Close to breaking times over mealtimes with 13 month old. Please share your wisdom!

[abigboydidit]

I'm stuck! DS is 13 months old and was a great eater from when he started weaning at 6 months. We did a mixture of purees and finger foods and he was really enthusiastic at mealtimes. I knew it wouldn't last - and it hasn't! He's at nursery 3 days per week and eats fine there. He will also eat breakfast (weetabix or toast) no bother. However lunch or tea at home are a nightmare. He's become increasingly intolerant of lumps (despite happily eating oatcakes, chomping through slices of melon etc) & now screams from the second you offer him the first mouthful of main course. He seems to enjoy the taste but if you're lucky enough to get a spoonful in he will tend to refuse for ages before accepting another spoonful. He will eat yoghurt, raisins, breadsticks etc with no such tears.

I really don't know what to do! I have tried praise, coaxing, letting him try to feed himself, making this less lumpy, offering finger foods instead (but he is now refusing anything he doesn't recognise). I used to stay calm during the refusal and just offer the next element of the meal when he refused. So if he wouldn't try the spag bol I would offer him fruit. If he wouldn't try the fruit I would offer him a yoghurt... But now it's really hard to stay calm and not get upset when he basically starts screaming in tears the second he gets in the high chair.

I would really appreciate any ideas or experience as am at my wits end! Thanks in advance.

What time is tea? Is there any chance that it's too late and he's too tired to eat?

Take him out of the high chair?

Feed him earlier - offer less things. Sometimes children are over whelmed with different foods and courses

Unfortunately because I work full time tea time can't be earlier than 5.15pm. Also, he's the same at lunch.. He's better somewhere busy eg a cafe as he's so distracted you can shovel it in though it still takes forever. I just have no idea what approach to take!

rubyslippers I have wondered about offering less. At the moment if he refuses the main course I will still offer a yoghurt (which he always takes!). I don't want to give him nothing but at this rate he will be living on yoghurt and breakfast (& nursery lunches - he tucks in fine there)..

First, i think you need to remain really calm. Not easy I know. Offer him a small selection of items (so as not to overwhem him- you can always give him more) and place them all down at the same time in front of him. Don't fret about what order he eats them. Let him have a spoon himself (even if he makes a mess) and just let him get on with it. Don't comment or cajole or even praise him. Chat about anything except for the food. If he cries or won't eat anything, let him get down but don't offer him anything else except for perhaps a healthy snack just before bed.

Good luck. Nothing more stressful than when they won't eat but he will come round- you just need to diffuse the situation for you both.

Is he eating with the family or on his own?

Iirc at roughly that age I was letting DD eat (messily) by herself while I was eating too.

As a pp has said, less options might help. Also maybe you could ask about how he eats at nursery to see if theres any major difference.

And if he doesnt eat take it away. At the next meal he will be hungry enough to eat. Children that age regulate how much they need very well. Maybe he just isnt hungry.

He could be cheesed off if you're spoon feeding. He might be more tolerant of lumps if you give him the whole food, finger food style? Eg pasta twists with Tom sauce. Could be cleaners nightmare.
And, he's not daft, he could be holding back as a yogurt is what he knows and expects should he not bother with the main course?
Perhaps follow the nursery day food times and type wise, if he gets on ok there?
Take him away from the standard meal time set up? Sit outside, have a picnic inside or out?
It's a horror, and with a proven formula:
The more the effort you put in, the less the little darling won't eat.

Thanks everyone. He seems to lack the coordination yet to feed himself and just launches the cutlery in frustration. Sorry! I feel am being so negative and you're all trying to help! Am just so tired of it and find myself dreading mealtimes. Hence all the typos in my initial post! It's as if he knows a yoghurt is coming so he just waits till it arrives! Or with meals he likes he just seems to get bored & almost forget what he's doing so he will start crying. Often if you can get him to take a mouth full at that stage it seems to prompt him to realise he was hungry and was enjoying it... Till he loses interest again!

It varies whether he eats alone or with us and there doesn't seem to be any difference between how he eats either way. At nursery they've said he's slow but I think he's distracted enough by watching the other kids that they just fire it in!

If hes frustrated with cutlery then just let him dive in with his hands. He cant learn the coordination if he never gets a chance to try!!!

And the yoghurt defo has to go unless he eats a decent amount.

:)

Sorry - I should have said that the meals at nursery and at home are very similar. He has dairy and egg allergy so pudding is almost always soy yogurt. I have tried finger food but unless it's something he recognises he gets really upset and starts crying, pushing it off the tray. I've been trying to tackle that outing mealtimes as he seems more likely to try something if I leave it as a snack for him to wander up and poke about at while he's playing. There's probably a lesson in there if I wasn't so pregnant & hormonal

I think I will try the self feeding tomorrow though. He can't exactly eat much less! Do you think I should hold off on yoghurt for now to try to break the cycle. Am always paranoid about his calcium intake!

