I know it's not unusual, but my 2 1/4 year old has developed a 'no' attitude to virtually everything that is put in front of him. He will sometimes eat all of his breakfast (Weetabix or cornflakes), but after that I have trouble getting him to eat anything else.
For example, today he ate:
Half a bowl of cornflakes.
Two strands of spaghetti for lunch.
A piece of toast and a couple of slices of mushrooms from the top of his omelette for tea.
And that's not an unusual day for him.
I'm beginning to get pretty upset about it. I have no idea what to do. Do I:
a) Just let him eat the things he really wants to eat eg. meat, biscuits, bananas and cucumber and hope he grows out of it. But is this reinforcing his fads?
b) Tell him that what I give him is all he's getting, and if he doesn't eat it he eats nothing.
I have tried gentle persuasion, bribery (eg. no yoghurt unless you eat your lunch / no television unless you eat your tea), tried sitting with him, tried leaving him alone. Nothing works.
I know the advice is to eat at the same time as your chlld. I often do at lunchtime but this doesn't make any difference to what the eats. And I can't eat tea at the same time as him because I'm not hungry then.
I'm not sure how he is managing on so little food every day. Apparently he has seconds at nursery (on Mon & Tues), but I've heard that's it's very common for kids to eat properly at nursery but not at home. I could understand if I was a lousy cook, but I'm not that bad!