Encouraging 2yo to eat

[MistyWitch]

Two year old DD is horrendous at eating.

We have all meals at the table where she has a chicco seat that goes on a dining chair as she hated the actual high chair. She sits comfortablly as she will happily go and sit there to do colouring etc at the table.

I make "normal" dinners that are served in dishes laid out in the centre of the table so everyone can choose their portion. She is given the opportunity to pick what she wants and allowed (with help) to put her choices on her plate.

She has the same plates as the rest of the family as she wasn't keen on the toddler plates and simply threw them on the floor.

Examples of dinners served. Roasts, stews, fajitas (extra mild for the kids), spaghetti bolognaise, macaroni cheese, pizza, seasoned chicken, stir fry, chilli con carne (again extra mild for the kids), curry.

She has progressively got worse for months and now eats nothing from these dinners. She used to be great at eating but since about 18 months has steadily got worse.

In an attempt to get her to eat something because she can't just eat nothing DP will give her yoghurts and fruit in place of dinner.

Mortifyingly at the moment we have a child who will eat bread and butter, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, tangerines, tinned mandarins, yoghurts, beef hula hoops, wotsits, chicken super noodles (when the stars align) and rice. That's it. I have tried typical "children" foods like sausages, chicken nuggets etc to no avail.

At my wits end.

Any advice appreciated and welcome.

I’m sorry I have no decent advice for you just wanted to let u know I’m in the same boat. My 2 year old sits in a similar seat and only eats a limited number of foods. He won’t even make an attempt to try them. Right now his main meal every evening is pizza, bagels or toast. He will eat corn only on the cob tho, peas, blueberries, grapes, raspberries, yogurt pouches, fruit pouches, potato scones, all kinds of crisps n choc. I am just hoping he grows out of it. No doubt someone will be along in a minute to say just let them go hungry they will soon eat..,,, I just don’t see the point in trying to battle a toddler. I don’t know any adults who only eat meals of pizza and toast so I just go with it

After having an extremely fussy eater I'd advise tow things:

1. Absolutely insist that DH doesn't give alternatives. She's never going to eat if she knows that her favourites will appear if she holds out and

1. Read My Child Won't Eat by Carlos Gonzalez

Why eat dinner if I get party food crisps and yoghurt? Eating is a right laugh mummy and daddy running around giving me loads of attention, then I get snacks.

Step back stop stressing talk about things non food and then at the end of the meal take it away nothing until next food time....then make it real food with nutritional value. Don't give lots of milk to drink it fills them up.

Sometimes she won't even eat the alternatives and on those nights she's up through the night because she's obviously hungry. She's a great sleeper and has been sleeping through since 9wks and with an older child and running my own business I don't want to ruin her sleep in order to win a battle over dinner. She eats very little. Appetite of a sparrow. Last HV appointment she was 50th centile for weight and height so they had no concerns despite me voicing my concerns.

I downloaded that yesterday, I'll get into it properly on Monday but did like the first few pages which reassured we aren't the only ones dealing with this and very unlikely to have the child who eats the least.

@Surroundedbyfools thank you for the moral support. Hopefully both go the way of my incredibly fussy brother and grow up to eat and love all types of food. Including vegetables. His bogey food as a child.

@jannier the problem is dinner is the last meal of the day. She has milk in the morning and before bed so that's not filling her up at dinner time. She doesn't get "party food" or crisps at dinner. We eat and she doesn't then when we are finished and the plates are cleared away she gets some fruit and a pouch of yoghurt because she can't eat nothing. There is no fuss made. She tries but we ignore her and move her plate if she starts throwing things but normally it sits in front of her until we are all done.

She has started helping prepare meals, simple things like getting the veg and potatoes out for me but still helping and it hasn't helped.

My DS is 23 months and we’ve had months of him being incredibly picky and barely eating. We went through a stage of making him a second dinner of his accepted food (beans, bread, cheese basically) for a while. Of course he soon cottoned on to that and completely refused all food. It got ridiculous and we were always stressed. He also wouldn’t eat any vegetables and barely any fruit.

My health visitor said that it was best to look at his food over a week rather than a day. That made me take a step back and I realised that he always wants more food for breakfast, so now I take that opportunity to offer lots of food including fruit. He is still offered the same meal as we have but there’s no pressure on him eating it. He says immediately ‘I don’t like it’ and we say ‘that’s ok, but you have to wait until we finish to get down’. 9 times out of 10 he gets bored waiting and starts eating. He still refuses a lot of things but he’s getting more adventurous.

