Any nutritionists out there who can advise...DD hardly eats anything!!

[Blundermum]

My DD, now 2, has always been a fussy eater but is getting worse and I'm starting to worry that she isnt getting what she needs nutritionally.
She takes about two spoonfulls of whatever and then thats it.
She does like her fruit which I know is good but a girl cannot live on fruit alone, can she?
She will eat ham but I'm hesitant to give her that every day because I've been told it's high in salt and she drinks milk.
Should I give her supplements?
There is so much literature around now saying how much food can effect intelligence and other things but what can you do when they won't eat?
Can anyone put my mind at rest?
DH not much help because he will happily feed her ice cream if she won't eat anything else!!

Meals without tears is a good book. Toddlers can survive and thrive on very little and a small variety - frozen yoghurt ice cream was a standby as DD wouldn't drink milk or much dairy. What I did was give DD what she liked, even if the same every evening and gradually introduce new foods on the side, eventually she tried them but it can take weeks/months. Took 10 months for her to eat carrots but she loves them now. Her eating suddenly improved when she turned two though and now at nearly 3 I would not describe her as a fussy eater.

My son eats

banana
yoghurt
cornflakes
baked beans
bread and jam/cheese
grapes

and only a few mouthfuls at any time.

He will happily eat sweet food but I try not to offer those too much as he would probably reject the above in favour of cake if he thought he could.

He was only offered water until he was two. He just didn't drink any of it, he now gets squash so at least he is hydrated and not constipated.

I try not to worry too much tbh, although I feel gutted at the lack of variation in his diet, I am more worried about turning food into a battleground.

I think dc tend to eat less when they aren't in a growing phase. When in a grwoing phase my 2 always had plenty of appetite.

My 2 dc are 9 and 11 and aren't eating much at the moment and going by the fact that I haven't had a change in shoe size or clothes size in the last few months they aren't in a growing phase.

All I can do is make sure I offer food to them and it is available in the house but if the aren't hungry I can't force them or waste time worrying.

My 2 will always be skinny looking as it's in their genes. I have a friend who constantly worried about her dd eating enough as she was small and skinny as she put it. So she constantly put food infront of her, really from morning to night there was food on the go. Well now, she's very overweight due to years of over eating.

If she's healthy and happy and alert and full of energy and bright eyed and not actively losing weight she's getting all she needs from somewhere.

Children need much less food than we think they do. Give her tiny tiny portions (so she isn't what my MIL calls "over-faced") of good food she likes, let her eat what she wants and offer her more if she eats it all. Don't praise for eating or criticise for not eating. And top her up with milk and toast or wholegrain cereal at bed time if she's hungry.

And try not to worry about it. She'll be fine!

Oh dear, I am having exactly the same thing. My son is 2 and hardly eats anything. He also likes fruit (bananas, smoothies, grapes etc) but not much else. He often does not eat any of his main meal; sometimes I do give him a yoghurt or pudding but do you think I should leave it so he learns to eat main meal?

I get so stressed out at meal times, thinking he should be eating a lovely cross section of homemade meals, just for him to push the plate away! Ahhh!

This parenting lark is much harder than I anticipated!!

Thanks for your advice, it really has put my mind at rest
Smitchy I know where you are coming from, I keep wondering about whether or not to give the puddings too...sometimes her meals can be 7 or 8 courses, more like a Greek Mezze really!!
It is so frustrating and the amount of food that gets thrown away is nobodys business!
When I was weaning her I brought cookery books, pinny's the works.
Make me chuckle now to remember how simple I thought it would all be!

This thread has reassured me a bit - thanks. My DD is three and will eat:

Bread (so toast and sandwiches form a BIG part of her diet)
Weetabix (sometimes)
Porridge (sometimes)
Fruit - bananas, grages, mango, oranges, apples, pears
Cheese
Hummus
Baked beans
Fishcakes
Pasta (but not with sauces)
Yogurt

When it is written down like that it is actually a longer list than I realised.

Until she was a year old she would eat anything. Now she insists that she doesn't like foods that she used to ask for and won't try anything new. What bothers me most is the lack of vegetables. I used to hide them in pasta sauces but then she started to refuse to eat the sauce. Some days she literally eats only fruit and bread. Guess I should try to worry less - it seems not as uncommon as I imagined.