Help! He just won't eat

[tillykins]

DS is 15 months old and has been a pretty good eater, trying everything and eating mostly everything. We recently tried to get him off baby food on to more of the stuff we eat and 3 weeks on he just won't eat

He has milk, fruit and toast and thats it. He thinks spoons and bowls are instruments of torture; if I offer him anything else he clamps his mouth shut or screams. I even tried to go back to his baby foods but he refuses those now too

He must be lacking in virtually every vitamin there is and he isn't getting any protein

I am trying to stay calm about it and not get into a battle with him about it, but I'm worried to death
Help please!!!

Have you tried finger food. Bits of cooked veg, pasta, cold chicken, anything that he can hold. If he won't use a plate just put it on his highchair table. Don't put too much on the table in one go.

tillykins, have a word with your hv if you really worried. Hopefully she will put your mind at rest. I have 3 children and the baby is only 11 months but I can remember going through stages like this with the boys (who are now 2 and 4). I can't remember exactly when the stages were or how long they went on for but they did turn out to be just stages, even though it felt like it was going on forever at the time and I too was worried. I remember giving one of the boys bits of cheese and lots of finger foods because I was convinced he just wanted to be independent and found it easier to get finger foods into his mouth than to use a spoon. He wouldn't let me feed him. I think he would occasionally eat fish fingers (not ideal, I know, but better than nothing!) and he seems to be healthy enough at 2 although he sometimes eats well and sometimes eats really poorly.

Hope that is of some reassurance. I'm sure lots of people will have been thru a similar experience so there should be lots of others along soon to share their stories and offer advice.

Does he seems well in himself?

goin through same thing myself.share the food with him and make it a game,clap when he eats anything at all.it took lots of tries for mine but they got the hang in the end,patience is a virtue.kerry27

Thanks for replying

Yes he does seem well in himself, even if he is beginning to look like a cross between a grape and a banana

I have tried giving him finger foods but he hasn't eaten any - apart from a gingerbread man, typical!

But I did put lots of different ones on his highchair tray, hoping he would pick one of them - could that be part of the problem?

Just give him a couple of thing on his tray.

Also when my dd is going through a not eating day (today) I feed her off my plate- again things she can hold. She also loves hot cross buns and will happily eat 1/4 of one (bad mummy icon)

also it could be that he doesn't want to stop playing to eat so could you perhaps feen him 'on the go'- let him carry on playing but have a plate of sandwiches nearby that you offer small pieces to him from

Message withdrawn

Just a thought but it could also be that his teeth are playing him up as well, which is why he's happy with toast n fruit, as these are often hard (ish) so nice to bite....
We find dd also 15mths likes to try and feed herself soup (double bib req'd!) and likes things like sausages, fishfingers, potato wedges/jacket potato n cheese, which are easy to feed herself with (she also likes any sauce you can give her to dip them in, so we're having to try and limit the ketchup.....hard with ss waving it in front of her)

so glad i'm not the only one with this problem. my DS is 7MO and has only ever entertained jars, despite countless home cooked recipes, mixing in with jars etc. but no, at least i knew he was getting a little nourishment. then last week he started to only entertain his puddings, so i stopped giving him a pudding to get him out of the habit, and now, he is point blank refusing anything but milk, won't even go back to puddings!! he's been through this before when he had a chest infdection but as far as i can see he's well in himself, although could be teething. i'm at my wits end and it's becoming a real battle. yesterday i only gave him milk and tried food again today, but no. i'm particularly worried as he's now at the age where he needs more food. any tips/advice would be most welcome.

My ds just turned two and he eats less and less each day! He now refuses foods that he ate happily for months. After only a few minutes in his highchair, he will start kicking and screaming to get OUT, even when I know he must be hungry. Today for lunch he ate just six pieces of small pasta. I am beginning to think he has a psychological problem. Why else would he refuse to eat when he MUST be hungry? HELP!

An average 2 year old eats 11 tablespoons of food in a day and will only eat one main meal every 48 hours

they are fussy little buggers

do not stress it

they will not starve themselves

We had this problem when dd was the same age.She had been eating the same food as us,but not at the same time & gradually ate less & less.

