Please talk to me about your 1 year old's diet and eating habits?

[NinkyNonker]

Cause I don't know if DD is eating enough and getting what she needs!

We started her on food at just gone 6 months, never did purees just went straight to solids. She ate everything, roast meals, veg, chilli...all sorts of different flavours and textures. But of late she has started just chucking everything on the floor, I guess feeding the dogs is more fun...

The only things that slip through the net are:

• Pasta (cheese sauce, pesto, tomato sauce, spag bol etc)
• Rice (with chilli, sauces, Chinese etc)
• Eggs (cheesy omelette, scrambled eggs etc)
• Toast
• Yogurt
• Porridge
• Fruit

She used to munch on veg, meat etc now it all just gets chucked, we can slide mince or small bits of chicken etc past the defences when mixed in with rice etc.

So yesterday for example:

-Toast and porridge for breakfast

• Fruit as mid morning snack
• Cheesy omelette for lunch
• Fruity flapjack (small amount) as afternoon snack
• A little lasagne (a few spoonfuls) and some garlic bread.
• Banana for pudding.

I don't know whether I should carry on giving her lots of different things (she always just ate what we ate) and accept that she may not eat a lot or should I start making her something different to us from the limited menu she is happy with at the moment? I want her to eat, obviously, but equally I think it is important to keep offereing her different foods, especially good protein and veg.

So, what do you think/do in your households?

Do you mean 1 year old, not 1 month?

That's the age at which they discover gravity. Just pick it up, give it back to her and ignore!

'1 month old' gave me a heart attack........

Just give lots of variety, keep offering stuff even if she is not eating/throwing it.

Don't label - 'Oh dd doesn't like/eat tomatoes/meat/whatever' it quickly becomes self fufilling.

She sounds like she is doing fine and will eventually eat loads of stuff as long as you don't make it into an issue.

Oh blimey. What a crappy typo, her diet at one month would have made a far more boring post! I was obviously thinking 14 months, one year, doh.

I meant to add that she is still BF, but only really when she wakes in the morning and bedtime.

Can I change the title?!

That sounds normal to me based on the children I see around me. It's great that you give her the foods you eat. I would carry on doing that, but maybe include something each meal that you know she likes. Sounds like you're doing a good job

I read somewhere (probably on here!) that their appetites often decrease a bit at about 1 year as their rate of growth has slowed down so they don't need quite as much, which seems to make sense. I think average weight gain between 1 and 2 is something like 3lb-7lb. My DD has grown upwards loads at 16m but weighs about 1lb more than she did at 11m.

Just keep on giving her lots of different things to try, we give DD all kinds of stuff, some of it she eats, some of it she plays with. If she doesn't eat any of it we offer her something nice but boring, e.g. slice of bread and butter, some rice, in case she is hungry and doesn't like the meal. have noticed though that a food which is not eaten today may be eaten until there's no more tomorrow!
they are really inconsistent at this stage it seems. My friend was worried about her DS as he has always been light and isn't eating much some days, GP advised her to think about his food intake over a week rather than day by day and that has helped her to relax about it (and me, as she passed it on!).
my mum took me to docs at about 18m as she was stressing about me not eating enough and he told her to look at the size of my fist and remember my tummy was only about the same! I think small kids need decent snacks and small meals and it sounds like your DDs diet is excellent :) if she'll eat eggs, porridge and fruit you won't go far wrong.

My childcare bible is an ancient Penelope Leach book (Babyhood from the 80s - a lot of it I disregard as it's outdated but I like her ethos) and there's a great chapter in there on just this kind of thing, where she points out a toddler can be adequately nourished on rice krispies and the odd chocolate button, or similar "bad" diet. Very reassuring if you can find a copy!

AH DS loves the gravity game. I agree with above, keep offering a range of foods, try not to care if it ends up on the curtains or in the dog.

firstly its very very normal -they eat less and also get more fussy at that age some children seem to live on air - my DS1 was one of them -

she also sounds like she eats a good range of food and a reasonable amount -don't stress about the veg too much -I am sure I read somewhere that actually it quite logcial for children not to eat it - very few calories, bitter tasting etc

the issue is do you cook for her seperately or not -
what I do is a bit of both - have a 5 yo and 20 mo - my 5 yo is actually worse than my 1 yo - but he was like this at 1 as well - sorry - although he is way better than he was a 1

so lunch - we normally have sandwiches so that they have what they like - and bits and peices
tea - sometime cook something for all of us -normally something I know they are likely to eat some of - but they don't have to loves - so for instance sometimes they gobble up a roast dinner, sometimes they don't but I do one fairly often, I sometime do seperate meals if I know they really won't like it - and also they eat early so it nice for me and DH to have meal together sometimes

do keep offering different things though and don't stresss about it too much thats actually worse for them

That sounds way more than DS ate at age 1. He has survived to become a very articulate, and suddenly very tall 3 year old.

Apparently their eating tends to drop off pretty sharply at the age of 1 as their growth does as well. DS went from 3kg at birth to about 10kg in his first year. Over the last 2 years he's put on 4kg.

DS would try anything and everything at first, then went really fussy, now will try most things again.

Oh I'm so glad I just found this. I just started a thread about DS (1 on Monday) who will only eat about 7 things having previously eaten everything. The list looks pretty similar except that he pretty much only eats bananas and no other fruit - gah! I'm going to try to get eggs back on the list. He's had no lunch today, so I'm going to leave him for a while, try again and then just give him a piece of toast.

I'm so relieved to know it seems to be normal!

My DS stopped eating a lot of things when he was around 1- previously he'd been happy to try most things had eaten fruit as snacks etc etc - then he stopped. we had days where he only ate cereal and yoghurt and maybe bread - sometimes not even that- a couple of days he ate only broccoli. we did get to the stage of worrying/talking to HV and keeping a food diary
We have carried on offering him all foods and he seems now (touch wood) at 18 months to be back eating a lot more things - so maybe it is just an age thing?
The food diary helped- we realised that we did give him snacks more than we realised- which meant he was more likely to be fussy

Apparently their diets suddenly restrict at this age because they become more mobile. So in times when we were less protective of our offspring, they might have gone toddling off, found an interesting looking berry and started munching on it - the fussiness is supposed to be an inbuilt protection from poisoning themselves.

Yep sounds very familiar. They just have phases don't they? DD ate everything and anything at 6 months but now at nearly 10mths, we've just gone through a really fussy, refusal stage and she's back eating again. Saying that, if she could get away with just eating cheese abd potato, she'd be delighted.

Agree with posters who say growth rate slows right down at 1. I read too that their appetite diminishes noticeably at this age, so sounds like you've got nothing to get too worried about.

I have also found with mine that when teething around this age they eat virtually nothing unless it is sloppy - and slides down with minimal chewing.

The list of things your DD will eat sounds pretty much identical to mine (21 months), except that she is allergic to eggs (and will eat baked beans til she pops given the chance!) She's always been pretty fussy, but when on purees would at least eat more veg. No advice really, but sympathy at ow annoying / worrying it is, and also glad it's a BLWer who posted as I;ve always wondered if it is my fault for not doing that (the only toddler I know who was BLWnd eats brilliantly, so I had a rather skewed view that it would have been the answer!)