20 mth old gone off food, except the sweet stuff!

[ljhooray]

My dd has always been a fairly good eater (never huge portions though) but for last week or so, eating little of her main and just wanting a yogurt or fruit (although wouldn't turn down a sweet snack).

I don't know whether to remove the sweet stuff and try and encourage the main or whether that will be making more of an issue of it and I really want to avoid food battles!

Any advice, is this normal?

It is pretty normal, once they get a taste of sweet stuff, to want that all the time.

I believe that it is important at this stage to make it clear that the sweet stuff is only offerred once the main meal is eaten. If they know that they can refuse the main meal and still get the sweet bit then they will do it.

But then, I am a meany

Stop giving anything after, and maybe try sweet meals, i.e sweet potato with marmalade chicken and carrots

She gets so upset if I try that, I've been relenting, so perhaps it's time to toughen up!

spread a little mango chutney on foods to sweeten them up

No don't give in.

She will never starve. With mine I found informal dinner much easier, she could come back to it if she wanted, they always do.

If you keep giving fruit and yoghurt it will become totally normal, which is not good.

So any advice on what to tell her when the dessert doesn't arrive?

I'm going to lurk on this thread as my 15mo is exactly the same and i have the same issue as OP (ie, not wanting to make an issue out of it).

I have been worried about him going hungry though so I've been giving him a lot more milk, but then I'm worried about creating a milk dependency .

My dd did this at 18 months and I cut out yoghurt and fruit. It was fine and much less stressful than I thought it would be! I didn't talk to her about it or tell her she wasn't having a pudding if she didn't eat her dinner. I just got her down from the table when she had eaten her meal and moved on to doing something else.

Could she be teething? My DS refuses everything apart from yoghurt and fruit when he is -- within a week or so he's back to his normal habits.