22mo just won't eat dinner

[MaverickSnoopy]

From day 1 of weaning she has not been fond of sitting at the table. She sat in her highchair rocking backwards and forwards. We have tried booster seat and just a normal chair at varying intervals. All the same response.

She has had some very good periods of eating and out of her 16 months of eating solids she's probably eaten well for 11 of them.

Breakfast is mostly fine. Lunch is ok too. Dinner she'll just sit there rocking refusing her food. We thought it was the type of food at first but she's even refusing her favourites. We've just got her down from the table and she's instantly eaten 3 mouthfuls of lasagne. That's it though so no more (so possibly a combination of eating at the table and food fussiness).

Tricky because she has an older sister so we want to sit together as a family. Especially as her older sister doesn't quite get it if little one gets to roam around and eat while she's at the table. However sometimes we do get her down after everyone else has eaten and offer her dinner roaming around....but I'm worried that she will get used to it and she'll really struggle to eat at the table (more so than currently).

It's been like this for about 2 months now and is getting worse not better. She's hungry at night too because she's not eating enough in the day.

Just wondering if anyone has any ideas?

If she eats well at breakfast and pretty well at lunch, I wouldn't worry too much about this. It sounds like she's having enough food overall and isn't very hungry at this time of day. I wouldn't let her eat while roaming around personally.

Have you tried letting her have some little toys at the table to distract her a bit?

What about a little toddler table and chair? Ikea do a nice wooden one.

Oh and no roaming eating allowed in our house.

If she's not eating then don't force her, she might not be hungry. Is she being disruptive? If not then just let her sit there while everyone else eats, if she is then maybe some toys but still include her in the conversation.

I would just sit her up the table and don’t take much notice if she isn’t eating. You don’t want her walking around with food as you won’t be able to go out as a family to other places.

Thing is, I don't think she is eating well at the moment. Breakfast and lunch are fine/ok not great. Today she refused lunch point blank and eventually ate it at 3pm at my parents house. Today she ate:

Breakfast:
Half bowl shreddies

Lunch:
Small piece of Quiche
3 strawberries
3 grapes
Small cube of cheese
1 pepper stick

Dinner:
1 tsp cream cheese licked off crackers
Half small bowl of ice cream

She's been waking a lot during the night recently. The night before last she was up 15 times and we've put it down to hunger. Last night DH gave her a bit of milk after a couple of hours and she slept through. I do not want to get into having milk during the night.

We do have an ikea table that she could sit at. Thing is the rest of us are at the dinner table. Sometimes she'll sit there rocking. Other times she sits there in tears pushing her dinner away and then pulling it back and so on. She knows she wants it because she's hungry but she just refuses.

Weirdly she'll eat at other people's houses and in restaurants and in the buggy....just not at our house. We are always quite relaxed about it all so no battle of wills or anything.

Both my DS go off their food when they're not feeling great. That can be as little be the start of a cold, and DS2 is particularly bad at eating when he's teething. He's 22 months old and we just had a 3 week period of little eaten at meals because his canines were cutting through.

We're quite strict about food at the table only. No dessert if you don't give you main meal a good go, and I restrict snacks to the same times they have them at nursery. If they're still not eating despite knowing they're hungry then I just leave them to it. DS2 has been like a hungry hippo this last couple of weeks making up for everything he didn't eat when he was teething!

The waking up could be teeth??

What time are you feeding her dinner? The tearfulness and pushing her plate away and then grabbing it back sounds like she might be overtired by the time you feed her, so she acts irrationally cranky due to hunger but is too tired to actually expend the effort to feed herself.

Does she snack at all? I know they often recommend against snacking as it can deter eating at dinner, but that’s not true of all children. My nephew is a total bear if his blood sugar drops below a certain level. I’ve watched him sit in front of plate of his favorite foods sobbing while saying “I’m hungry I want food” but adamantly refusing to pick up the food and eat it. Sometimes he would calm down if we helped him by feeding the food to him at speed since it required no effort on his part and got his blood sugar up quickly. However, the other half of the time he’d clamp his mouth shut and refuse all food. A high protein snack about an hour before mealtime is the only way to ensure our little guy isn’t too cranky or hungry to eat his dinner.,