My 1 year old will only eat puffs!

[Bethmxox]

I’m honestly at a loss with my little boy, he will turn 1 on Saturday and for last month the only thing he will eat is puffs , dry cereal or crackers.

ive tried just not offering them but he screams and cry’s for hours hungry unless he gets them, I’ve offered him eveything I can think off but he won’t touch a thing. He won’t let us anywhere near him with a spoon and cry’s and cry’s if he’s in his highchair now.

he was an amazing eater when we first weaned him and would eat any flavour at all ( pouches or blended food ) when he was 10 months we switched him to ‘ proper solids ‘ and he was doing really well but then one day woke up and just completely refused anything ever since. He won’t even look or touch anything but his preferred foods.

I’ve tried talking to our HV who just advised me to not offer them. He was sleeping through the night but now he’s up nearly every hour wanting a bottle and has also become very clingy and will now only sleep if I’m holding him. He won’t even go to his dad 😩

I’m just so worried about my baby and so tired I end up in tears most days. ( I also have pnd and am 6 months pregnant with baby no2 )

Christ Lovepeaceunderstanding is being an utter dick. Yes a one year old should be having solids as a main form of nutrition. According to NHS. The need iron for one which isn’t in big enough quantities in breastmilk.

@Bethmxox I know it’s worrying but I would try and play it cool. I know the more my little one senses that I want her to eat something the less likely she is to want to eat. Has your boy got his molars yet? My daughter didn’t want to eat much when she was cutting hers. She woke a lot at night wanting boob too because she wasn’t getting the calories during the day.

In your shoes I would continue to offer the puffs but put them alongside other foods. With my 14 month old I find that she is more likely to try new things if she has something ‘safe’ on the plate to have first. I just ignore her, get on with my own meal and let her eat what she wants. I don’t stress and I take the plate away when she signals she’s done. I never ask if something is nice but I might talk about texture. Is that crunchy? Is that soft? Oh, I like that one, it’s chewy etc.

Some meals are more successful than others. Today she didn’t want to try anything other than her bean salad even though it was all things she likes until she stole my fork. The novelty of trying to stab stuff with mummy’s fork led her to start stuffing the rest of her dinner in.

Basically, try to turn mealtime into something fun for everyone instead of a stressful battle. He’ll be picking up that you’re anxious and translating it to the food itself making you anxious rather than him not eating. I know it’s hard to be easy breezy when you’ve tried your best and it’s all going on the floor and for fuck sake you liked green beans yesterday why are you acting like I’m poisoning you, I need to get food into you and I’m failing and everyone else seems to be able to do this simple thing so why won’t you just eat but making food a thing of tension will not be helping.

Good luck and don’t beat yourself up.

The above sounds good, I just wanted to add if Possible get someone else to look after the child at your house and do this. The emotional toll it will take on you might make it hard to stick with.

Is he teething?

Both of mine could be really tricky with good when a tooth was coming through.

And do ignore Lovepeaceunderstanding

OP, I'm hoping that you come back on and are able to read this...

My toddler is 19 months now and was very much like this for a long time. She has always been on a very low percentiles this started dropping so her not eating enough was really worrying for us. Initially we had been avoiding any unhealthy foods as we didn't want to instill negative eating patterns but we got to the point where she was eating so little that we would be taking her out to cafés for cake just to get the calories into her! I felt so much guilt for it as obviously it's not what you want to be feeding your 1 year old. We also tried feeding her in so many ways- high chair, out of high chair and on my lap, letting her take food from our plates, hand feeding her (and having various people try this), picnics on the floor, food at the side for her to pick at while playing.. Sometimes one thing would work for a hot minute then wouldn't. We even tried letting her eat while watching TV, despite us not allowing her to watch TV previously.

She has gradually become much better, particularly in the last couple of months. She still has periods where she will eat very little for a few days but it's now interspersed with times where she will eat loads throughout the day so I feel far less anxious about it.

