Help my 3 year old eat!

[Corilee2806]

I originally posted in behaviour/development but noticed that board is very quiet so trying here instead (thought the feeding boards were too baby/weaning focused which isn’t really my issue)

I’m at my wits end and looking for advice, apologies in advance if this is long.

I’ll start by saying I’ve always worried about my daughter’s weight and growth - she was very tiny when born and didn’t gain weight well for the first 6 months or so, wasn’t on the charts and referred to a paediatrician. Then when she started weaning and I stopped BF she was fine, ate well, pretty much anything we put in front of her, and started climbing up the charts especially for weight. She was signed off around 1 year, on the 25th centile for weight and around 9th for height where she has roughly stayed since.

I know that as long as they are tracking their line and not losing weight health professionals aren’t too concerned. But since the age of around 2 she has become fussier and fussier - this seemed to get worse when her brother was born when she was just over the age of 2. I’ve consulted a few resources and it seems it’s about control rather than any sensory issue. Although sometimes she doesn’t like to even be in the room with certain food smells and really freaks out until I remove it or her. But it’s gone on for a long time now, she’s 3.5 and things seem to be getting better rather than worse. When I spoke to a HV they said as long as she’s happy and healthy and meeting milestones I shouldn’t be too concerned and she is - she’s very bright for her age and a happy girl, this is the one problem area really! Lately she has been I’ll quite a lot and taken a while to bounce back - I know this can be normal with all the bugs going round but I worry her immune system isn’t great due to her poor diet. She has a vitamin every day.

So, her actual diet. She eats a decent range of breakfast - cereal, toast, porridge, and she tends to eat a lot as she wakes hungry after not eating much dinner. Lunch isn’t too bad, she only really eats a plain butter or jam sandwich but will have cucumber and tomatoes and she eats a good range of fruit. The issue is dinner - she just really doesn’t seem to enjoy this mealtime and only wants to eat sausages and pasta. If I make anything else she won’t come to the table. She will sometimes eat some carrot - no other veg. Nothing with a sauce, not nuggets or fish fingers or pizza anymore, spag Bol or other things she used to like which I could hide veg in. I feel like I’ve tried everything - we used a book and got advice from a lady called Claire potter who basically advised the whole ‘division of responsibility’ method which I try to stick to but it often means she won’t eat anything at all, if I give her what she likes and put a bit of what we’re having on her plate she just refuses it and takes it off or leaves the table. She then says she’s hungry at bedtime, sometimes I give her a dry cracker or piece of toast as a snack so she doesn’t go to bed starving. We’ve tried making mealtimes fun, serving family style meals in the middle of the table so we can help ourselves, letting her eat in the living room, everything! We try not to tell her to eat, make dessert a reward, put pressure on, I know all of the principles but it’s hard to be 100% consistent, the other issue is she is with her cousins for childcare a few days a week and they are older and fussy eaters so I think she’s picked up on that in the last few years - she uses words like disgusting for foods she doesn’t like. Sometimes she refuses to even sit up properly or use cutlery - like she wants to act up on purpose, at first I thought it was all a behavioural reaction to her new brother but he’s 16 months now!

I don’t know what else to do, I want to get a referral to a dietitian but I’m not sure if that will happen as she’s not really suffering as a result of the fussy eating. I really hate the idea that I just have to let her grow out of this - I really want my DS who is currently a good eater not to go the same way and it’s so annoying not being able to eat family meals together nicely. My husband and his family all are pretty blasé about it as they were all fussy eaters as kids and grew out of it later on - by teenage years - but I don’t want my daughter to eat sausages and pasta for the next decade or more! It really gets me down and occupies a lot of my headspace and I feel really alone with it, I dread play dates and eating out too as she rarely eats.

anything else I can do? If you’ve read this far thank you very much!

And thanks @RinklyRomaine - really reassuring to hear about your 12 year old! I’m sure my daughter will be fine in the end, as her dad was like this and eats anything now. Just hard when you’re going through it!

Just to update on this, I took my daughter for a weight and height review today and she has dropped a centile on both, which I suspected - she hasn’t really grown since Xmas. It’s hard not to worry as she is little to begin with! The HVs I saw were helpful and have said they’ll monitor her for next 6 months or so and I’m also going to get her checked by GP with possibility of referral. So it sort of helped to know there’s a bit of a plan even though it’s going to take a long time with no simple fixes or answers, possibly ever! For me it’s just about knowing I’ve done everything I can to help her and make sure there’s nothing underlying all of this that we’ve missed. I find the advice you get can be so mixed and for those of us who are natural worriers, being told to just relax isn’t very helpful, we need strategies and ways to deal with it! I’m thinking about starting some kind of resource for mums like me but sure there’s already lots of this kind of thing out there…

I'm glad the HV was helpful and will be keeping an eye. Hopefully she will have a growth spurt soon, but as you say- you don't want to miss anything.