We put her highchair away,used a booster seat at the dining table & moved her mealtimes around so we all eat together.It has worked like a charm-she always checks to see that we are eating the same as she is & then gets on with it.If there is a new food she is suspicious about,she will try a bit off mine or dh's fork,then eat the same thing from her own plate.I honestly can't believe how much better she is eating.

tillykins
i echo twigletts words, my dd aged 2+4 is a divil, she is sooooo fussy and has been since about 9/10mths, i had numerous threads about her eating and my panic attacks over it.
she eats well when she is hungry, i.e i starve her to get a good meal into her, she only eats 1 proper meal a day and thats her, she looks fine and doesnt get sick.

dont worry too much, i too thought my dd had no vitamins in her. She wont eat fruit bar bananas - which add to her constipation, so i hide appple and pear in chicken nuggets i make for her with carrot.

i find they like tomato things - does your ds go for pasta because you could do a tomato sauce with basil for him and at least thats lycopene in him! plus with the pasta they will pick it up themselves without the spoon or fork - independence thing.

jane clarke in the times wrote a piece about her toddler and how she,jane,uru of healthly living couldnt believe a child wouldnt eat and then she had one! heeeeHe! , decided how t.v might actually help in this situation, my dd asscoaites chicken nuggets with dora at 5pm on discovery, she eats them every time.

Many thanks, Twig and others, for the encouragement. I wasn't too stressed about it until I took him into the doctor's for his 2yo checkup. At 18 mos, he was in the 50th percentile for height and weight. Now, just six months later, he is in only the 10th percentile for height and is NOT EVEN ON THE CHART for weight! He has gained only 3 oz in the past six months. His pediatrician said, "I'm not too worried yet, but I want to see him again in six months." Honestly, it is so frustrating I could scream! We have tried feeding him with us. Didn't help. He took three bites and began to scream again. It's not the taste of the food that bothers him. He simply does not want to eat. Please, any advice will be gratefully appreciated! I am approaching my wits end. Thank heavens that ds2, 3 months, eats like a horse.

I was pleased to find this thread. My 9 month old dd won't eat either. She has just had a chest infection that went on for a month and her bad eating has been that long too. She is better now but still won't eat. Only wants milk or yoghurt. She is thin thin thin but doesn't seem hungry. Meal times are turning into a battle ground. We have tried everything from puree to finger food, fruit to veggies - nothing. Any advice apprecaited.

Can I join in??
My DD won't eat either .... she did up until she had a nasty tummy bug at the beginning of january but then she got really poorly and didn't eat for 2 whole weeks.
Since then she goes stiff if I put her near the high chair and behaves as if I am poisoning her when I come at her with a spoon. Sometimes I can distract her with things, give her a toy to play with, or a spoon so she can feed me , but really today was a typical example: breakfast (the only decent meal of the day): half a baby bowl of baby muesli, Lunch: 2 or 3 mouthfuls of savoury lunch (homemade and I tricked her to open her mouth ), a few raisins, a bite of a banana, a nibble of an apple, Dinner: some bits of what DS is eating, today it was a couple of bites of sausage, a couple of peas, a bit of potato that she spat out again ... but she will eat a whole fromage frais with no bother.
I give her snacks of bits of apple, raisins, rice crackers etc during the day.
I have given up stressing about it ... she is happy, healthy, alert, and if she gets thinner it won't matter as she was always a porker anyway!

Bizarrely what she does do when I take her out of the high chair is go around the floor eating what she threw off it ...
She prefers to eat on the move ... not a good habit to get into I know but right now I don't care!!!

There are vitamin drops you can buy to put in his milk for a while until he is back on track. I know they are not ideal but can be a help when children go through eating phases.
I have a DD a similar age going through this right now, weight not dropping too much but she has always been fairly big for her age - 75 centile.
She is teething a bit - back ones, so hates "hot" food - has to be out of fridge and smooth at the moment, on not too hard to bite such as cucumber. She is living on fromage frais tubes (she refuses to be fed by me and the tubes are less messy). I put a couple of things on her tray, make a fuss about how nice they are by eating one myself (maybe a grape) and yum yumming away, then pretend to ignore her a bit while eating my own food. I make sure the rest of the family have similar things so she can see we are eating it too. Bit of a performance but it works. The other thing is to put her food on my plate and offer her only a tiny bit on hers, then feed her directly from my plate, or transfer across for her to pick up. She thinks she is eating my dinner and likes the idea enough to often give it a go!
Other tactics (but may not be relevant to you), I have cut out all between meal snacks other than a small banana mid morning and maybe a yoghurt or quarter slice of cold toast in the afternoon. If she is hungry, she is less picky, but too hungry makes it worse so hard line to tred.
I try to feed her when she is not too tired, even if very hungry, if she eats too late then she just throws it at me - evening meal is now 5pm and never any later and has helped improve things.
I would forget the spoon and bowl altogether and try to leave him to it,try to remove all stress about mealtimes and try not to show you are mentally adding up every mouthful - hard I know, been there! Good Luck.