I know how hard it is but you're doing your best. Keep offering different foods throughout the day in various forms and don't beat yourself up if he's not eating them or much of them yet. Try anything you can, if he doesn't like being spoon fed then try giving him spoons with shorter stubbier handles that he could hold easily himself, try dipping the crackers or puffs in soft cheese (my mum used to do this with our toddler and it was one of the few things she would take) or peanut butter. For us it was a lot of trial and error until eventually she just started eating better of her own accord, even eating things she previously wouldn't ever touch (she wouldn't eat meat or chicken before but will sometimes now).

Gosh the rudeness of people on mumsnet never ceases to amaze me! And the irony of some of their usernames.

The puffs and veggie sticks are like crack for these babies! My 9 month old DD LOVES them. We're having to restrict because while they were great at first for working on her hand-eye coordination and generally encouraging her to eat more solids, now they're her faves, and she'll squawk up a storm to get them. Her face lights up when she sees the packet. Mad! On the one hand it's utterly incredible and delightful to us that she's got a personality now and has developed such strong preferences but on the other it's... worrying! We're trying to work out what she likes so much about them. She's still toothless and teething so we suspect it's texture and the way they feel in her hands over the taste. There's not a lot we can do to safely replace that with another, more healthy foodstuff yet. She likes broccoli florets though, just not as much as a veggie stick!

Thankfully she's not rejecting anything else, but she will decide mid-meal that she wants a crisp of some sort and it's tricky to get her going again on her real meal without giving in. I'm going to follow the advice here so we can try and avoid the situation you're in OP. I'm sorry because it sounds super stressful, but there's a lot of good advice here. Ignore the haters, they're idiots. You're doing a great job!

but she will decide mid-meal that she wants a crisp of some sort and it's tricky to get her going again on her real meal
How do you know when she's suddenly demanding crisps, she can't be talking yet?

Stop producing the packet.

Ok so kids at that age quite commonly are low in iron which in turn causes low appetite and they can get picky about what they eat. It's a vicious cycle then because they take less food and more milk which inhibits iron intake. I would look to increase babies iron, perhaps by switching to a fortified milk as mentioned by PP, and try to get iron rich foods in - easier said than done I know. Cereals like Cheerios have iron so you can keep going with that and offer something with plenty of vitamin C at the same time to help with absorption.

Dd held out over a week for McDonald's nuggets and fries, homemade wasn't acceptable. They do this. Tends to be in phases and the trick is to gradually add in other foods eg try putting something on the cracker's or a dip with breadsticks

OP, is it the puffs or is it perhaps him feeding himself? My DD never let us feed her with a spoon. She much preferred to eat solid food with her hands. We ended up doing baby led weaning before I realised that was a 'method' with a name. It was very messy but a big relief when I realised that was the issue.

I agree just feed him strips of finger food (fruit, crackers, veg, toast, cheese etc and keep trying. And just stop buying puffs. It will be painful for a few days but honestly won't last forever.

I hope you have lots of support for your mental health xx

@Bethmxox I had similar problem with my daughter. She got so addicted to these puffs and snacks that she stopped touching her food and kept screaming until she got them. I also received these advices that : "stop buying, they will eat real food if they hungry". Not my baby! She screamed and screamed and had no food for days. So I understand what you are going through.
This phase will go away soon and they taste will also change. My daughter is 14 months now and stopped being interested in puffs and got addicted to the baby biscuits and sweets. She also stopped eating food that she liked before and now she loves things that she hated.
But in a meantime what helped me was to not give any food she didn't like. She loved porrage, fruit, toast and yoghurt. So I kept offering those to make sure she didn't wanted the puffs. I think the goal here is to stop them wanting these puffs rather then forcing them with food which they don't like. Don't be afraid to over offer things that they like. Anything is better than these little treats.
You can try to bake some veggetable muffins, that seems to work for me. If it's teething, offer breadsticks (my baby's got addicted to them around 12 months).
Try not to worry about the nutrition. They get enough from milk especially if you give supplements.
I know it's seems hard now but this phase will change soon!