I guess I would say, try not to stress and don’t offer alternatives because toddlers are not silly and she will definitely know that is an option. Can she have milk before bed to fill her up a little more? I understand the not wanting to disrupt sleep but in the long run you don’t want this battle over meals.

No advice, OP, but we're in the same boat (in fact, part way through reading, I was wondering if you were actually my DH 😆)

Our DD is 2 and went from being a great eater to one who really isn't. I'm really hoping it's just a phase and she's just not overly hungry some days, plus she's going through possible nap dropping (so extra tired in the evenings on non nap days), and the usual winter bugs meaning she's not feeling 100%.

It's hard, but give her a multivitamin and carry on with what you're doing is my advice. And don't get too stressed about it (and I'll start trying to take my own advice...)

I don’t have a particularly fussy eater so sorry if this is something you’ve tried, might not work but just a thought…

DS usually has a yoghurt and/or fruit after dinner. If he asks for this but hasn’t eaten much dinner I give it to him but don’t take away his dinner plate, just leave it on the table (DH and I are still eating too if he asks early on in the meal). 9 times out of 10 he finishes his yoghurt and fruit and then goes back to eating some bits off his dinner plate.

Basically, could you offer the yoghurt and fruit as part of the main meal, served at the same time so it feels less like an alternative but also, sometimes she might eat something else on the table once she is eating.

@Seasidesusy there isn't really any part of the day where she eats a decent amount. She is so active I genuinely don't know how she isn't starving. She already gets warm milk before bed and because she eats so little it isn't enough to tide her over.

No fuss is made, like your son she just has to wait but she doesn't give up and start eating. Everything is "yucky" despite not trying it. I'm not expecting her to eat loads, as I did with my first (didn't realise that a toddler portion is really quite small so thought she was a poor eater but she really wasn't. She tried everything and had a few bits and pieces of each thing at a meal), she is given a tiny amount to try. None of it touches and still she just refuses it. No TV at mealtimes so there aren't any distractions. I've read everything I can find and implemented everything except just leaving her to be hungry because I can't do that and neither can DP.

@IcouldbutIdontwantto the multivitamin is the only thing she takes willingly 😂 sorry you are also struggling but makes things easier to know others are in the same boat! Also at the dropping (well reducing) her nap stage and she had a particularly nasty virus mid December and seems to have got a lot worse with food since then.

@Gruffalotea thank you. That was actually our sort of first steps when she became a bit awkward at meals. Gave her everything at once. She was dipping strawberries in mince at one stage. Gross but at least she was eating.

Huge solidarity. I'm in a similar position (mine is 4 though) and I feel like I've tried everything. (Please god nobody else ask me if I've tried a "race" to see who can eat the carrots first 🤦‍♀️) Traditional strategies just don't seem to work for us.

We've had a teeny tiny bit of progress recently when I've added bread and butter to the table with every meal. When he knows he can eat just bread and butter if he wants to, and there is absolutely no pressure to eat the other stuff, he's actually tried a tiny nibble of the main meal. I hide flax seeds and chia seeds in the bread, so I feel good about the "just bread" option if that's all he has.

I can recommend "kids eat in colour" for talking about all foods in a positive way

@MistyWitch you really could be my DH... my DD loves her 'mitamins' and will refuse to eat her breakfast until I've put them in the milk 😆

I've just had a thought now you've mentioned the virus - I wonder if her taste could have been affected by it, so everything tastes a bit off? That happens to me sometimes - and wasn't it a symptom of covid?

My daughter goes through phases of essentially eating nothing. She will some times have cereal for breakfast and then maybe lunch or dinner. 1/3 of a Weetabix would be breakfast and 6-8 piece of plain pasta and a tablespoon of frozen peas. Other times she polishes off the same meal as us. Has toast and cereal for breakfast. Has snacks as well as lunch and dinner.

When she is in a non eating mood there is no chance of getting her to eat our food so we have stopped trying. We make our food similar to hers instead. So lots of pasta only we have sauce. Once there are glimmers of hope that she will eat what served we eat family meals. These are a challenge given she has 20 allergies but with some creativity we manage!

