Food tips for 3.5 year old

[Charlie4491]

Happy new year to everyone!
I have a 3.5 year old girl who’s become terribly fussy with her food over the last 6 months.. between 2-3YO she would pretty much eat anything, she hit 3 and it’s all gone abit pear shaped.. she stopped eating a wide variety ,but I could get her to eat certain things from each meal and some of those things would be healthy things like broccoli peas carrots raspberries strawberries blueberries raisins flapjacks-(maybe not so healthy but better than choc biscuits) porridge for breakfast etc. Her diet now consists of soft cheese on crackers (I buy mixed grain which she will still eat), skips/wotsits/quavers, yogurts, coco pops, toast, occasional strawberries apple orange, & spaghetti or pasta..
I manage to get her to drink smoothies (although they may have a high sugar content, I feel I can swallow that because the vitamins etc she would be receiving from that smoothie benefit her and wherever possible I will buy low sugar alternatives).
I’m tearing my hair out now I feel like such a bad mum although I am trying my best.. I have tried offering her what we have for dinner and she just says ‘I don’t like it’, she will give it to her 8 month old brother who will pretty much eat anything.. I don’t want to force her to eat and I refuse to punish her because she’s not eating her dinner that she doesn’t like, and not allow her to have yogurt for pudding.
She has a very small frame she’s super skinny anyway she’s always been petite (she was 5lbs at birth). I just hope there’s other parents who have experienced similar and what the outcome was or how they dealt with this.
At nursery she will eat scrambled egg on toast, tomato soup etc but I have no idea how much of that she actually eats..
I wouldn’t consider myself to mollycoddle her, I am firm but I like to be fair and I remember being that child who’s not allowed to leave the table until your plate is clear and I hated the food that I was being made to eat so much it made me feel sick. I refuse to make her feel like that and I’m trying not to make a big deal out of this eating thing, really just giving her what she says she will eat but it just feels her variety is getting narrower each week..I have tried not asking and just serving up what I think she will have and she will literally put it back in the kitchen and tell me she doesn’t like it, and she genuinely won’t touch it.. any ideas or tips I would gratefully receive...

First of all it doesn’t sound like her diet is too bad - there’s protein, carbs, fats and fruit in there. I’ve heard worse! Obviously it could do with improvement but I doubt she’ll end up malnourished on this diet.

Will she eat sauces with her spaghetti and pasta? You could try making new sauces with her - there are lots on Pinterest with avocado, pesto, cheese and butternut squash etc. You could also try pancakes if she’ll eat them, with a bit of sugar (don’t worry too much about that, as long as she brushes her teeth it’s no big deal) and mix ins like carrots and zucchini (zucchini is the magic veg that can be hidden in anything- just squeeze the water out first). Muffins too - there are lots of recipes online.

Try using similar foods to bridge the gap. DS is picky and wouldn’t eat pasta. I really wanted him to because pasta is so easy! One day I was making myself some instant noodles and DS started eating them dry, like crisps (which of course he loves ). I let him do that, then showed him me putting the noodles in the pot and let him put some in too. He was then happy to eat the cooked noodles. They’re not very healthy but I gave him them for a few meals to consolidate it, then replaced the noodles with vermicelli pasta. We then selected some ‘teddy bear noodles’ in the supermarket, started calling it pasta and now - voila! - he eats pasta. Hard work but it was worth it in the end.

I do a lot of smoothies at home. I find DS will eat almost anything in a smoothie if I add a couple of dates and a tsp of honey. His favourite was a cauliflower one which was absolutely vile IMO but he loved it. Just take a banana, half a handful of veg, dates and honey and a bit of milk and blend. We call it ‘ice cream drink’...

For perspective, DS had toast for dinner. I basically don’t know what I’m talking about but I try very hard!