I used to give mine their food and leave them to it. As the rest of us were also eating. I gave them large bits of food that could be picked up and fed by using hands. For example a roast potatoe chopped into quarters and finger shaped sections of roast chicken with sticks of cooked carrot. Ignore them and leave them to feed themselves, if they are hungry they will eat! If not remove and move on with your routine. If they then become hungry before bed reoffer their dinner.

my DS is also 13 months old and dairy intollerent. He is happy to be spoonfed porridge at breakfast (made with soya milk) and has a banana or grapes or melon. he snacks on breadsticks, soya/goats cheese/fruit at 10:30 ish and lunch tends to be hit and miss. Sometimes he will eat other times he wont. Tea for us is about 4 pm and he guzzles it down. he feeds himself with fresh veg, fish, chicken, potatoes etc and is happy to be spoonfed soya custard or jelly. I have found he increasingly wants to use his hands and eat himself rather than be spoonfed. im not stressing about it though and just taking food away if he is mucking about. He has 7 oz of nutramigen at around 6pm when he goes to bed.

My 13 month hates being fed. Uses spoon/ fork or hands. If cants use cutlet yet give them to him but hands are fine. Give him what you have

Main meal at lunchtime worked for us - starving and not so tired then. Although I notice you say at lunch also, so maybe only part of a solution.

Tea time can then be a sandwich or flapjack, ie pretty unbalanced, just quick and easy, and in front of the tv if they are tired. Don't worry, it's not downhill to Greggs sausage rolls and fruitshoots, it's just until they get less tired. Maybe even try tv as a distraction at lunchtime as well, if it works... just to get him back on track.

Also, re calcium, our dietician always said that 2 x calcium enriched soya milk per day (morning and bedtime), plus 1 x calcium enriched soya pudding was fine (dd1 also dairy/egg allergic). You can give a supplement if you're worried.

Maybe consider teething as well?

How do I get him started on that though? Would appreciate any hints. He used to pick up anything you put in front of him and at least have a tentative lick but now he has a total meltdown. I gave him watermelon today for the first time as he loves melon but he had a total meltdown! Screaming, tears, throwing it away and recoiling when we set it in front of him. I get the same reaction every time I try anything that doesn't look familiar! He just seems to have taken a huge step back. And if am honest, I've been trying to reduce my own stress recently by tiking to the same type of meals that I know he likes.

Sorry - cross post. Thanks RationalBrain that's really helpful. Now I just have to stop him being so terrified of sandwich fillings... (seriously! You'd think I was trying to poison him!)

Iirc around now is when babies taste buds start to become more developed, and they do get pickier. Just go with what he likes for now, and back right off with everything else, you don't want to make it ino a battle.

I'm sure I've read somewhere that kids often have a shutdown to new foods around 10-11 months. They'll eat anything and everything up until that point but at that age they don't like 'new' foods.

Don't have any answers for you, but might be worth looking online for more info on this shutdown thing.

Oh! I like a good google - thanks!

abigboydidit I don't have any wisdom to offer but do want to let you know that you are not alone. My 3 year old also rejects any food which is not bland and familiar. He also has food allergies... sometimes I wonder if children with food allergies are more suspicious of new foods - perhaps because new tastes could be associated with the mouth-tingling sensation that precedes an allergic reaction.

I'm sure that you are probably right to continue offering a variety of different foods, and that I am totally wrong to pander to my 3 year old in the shocking way that I do. However, it might be worth considering whether the foods that your DS is rejecting have any ingredients in common, in case he does have good reason. (For example, my DS still refuses anything that contains onions; he does not have really major reactions to onions but I know from my old food diaries that they did give him quite bad eczema if I ate them when he was still exclusively breastfeeding, so I do wonder if he is listening to his body rather than simply being fussy).

also, my DS cried when I tried to feed him watermelon, and got a red rash around his mouth. He used to tolerate other types of white-flesh melons when he was a baby, but now rejects those too and sometimes gets the odd hive from putting them to his mouth. I wish I knew why!!! Allergies can develop over time, and these minor reactions also seem to come and go according to factors I can't really work out properly, such as whether or not he has a cold at the time, or is getting over a tummy bug...

I believe that as well as asserting their independence by this age they may be not quite as hungry as their growth rate slows? As someone with an incredibly fussy 6 year old, one of my biggest errors was worrying so much about what she was eating, perhaps if I had been more laid back we would not be where we are now. Your baby will not starve and will eat when hungry ( just difficult to put into practice).

I agree with ladyintheradiator.

If he's hanging out for the yoghurt let him have one then leave other food within reach and let him get on with it.

Have a think about why he will eat a more varied diet at nursery. My guess is that it's because they put the food in front of him and let him get on with it without involving any emotion. It doesn't upset them if he doesn't eat and you need to get the same message across to him.

You need to work on the principle that he gets the food he enjoys and nothing else. Try to reduce the emotional pressure you are both feeling at mealtimes by not offering any food but leaving it to him to pick it up.

Leave the food in reach but take it away without comment if he objects to its presence. Don't offer anything new. If he doesn't want to eat get him down from the highchair cheerfully.

Once he starts feeling safer and more relaxed around food he will at some point start to show an interest in other foods he sees you and others eating.

In the meantime he's getting some variety of food at home and what he has at nursery makes it wider. He'll be fine.

Your target isn't to get him to eat anything at all. Your target is to help him feel relaxed around food. If you achieve that he will do the rest.