideas and is this normal ??

Oxocube - you do mean 0.75 pints and not 3 or 4 pints?!

my son is 8 months and i have just moved him onto formula milk during the day and breastfeeding at night - how much milk should he be drinking- at the moment he is only having about 10-to - 12 ounces a day - he is on 3 small meals a day

My 2.5 DS became a bit of a fussy eater. I now put almost everything on a stick, everytime I go to Costa Coffee, Starbucks or Ikea I take a hand full of the wooden stirers. It works every time, sausages, fruit, veggies, chicken anything I want him to eat.
A friend told me that a small child only needs 6 spoonfulls of food a day and since then I've stopped worrying. Ds can graze over a plate of food for an hour, he keeps going back to it and then does quite well. God luck!

Yes Bozza! 0.75 pints! Not even my greedy d.s. could manage 3 or 4 pints! His dad could easily though, but unfortunately not milk

Hi Jinna

I am sure with the BF on top of that, he is getting enough... does he have a bit of yogourt or cheese as well? Even if he didn't I am sure you're fine. The official line (but babies can't read ) is 16 oz I believe so JUST formula and you're not far off...

The sluglet's favourite is mashed potato. I always make extra, then for lunch I divide it into small balls (gob sized) throw it in a hot, non stick frypan without oil for a few minutes until there's enough of a crust to hold the ball in shape. She can then cram them in her mouth without too much mess. If you add grated cheese, a few veggies or chopped up bits of meat, you can present a balanced meal that's easy to eat.

Another version is fritters, an old favourite from my NZ childhood. Take half a cup or so of flour, half a teaspoon or so of baking powder, an egg and mix them with enough milk to make a batter the consistency of thick cream. You can then add anything you like, grated carrot, mashed potato, cheese, spinach, peas, spices etc. Drop spoon sized dollops in a frypan, turn them over when the bubbles pop but don't close over. Drain on kitchen paper and keep them away from husbands who will scoff the lot given an opportunity. The beauty of these are, apart from the fact that they are just as tasty cold, the child can eat them on the run with a minimum of mess.

You may even find you don't have to give up on spoon food altogether. At the same age (just short of a year) my dd gave up eating until I switched to finger food. (cooked veggies, toast, fruit, etc). Discovered that as long as she could eat some finger food first, she was also Ok for me to spoon in some other stuff (fish pie, stew etc). A year later she still eats everything unless she isn't hungry.

Quick Update: Gave ds some finger food for lunch today. Some new potatoes chopped up, carrot strips and boiled egg. He made such a song and dance at first...poking everything and then putting into his mouth but not chewing..just looking at me and giggling! I then walked away and did other stuff on other side of kitchen and he ate it! Not loads but enough to keep him happy!

Will do this for a while then try SJS's suggestion about spooning stuff in afterwards.

One point though...lunchtime took ages! I know spoon feeding was "easy" and didn't take long and of course finger food meal will take alot longer but should I set a "time limit" ...that sounds a bit harsh but you know what I mean I hope..at what point should I end lunch time as it could go on forever if my ds had his way!

I've found that the walking away trick often works for me too futurity. I try to be conscientious and sit with DS but sometimes if he's messing I remove the audience (ie me) and go into the adjoining utility room to sort laundry - there's generally some to sort! As for the stopping a mealtime - as long as he's messing with his food on his tray I tend to take a laid back approach but when he starts throwing it on the floor I tend to class that as the end of a meal time. Now he's that bit older he will tell me he's finished (as in "all done mummy" and point to the bin).

My baby (12 months)hasn't had much of an appetite for solid food at all and has always been small (we know all about centile charts and being 'underweight!). But just recently (last month or 2) she seems to have found her appetite and started eating quite a lot. But still some meals/some days she eats hardly anything. Unless it's a pudding. I try to keep off sugary fromage frais etc but if she really won't eat a meal she will usually have some plain yogurt/pureed stewed dried friut or home made custard or blamange with not much sugar in it.
She is really going off being spoon fed and wants to feed herself. Yes it is very messy and takes ages. I have seen spagetti hoops eaten with fingers. Yes very messy but that is what the child (16 m)wanted to do. You just need to start the meals early if you need to do anything afterwards. I leave her there till she has dropped (thrown)everything she has not eaten on the floor.
About the milk - I have the opposite problem. She was breast fed and would never have a bottle. She gradually dropped the feeds as she ate more solids and at 11 m stopped the breast altogether. She will not have any kind of milk from a bottle or cup (but will drink water/juice from a cup). I never confessed this to the health visitor as they fuss too much. Luckily she eats yogurt or milky puds at most meals. Well, she would - they are puddings.
I think it is too easy to worry. As long as you offer them sensible healthy options they will be fine. She has 3 meals and a snack (biscuit/fruit) mid-afternoon.