@FleasAndKeef racing, pretending you really want this bite and letting her pinch it off your fork. We've tried it all and it works for maybe a minute and then never again 🙈 we thought we had cracked it with the fork game, she now just tries to feed us instead! We serve bread and butter with most meals anyway as DP thinks bread is life.

@IcouldbutIdontwantto I can assure you I'm definitely not your DH 😂 maybe our DC are just little twin souls!
Funny you say that, she had antibiotics (precautionary) as the dr thought it may be Scarlett fever due to strawberry tongue and not being able to get a good look at her throat, she was saying everything was "spicy". Thought it was because it was sore but maybe it's because her taste is all to pot.

I totally understand where you coming from OP. My DD is 2.5 and was similar and I thought I was doing all the right things. Then one day I saw a post about it on insta (big little feelings) about just being neutral with ALL food and also I had my Ds when she was 18m so I just didn't have the time to stress about it. She's growing and healthy so that's all that matters! Once we've had our family meal, I always leave hers on the table for the evening and 90% of the time she'll go back later and eat more.
I'm sure you're doing all this, but,
No alternatives, no fuss. I don't know if she's ever woken up hungry, she's never said she's hungry ever and I think night wakings are likely to be something else.
Never ever say 'but you like spag bol!' or whatever.
Never do the whole 'oh look, daddy is eating his carrots, he loves carrots, mmmm' etc
We literally just put it down and talk about our day. If she says she doesn't want something we say 'ok, you can try it again another time' and she can move food on a 'no thank you ' plate instead of the floor! She'll sometimes eat off this later as well.
We stopped over praising her for eating well as we realised eating should be normalised and making a big fuss also wasn't helping

And no fork games or racing games or anything like that! Put it down and say, here's your curry, or here's your cake. Neutral always! If she's knows your hugely invested in what she's eating then of course she'll play games. Just don't let her know you're even noticing what she's eating.

Could you try toast or something boring as the after tea alternative? My youngest is a similar age to yours and even though she's a great eater I 100% know she'd hold off if she knew a pouch was on the cards later. Pouches are like drugs to her 😅

Also I sometimes make my kids banana milkshake with added spinach. I guarantee you cannot taste the spinach AT ALL. It's a way of getting some extra nutrition into them but they think they are just getting a 'treat'. You can also add peanut butter

the last little guy I cared for had a smoothie most mornings. It always had loads of spinach in it and also fruit and something with protein. He loved it.

Its also fairly common for kids appetites to change around 2 as they’re not having the massive growth spurts they have as infants. Practically every 2-4 year old I’ve met has either had a poor appetite or only liked 3 things! I’d keep offering healthy options and remember they don’t need to be big portions.

@Superscientist 20 allergies, I take my hat off to you after doing Christmas dinner for someone with 3! I hope it's just a phase that has got worse after an illness followed by a very busy and exciting time of year!

@User415373 we are majorly guilty of making comments like those you quoted. Will stop that and try just being completely neutral and ignoring. A no thank you plate is a great idea, far better than the current no thank you dog where everything seems to disappear to. Although he's no longer allowed to roam free at meal times as we thought he was a distraction and feeding him was a great reason to not eat so he stays in the living room at meal times.

@bakewellbride the pouches are actually my choice for less mess, she prefers a pot and a spoon. She gets a mix of both pouches and pots. She's not a big fan of toast but we quite often give bread and butter (which she does like) instead. I'll also happily take that smoothie recipe please, not just for the little one but for the whole family 😂 it's me that loves veg the rest are a bit meh about it but eat it because it's served and they know it's good for them.

@Lizzieregina that makes me feel a lot better, if it's normal I'm not going to worry too much. Especially as at HV appointment on the 20th they had no concerns. Just keep persevering and offering but won't stress if she doesn't take to it.

Good luck. My child's friend doesn't eat much either and it looks tough x

Yes, we had the same issue with the dogs but they are put out now when eating.
I can't tell you how much better it is. Just no drama at all and she's eating better as well.
We were at in laws over xmas and I told everyone to not encourage her to eat at all, don't mention her food just sit around the table and talk, ask her about her day etc. she ate 2 bowls of pea soup and everyone was 😲
We never talk about what she likes or dislikes anymore.
We do always serving something 'safe' like garlic bread and she always gets fruit with dinner. Like a pp said, often when she's had the fruit she'll go back to the main.
It's honestly changed my life! Trust nature and their little bodies!