Would she be open to other foods for breakfast, if that is currently her biggest meal of the day? Omelette with various fillings, hummus or avocado on toast, savoury pancakes or waffles etc. Then you've started the day with at least 1 portion of veg banked even if the rest of the day goes wrong.

Could you get her involved in some of the prep? At that age, she could put all the toppings on her own pitta bread pizza, mix eggs with a fork prior to cooking, peel any fruit or veg you can do by hand (I often used to get DCs to peel garlic cloves for me), spread the butter on toast, or pick the herbs from the garden. She could do most of making her own sandwich too. Fajitas and tacos are always popular with my DCs as they like constructing them themselves at the table.

I skipped the health visitors snd went straight to the GP who gave us a dietician referral immediately when we were in the same situation. The health visitors were a bit useless!

Solid Starts is the most wonderful resource for mums of picky eaters, it was started by a mum of a restrictive eater who ate less than 10 foods. It’s got over a million members now and was suggested by the dietician. Totally a game changer for my daughter.

Thanks for the above suggestions! We’ve tried some of these. She won’t eat eggs or anything savoury that isn’t pasta really, so limited on what she can have for breakfast - she does like porridge which is good but other than that it’s cereal, pancakes but not homemade, and croissants.

she loves being involved in food prep and also the idea of the sort of meals you have to construct like tacos - but when it comes to it she won’t eat it, or will literally just eat a plain bit of tortilla.

I’ve tried giving her the few foods she literally will eat for dinner with a bit of what we’re having on the side, always a small amount, eg tonight a bit of roasted veg kebab, she has an absolute meltdown if anything unfamiliar is on the plate at all, and in the end it’s just easier to remove it or nothing gets eaten. She will eat pasta with one type of sauce, it’s one of those piccolo ones, tonight I used a different one I thought she liked and she was crying her eyes out. Mealtimes are stressful to say the least, I have to try hard not to show the stress!

Thanks for all the advice, speaking to GP next week and hoping based on what I tell them they will refer to a dietician.

Hi OP, I’ve read all your posts, what you’re going through sounds really, really stressful,.

I posted a couple of weeks ago asking for advice about my picky DD. I will say up front that she doesn’t sound as difficult as your DD with food so take this with a pinch of salt. But I’d been trying to follow the same principles as you - not making dessert contingent on eating a meal, not making any comments about what is eaten, allowing ‘safe foods’ such as cereal or toast if she didn’t eat, not showing that I cared at all about what she ate etc. Her range of foods was getting smaller and smaller and she was refusing to try anything new.

I took the advice that I received here and DD has tried new foods every day, eats her dinner, and dinner has become much more enjoyable all round. Main changes I’ve made:

• I give small portions, and always make sure there are things or elements of the meal that she likes


• when she asks for dessert or more of something she likes I say ‘yes of course you can, if you’re still hungry when you’ve finished X then you can have Y’ - and stick to this. I don’t make it about wanting her to eat, but focus on not wasting food and that she can’t possibly be hungry if she won’t eat her dinner


• new foods are introduced by stealth. So if my DD liked sausages and pasta I would think of serving her a sausage pasta bake, with her portion probably including some plain pasta and very little sauce. Then when she gets used to that increase the sause, possibly add peas or something (my DD ate a mouthful of peas the other day I could have thrown a parade)


• anything new she tries I praise her for trying, if she doesn’t like it she doesn’t have to eat it. ‘Safe’ foods do have to get eaten if she wants more/dessert. So, for example, carrots have now become a ‘safe’ food: if she wants more cheese she has to finish her carrots. If she doesn’t want to eat then that’s fine - the consequence is that she can’t have more cheese, because if she doesn’t eat the (very small amount of) food on her plate then that is wasteful


• limiting snacks in the afternoon


• leaving her dinner out in case she realises she is hungry after all…


• not giving an alternative

I have introduced new foods at every meal time and the amount of foods she will eat has increased dramatically. We are eating much more varied meals and I am so much less stressed. Like I say, our starting point was further forward than yours, but I think the more direct approach has really worked for my DD.