Spanna that is exactly the way with my DS. I have never given him spag hoops but baked beans eaten in the same way would have a similar effect and he adores them.

What do other people do when their kids don't eat, won't eat, won't even try their food? My twin boys are nearly four and seem to have incredibly erratic appetites combined with truly intractable stubborness. Though they very occasionally will eat for England, they more often will not touch even a bite and will instead whinge and moan in a v irritating way about how yukky their dinner is and how they are not going to eat it. While I'm not worried that they're malnourished or anything like it, they are certainly not eating anything approaching a balanced diet and both my partner and I are finding family meals a less than relaxed and happy experience. What are people's views on whether I should expect them to stay at the table during meal times even if they will not eat, how I can encourage them to try one bite prior to telling me it's rubbish and disgusting, etc? The food itself doesn't seem to make any difference- in food refusal mode they will reject even the most tried and tested of favourites. It's getting me down in a minor way- I'd hoped we might be at the having nice meals together as a family stage by now. Is this just unrealistic?

Scummy, I queried this type of thing last time I saw my HV. Her response was they do it because they can & all 3 year olds need to have some aspect of their lives which they control. She reckons that nearly all of them are terrors over eating or weeing or sleeping and I should be thankful that in dd's case it was just eating and not any of the rest. Letting them know you care often makes things worse too.

We tried to do the family meal thing but dh's blood pressure (poor at the best of times) was going through the ceiling so we've gone back to sitting together as a family while she eats her evening meal. Not proud of ourselves but we count too. In some ways it's helped her try new things because she always asks what we're having and is now getting p*ssed off with having her usual stuff if we're having something exciting.

I reckon that consistency (as always !) is the way to go. Our family weekend lunches which work well (often with friends round too) have a rule that if you're not going to eat or talk nicely you get down from the table and leave the room on the understanding that the grown-ups will not come to play until they've either a) finished eating or b) finished their wine. It's taken a long time but it is now working because she HATES the fact she might be missing out on something.

My DS (2) can also be like this & it is SO irritating - we just don't let him down until we have finished. (Might be extra long time if he had to wait for us to finish the wine as well !!). He did this tonight, I had made a shepherd's pie of which he had one spoonful. He was then offered yogurt or fruit for a pudding, he chose an apple (I wish I could only eat an apple for my main meal, I might lose some weight!!).

No real suggestions, but at least we're not alone.

Scummy, our son's the same (although if we take him to a restaurant Batters, he will cheerfully eat his own weight in Italian/Greek, even French food). We can't even bribe with pudding after greens and some main course, as he often declines this too. What REALLY upsets me is he eats the stodgy school-dinners type rubbish at nursery really well, apparently. We are still soldiering on with the family meal most days. We let him get down but warn him he must play quietly in the same room as us which he is usually happy to do. He cannot get back up if he changes his mind about pudding and he gets nothing else to eat until the next meal.
Agree that it's the arbitrariness that is most upsetting. How can home-made spag bol be disgusting one day and just what he wanted the next? Our teeth are ground to stumps some days.

Scummy, all commiserations. We frequently go through exactly the same experience although we only eat together as a family three days a week. Our approach is just not to say anything and then make no offer of pud or anything else. He is slowly getting better but his diet is no where near as balanced or varied as I would like. As Batters says, eating with his friends usually brings about a miracolous transformation.

Scummy - do they snack at all between meals?

My ten month old son appears to have gone on hunger strike, steadfastly refusing to open his mouth the minute I offer him food. It seems to have happened practically overnight - one day he was eating brilliantly and the next day he was saying no to everything! I've literally spent hours on a weekend preparing endless varieties of tasty home-cooked food, only for him to splatter it raspberry-style across the room. What's even more exasperating is that he eats the stodgy school-dinners type rubbish at nursery really well, apparently. I've now cut out his fromage frais and fruit altogether, and am trying to remain calm and patient. I must admit though, that I am quietly stressing that he's not getting enough protein and iron in his diet and would welcome any thoughts and ideas of how to get through what I hope is just a phase!!