How to handle picky eating in 12 month old?

[ADuckNamedSplash]

DD was weaned at 5 months and once she got the hang of it, ate almost anything, quite happily. She's now nearly 12 months and down to 2 bottles a day, but over the past few weeks she's started rejecting a lot of foods she previously liked.

If she was older, I would tell her that she didn't have to eat it, but she wasn't getting anything else, and if she then complained of being hungry later, I'd give her something healthy but bland to fill her up. Obviously she's too young for this approach at the moment, but the only alternative that I can see is to make her something else. But I'm concerned this will teach her that she can just refuse foods until something she likes comes along! So is there some other approach I'm missing here? What do other people do with kids of this age?

It's really common that they go off previously accepted foods at that age. Try not to make a big deal of it. Keep offering small amounts of lots of different things and see what works. Shes too young to be strategic about holding out for the preferred option yet, so just go with the flow, use healthy snacks to fill up if need be, and make mealtimes as positive a time as you can. With my DD she'd always refuse the first mouthful but if you got her started she would usually eat. I'd sometimes give a bit of finger food while she was playing to catch her off guard, or give pudding first and the main course after, just to get her off the mark.

Ignore it! Just keep offering they'll get over the phase soon enough.

All mine did this- and it lasted, I ended up rotating a few meals that I knew they would eat some of, so say potato sweet corn fish fingers, if they refused say the fish then they would just eat more of the other things. I’d look at it over the day- if they eat 3 meals worth or protein carbs and vedge or fruit don’t worry they will be getting what they need. It’s really common and in some kids it’s pretty pronounced. All of mine eat normally now though, I did worry at the time but all fine.

Just keep going and add back in more milk as needed or offer a snack between meals. At 12 months mine was still having 4 bottles a day (though one of those was really small and paired with a snack). So you may just need to rely on extra milk for a bit. It's just a phase though and will get easier again soon.

Give her the bitter greener stuff first when she is hungry.
I feed in courses now!