Please help

[M2AL]

Hi everyone my 19 month old toddler has refused to eat anything apart from fish, potato shapes, beans and scrambled egg for a few weeks now. She used to be brilliant with her food and eat everything but now refuses every time and heaves. I’ve tried putting vegetables on her plate in the hope she will try then, blending vegetables on mash. Even letting her see me cook them but she point blank refuses to eat any other food. She loves certain fruits but I’m scare of how unhealthy her diet is becoming. I even refuse to make a new meal and she would go to bed without . I’m stuck what to do.

Is anyone else’s toddler the same
Is this a phase. She used to eat brilliantly at nursery too and now goes most of the day without a substantial amount of food

Have you taken her to the GP to check for an ear infection? Or tried nurofen and anbesol liquid in case it’s teething pain?

If you have ruled out pain, it’s most likely a phase.

Try giving her a mixed plate of things you know she will eat and things you want her to try. Present them all together without comment - don’t tell her which bits you want her to eat etc, but do put the things she likes at the back of the plate and the veggies etc at the front. And make the quantities of the thing you want her to try tiny - like one tomato / one slice of cucumber etc.

Don’t make a fuss if she doesn’t eat them. Just keep presenting the food in this way, and make sure she sees you eating it at the same time as she is eating.

Most toddlers go through a really fussy phase, and most come through it eventually! The main thing is not to make food a battle in the meantime.

Personally I'd serve a mixture of things she will eat and things you don't think she will at each meal, without much comment. Then you know she's not going to go hungry, and can give her space to try something new. The important thing is not to comment I think. Ultimately you can't force her so best not to make it into a big deal. She'll come back around, give it time!

I think 19 months is usually when the picky eating can hit.

If she’ll eat fish finger shapes, Asda do frozen fish shapes with a bit of veg mixed in called Under the Sea shapes.

I found at that age I had to put the plate down and not comment on it. If I tried to get him to eat something specific he’d cry and say he didn’t want any of it. Keeping quiet and ignoring the complaints worked.

I started cooking one meal for all of us and let him see we all had the same. If he got fussy I’d just say you’re having the same as mum and dad. He played about for ages and some dinners went cold but eventually he realised that he had to eat what he was given if he was hungry.

He’s 3 now and eats the same as us and is quite adventurous with food.

Good luck OP.

Do you eat with her? We try and eat as a family, not always possible I know. But it shows my kids that we enjoy the food on our plates, and normalises eating things they may not want to eat. Dh and I will also talk about how nice something tastes, or give foods silly names, broccoli is dinosaur trees for example. Mine seem to go in phases too, ds is nearly 4, and in an 'I don't like it' phase at the moment, about things I know he does really like. If he says that about his dinner, my response is, 'well ok, you don't have to eat it but there's nothing else'. Followed by the rest of us eating and enjoying. Most of the time when I look up a minute later, he's munching on something from his plate. If it's something new he gets a big well done for trying it, but no comments or pressure if he doesn't. My main aim around food is very low key and relaxed, I do my best to put out healthy meals I know they and we adults like, but am very firm on the point of not serving alternatives.

It's totally normal. There are all sorts of strategies that you can try as PP have given but my basic view is that everything is a phase and it will pass in its own time. Fussiness is totally part of development - it's evolutionary. I try not to stress. Serve enough food that DS likes that he'll eat something and make zero comments about what he has/hasn't eaten.

Just a phase, from what you’re saying she is actually not too bad. My son ate absolutely everything until about 18 months- you name it, hummus, Brie, all veg, he was an eating machine :) then once in creche he went through about 6 months of eating very plain food, no veg, nothing green. Now he is 2,5 he is almost back to himself again and eats like an adult minus green veg:) so it’s all just a phase. My advise is: always put a little bit of veg on her plate at every meal. She’s not gonna eat it but she has to at least see it’s part of meals. If you could eat at the same time so she can see you would be a bonus

Also as PP said try not to comment too much about things she hasn’t eaten. My son of course leaves his green veg so I just take his plate and eat it and say “oh you left this mummy will eat it then it’s so yummy” in a hope that one day he will eat it again. Good luck