Hi @Bancha - thanks so much for reading and your thoughtful reply. There’s some really helpful stuff in here, it sounds like there’s definitely some similarities between our DDs - how old is yours? Do you mind me asking where I can find your thread - I find reading others in similar situations really helpful! I’m so pleased you’ve had some success. I’m really hoping we can make some small changes, I’m not expecting a drastic improvement and know it will take time. Is your DD a healthy weight, growing etc?

I would switch lunch and dinner around eg spag bol at lunch and sandwich fruit for tea.

@Corilee2806 No problem! Like I say, I think my DD hadn’t gotten as far down the fussiness route as yours has (there’s still time, of course), as she’s younger - 2.5y. There are no issues with her weight, thankfully.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4570946-to-not-want-to-live-off-spaghetti-bolognese

i posted in AIBU when I was trying to meal plan and feeling really annoyed, so got quite different responses from what I expected. Being a little more firm has made a massive difference.

Also just to add when I said I limit snacks in the afternoon, if she asks for a snack too close to dinner time I often say something like yes you can have that if you’re still hungry when you’ve finished your dinner. That way I’m not saying no or making some foods more exciting than others - to me it feels like I am just regulating the order that things are eaten in. She also never forgets that she has been promised something she wants so it helps her to keep focused at meal times haha. Someone gave the advice that there are things she prefers which she holds out for, and that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t like everything else, but that if she’s learnt that not eating dinner means she gets cereal (that she prefers) then she will do that. That made loads of sense to me and really helped me reframe how I approach the issue.

Like I say, YMMV, but it has made such a radical difference in my house that I couldn’t not post! I really hope it goes well with the dietician.

@Bancha thanks for the link to your thread, there’s some useful advice in there! I thought about posting in AIBU but wasn’t brave enough!

good advice re the late afternoon snack - much better way of wording it than just saying ‘no it’s too close to dinner’ the other thing I’ve tried with that in the past is offering something I’m putting on her dinner plate anyway like carrot sticks but that hasn’t worked lately.

when I’ve given her dinners that she won’t really eat - basically anything that isn’t sausages - so she might eat a bit of pasta and cheese and that’s it - she’s always hungry at bedtime. She always asks for a snack and I offer a cracker, breadstick or plain toast. I don’t think she’s holding out for it as it’s not exciting but I can’t let her go to bed starving. But this is why I often end up putting sausages on her plate otherwise she’s just had some carbs and with the weight worries I feel like that’s just not enough. So stressful!

Yes, my biggest worry was sending DD to bed hungry. I haven’t had to do that since taking the advice on AIBU although it sounds like many other parents would be willing to do that! However, I think you will know your DD best and whether that would encourage her to eat better or whether it would just do more harm than good. Having said all that, even if the food isn’t interesting I wouldn’t say it means that she’s not holding out for it. The cereal or toast I would previously give DD if she wouldn’t eat dinner would be very boring and bland but it is familiar and comforting to her so she definitely was holding out for it in our case. However I think if I was worried about DD’s weight and her diet was so limited I would also hesitate to not give her food if it was the only thing she would eat. It may be something to ask the dietician about? How have things been the past few days?

I just couldn’t do it to her. I think this goes back to some deep rooted stuff around when she was born, she was suspected to be growth restricted and was born at 5lb, lost weight then we had struggles with feeding, jaundice and weight gain, she was tiny and not on the charts for quite a long time, I remember once been pulled into a room of HVs at the weight clinic and made to feed her in front of them, I’ll never forget it. So you can tell I have some emotional issues around her eating and weight! Which I very much ensure she doesn’t see or hear about. I don’t think letting her go hungry would make the slightest difference anyway. I do agree she could be holding out for the snack - she’s not silly. She asks for it every night now. Nothing has really changed the last few days. My husband gave her dinner on Sunday, a pasta bake with the sauce all mixed in and of course she didn’t eat it, he didn’t give her anything else so of course she was hungry at bed again. Speaking to GP on Thursday and really hoping they’ll make a referral based on what I tell them.

That's what I'd do.

IME, the less/ simpler the food is cooked the better I.e. chopped raw veg, plain meat with no sauce or breadcrumbs etc, plain fish, toast with no spread, natural yoghurt, etc.
Colour for fun + consistency.

Good luck!

Just to update, I had the call with the GP this morning and I wasn’t fobbed off which was quite reassuring - he looked at her growth charts and based on those and answers to his questions he’s ordered some blood tests in the first instance, checking for things like celiac I think, and any deficiencies like anaemia. I’m glad we have a starting point, just got to convince her to have the test now, she’s had a total fear of hospitals and medical things since a head bang 6 months ago which landed her in A&E! Thanks everyone for all the advice so far.