21 month old dd has become a little fussy with food

[foxessocks]

Anyone got any tips for getting veg into a toddler?! Any good recipes or ideas? I don't want to start having to hide veg in every dinner because I want her to know what things look like and enjoy them! She has always been a good eater and we always eat our dinners together and she has exactly what we have. She loves things like curry and tacos so she likes strong flavours. Just at the moment she really seems to have an aversion to vegetables! So for example last night we had pasta which had Mushrooms and tomatos in it but she just ate the pasta and some of our garlic bread. She ate two Mushrooms when we told her she could only have more bread each time. Not sure if that's the way to do it! At lunchtime today she got really upset when she saw her lunch of leftover curry because she could see the vegetables in it, I managed to get her to eat some by soaking her bread with the juice of it and she ate that.

I'm starting to worry she isn't getting enough goodness from her meals but I don't want meals to become a big deal because they have never been before we just give her a plate of what we're having and let her get on with it then take it away when she's finished. It's never really been an issue before!

Any tips or reassurance welcome...

Mash things up. Hide the veg! I was like you, my ds (now 2) ate quite well and then it seed like overnight all he would eat was pasta and cheese or rice crispies. It was very stressful and made dinner times very fraught as I got so worked up. It does improve but you have to try to hide how troubling you are finding it as the stress just makes it worse. He's over two now and actually ate his first plate of rice (EVER!) last week after us offering him it about a 100 times.

Keep offering stuff, she might eat Iit she might not but persevere, one day she will eat it!

For my peace of mind I just blended veggies into tomato sauces, give him banana on cereal and mix peas in with macaroni cheese. I also give him a multi vitamin just to make sure

keep trying. Try to stay calm! Some good advice I also got was if you ha r slaved over something, don't give them it the same night as the rejection after a huge effort will cause tempers to fray. If you can, give them it the me to night instead when you will have forgotten the effort you put in.

Good grief! If you can make sense of all those odd autocorrect changes well done!

Should be 'give it to them the next night instead'

My DD is the same age, eats well and if she doesn't want something she will leave it. If we encourage her in any way whatsoever she digs her heels in and refuses it all. We have found the best methods are:

1. Give her a small amount, she can have seconds if she likes.
2. Carry on with normal conversation and ignore what she is or isn't eating often she makes up her own mind to eat it.
3. If I've cut up some fruit or something and she won't eat it, I eat a bit off her plate then she gets all defensive and eats it!
4. Hide bread until she has eaten a reasonable amount of something else. If she suspects the presence of naan, garlic bread etc she will only want that. I don't even mention it is an option but magically produce it from the oven after she's eaten say, half of her main meal.

Of course all kids are different but those have worked for us.

Thank you. I tend to make all my pasta sauces, casserole etc from scratch so there are usually fresh tomatos in there at least! Which is why today at lunchtime I let her the bread dunked in the curry juice as it was mainly tomatos. She will eat peas quite happily so maybe I do need to throw them in to stuff more. I guess I'm a bit in denial and just want us all to carry on having our normal dinners...I didn't want to go down the route of hiding veg but yes maybe I should try that a bit more now.

She does have a multi vitamin now which I never used to give her!

We do definitely try not to get stressed but I have to admit this last week we have been getting a bit fed up but will tell dh we both have to be really positive!

Thank you I'm glad I'm not alone anyway

I've found that if I get my DS (22 months) involved in the cooking of dinner he is better. I pull up a chair to the kitchen work surface and get him to do whatever is safe. I had him cutting up mushrooms the other day with a dinner knife. He loved it and kept eating the raw mushrooms! Also had him stuffing tubes for spinach and ricotta cannelloni and he really dug into it for his dinner.

That's a good idea. She does bake cakes with us sometimes and always loves it when she sees them come out of the oven. I think I will give that a try...I hadn't thought of chopping things because I thought she'd be too young but yes if I give her one of her little knives. Thanks I'll see how it goes!

My almost two year old ds is getting fussier and fussier, having always eaten whatever was put in front of him. It's their age and it's always when it's some nice veg thing you've made and it's a pain in the arse! I swore I wouldn't hide veg, that my boy would just eat them anyway......but he doesn't so I put them in pasta sauces, make lasagnas with veg in and generally mush and puree the hell out of them!

nicky Argh...It sounds like such a bother having to puree stuff! Do you use a hand blender or a proper food processor? I may have to make a meal plan for next week that involves the dreaded hidden veg!

Foxes you can grate veg into most saucy dishes. I add grated carrot to tomato based dishes- it is sweet too so DD doesn't notice it. I make fish cakes and grate courgette in. And I chop up cauliflower small to add to pasta. But all in all I try not to worry. I hated vegetables as a child, and I could happily live on them now. It's a normal phase, they get over it. My DD ate nothing at all until a few weeks ago (she's 19months) so I'm delighted to have a child who will eat pasta/rice at this point!

Thanks, grated carrot and courgette is worth a try, I hadn't thought of doing that. I do hope it is a stage, me and dh both eat heathily and love all kinds of foods so I just was hoping that would rub off on her but I guess 2 is very young! I'm pretty sure she's just stubborn so if we suggest she eats something she just goes NO NO NO and then she pauses and says "thank you so much" she does make us laugh at least!

Yeah I grate stuff too. I mainly batch cook all of ds's food and freeze it in portions- stuff like fish pies, shepherds pies, lasagna (I get loads into a lasagna), broccoli, cauliflower and macaroni cheese etc so at least the hassle is condensed! I take heart in the fact that he will eat hidden veg in sauces as my friends little boy won't even eat them, just plain pasta etc.

Cooked broccoli blitzed with cream cheese makes a convincing "pesto" too.

Oh another one a do is blitz peas, spinach snd ricotta and add a bit of Parmesan as a pesto. Delicious too actually. Pointlessfan I hadn't thought of using broccoli- that's a good idea. Mine actually ate some saag paneer this evening. Which really surprised me. And refused to eat the fairy cakes we made earlier. Even stranger!

Ooh that sounds nice! I got dd to help "chop" the Brocolli and carrots tonight and she washed them for me and put it all in the saucepan. She nibbled on the raw veg while she did it so already progress! (She did spit some back out but hey) we'll see how this goes anyway!

Does she like soup? Soup is a brilliant way to sneak in veggies!

She used to like soup! Goodness knows now though! She mostly just wants to eat rice, pasta, bread or fish! She loves fish which is good I guess. She ate two or three pieces of brocolli tonight because we let her dip them in some Ketchup (we had chips with our dinner tonight we don't often have ketchup!). She ate all her fishcake too so not too bad really all in all.