Why are you giving such a young child baby biscuits, baby sweets, baby crisps in the first place, and then wondering why she prefers them to real food?
Got addicted 🙄

This. Don't buy them and you won't give them to him and don't fill him up with loads of milk instead of that will be the next thing you have to change. He won't starve. Sit down with a big plate of something and watch the telly, nice and relaxed and I bet he'll be over to help himself.

It's probably not the puffs - it's just because they are there

My lo loves these ( she's 9months ) and for some reason finds them so easy to eat and would have these over anything - her eyes light out when she sees them but if she was acting like yours at this age I wouldn't buy them - simple

Over thinking it here massively op - the pp was spot on, just offer alternative food and they will soon forget

If it's not puffs, it will be something else so time to change the parenting not the puffs and I don't mean that in a nasty way - just if you are like this now at this age with puffs can you imagine how life will be much harder if you continue ' he will only eat puffs '

@ReadersD1gest

Everyone offers those to babies. And the nursery is the worst!

Everyone offers under one's sweets and crisps? No.

The nursery my one goes to don't they have a set menu

I have dc with arfid and we just have a plate with different sections - put the ‘safe food ‘ in the big section and other foods in other ones and say nothing. No pressure, no rewards just nothing. I’d say for fussy eating to do the same . Get A good multivitamin and see how you get on

As others said, you need to stop buying those puffs (or any ‘baby’ food), they’re so highly processed with no benefits,
plus expensive. Offer very small portions of a few different foods, and you need to be indifferent to him eating - don’t put any pressure or ‘encouragement’. And give a multi vitamin due to the lack of fruit and veg

I'm just posting in solidarity - I have a 2 year old who is a horrifically fussy eater and it's so stressful. We've tried everything and also went to the GP, but because she's still gaining weight and seems healthy nobody will do anything. I did speak to our Health Visitor and a Paediatric Dietician over the phone and the advice generally is to offer a "safe food" (something they will eat) along with a very small portion of new foods at every meal, but not to make a big deal of it at all - just to put it out. We were definitely not advised to stop giving foods that she would eat and were told under no circumstances to be negative or in anyway forceful (not that we ever would have been!). The Dietician also said to try very similar foods to what they do like (e.g., if they eat mashed potato try a roast potato etc.) I'm sure you are doing all of this already but sometimes it's good to have the reassurance that you are doing the right thing even though it's horribly exhausting and stressful. I was reading about neophobia (fear of new foods) recently and found that quite interesting too. Good luck with it all - it's horrendous and made much worse by people who assume that it's clearly the result of your parenting.

@ReadersD1gest
My daughter is 14 months. These treats usually from 7 months.
I'm not saying it's right, but everyone gives it to them and some babies gets more obsessed with it then others.

@kirsty2023 they offer them for snacks or if they don't want to eat their lunch/dinner

I have no idea what puffs are. (Crisps?? Salty snacks? Sugary cereal?)

If you'd never offered crap your DS wouldn't know they existed. He's only 1. If you stop buying junk now neither of your children will eat it.

The child will not scream for a week without junk food. As pp said just eat what you eat (healthy) and let the child pick off your plate. If they see you eat and they are hungry they will likely eat.
Unless there are other issues there's nothing a GP needs to do for a child that will only eat junk food.

I think it's called food chaining where you look for foods that are similar to safe foods and over time expand the child's repertoire. I got my autistic child from toast to breaded chicken nuggets to plain chicken with this method and a couple of other successes although she does still have a very restricted diet .
Things that might be similar to puffs could be toast fingers, crackers, chips, banana chips, vegetable crisps. If something like toast is accepted you could then try something on the toast etc. Good luck!

Everyone who says "stay strong" has not parented a true selective eater. Staying strong means allowing them to live solely on milk, and see their weight drop.

Can I recommend Help My Child Won't Eat! By Carlos Gonzales. It took time by my now 5yo now eats a decent range of foods (albeit small portions and is still under the guidance of a dietician). Things do improve but it's a long game.

Also: it's absolutely nothing you've done. My youngest is a complete gannet and will try anything. It's just personality.