Extremely fussy two-year-old! Help before I go insane.

[Sham95]

Hi everyone. I need some advice please and I also need to know if this is a normal thing for 2 year olds. Also if someone else is in this situation to point me in the right direction as this is driving me insane.

I have a two year old daughter who is extremely fussy when it comes to eating. When she was small, she used to eat a lot and used to eat anything which was put in front of her. However, as she’s gotten older, she refuses to eat anything. I’ll give a breakdown as to how her day goes.

8-8:30 am - 8oz milk

9-9:30 am - bowl of cereal. However, recently I have realised she doesn’t eat her cereal as much, so I have cut down on milk altogether and started to give her cereal. But as an example, today, she had a few bites of cereal and didn’t want anything else.

11-11:30 am - I ask if she wants to eat anything and cut fruit for her but she doesnt eat anything when offered.

12-12:30 pm - naps for a couple of hours.

2-2:30 pm - offer her air fryer foods such as chicken nuggets, waffles, hash browns etc etc. Again, depends on the mood whether she wants to eat or not. If she does it’s the bare minimum 2 3 bites and that’s it.

4pm - offer her whatever we have cooked for the day, chicken curry, meat curry, rice, noodles anything. But again refuses to eat.

7pm - offer food again and noting.

8:30pm - she will have milk and bed.

in between all this, if she’s offered crisps or snacks I.e. chocolates or snacks such as rainbow drops she will eat these happily and I know it’s bad parenting but I’d rather she has something rather than nothing. Also when I say crisps and snacks, it’s not a lot it’s just one packet of crisps or some snacks. And it’s not in between all them times it’s when I feel like she’s not ate anything at all.

can someone please advise me as I can sometimes cook two different meals for her and she will refuse it straight up. It’s driving me insane and I’m not too sure as to what I am doing wrong.

Starting with the assumption that she’s being a fussy two year old, rather than a child with food difficulties which has a different approach.
Don’t fall into the trap of trying to avoid hunger at all costs, she won’t starve and children need to feel hungry as part of a normal eating routine. Being hungry won’t hurt her, she will not starve.
Eat meals together, put the food into serving bowls and allow her to serve herself and choose what goes on her plate.
Don’t talk about the food, don’t comment on what she has or hasn’t eaten, don’t praise her for eating or criticise her for not eating, don’t try to bribe or coerce. Your job is to serve the food, her job is to eat it.

Love it! 100%

I do think on these threads sometimes people haven't experienced this situation. It's all very well and good saying cut out milk, cereal and snacks but when your child literally will just refuse to eat otherwise its very difficult.

I also agree with @Elisheva on this:

Don’t talk about the food, don’t comment on what she has or hasn’t eaten, don’t praise her for eating or criticise her for not eating, don’t try to bribe or coerce. Your job is to serve the food, her job is to eat it.

Leave the cereals and swap for cooked porridge with banana maybe

My DS (3) is a picky eater but has become much better over the past year and I'm confident will continue to improve.

I know that the main (and very good) advice is to offer the food you want them to eat and it's up to them whether to eat it or not. I personally found that this didn't work very well with my DS as he just won't eat if he doesn't want to, I'm not sure why but I don't think it's always a one size fits all approach. It can be so worrying and frustrating when they refuse food.

The things I have found that works well for us are:

1.) Give a daily multivitamin if not already, my DS like the gummy ones as he's not yet allowed "sweets" so he thinks it's a nice treat. This just gives me a little peace of mind as I know his intake from food will sometimes vary each day.

2.) stress free approach to meal times, I offer what I know he will eat alongside a small amount of something he is unlikely to want. No pressure, he always used to leave it but over the last few months he has often started to try and enjoy new things, I am really consistent with this even if it seems like a waste sometimes.

3.) He's fascinated by fruit & veg in its raw form so I use this to my advantage and make a big deal of looking at it with him at the supermarket, I also let him look/ play with it at home if it's got a skin and he often watches me prepare it. So when I serve it and say "ooh look pear" etc he will quite often get excited and have some, I also eat things with him and let him feed some to me and then encourage with "your turn" like a game.

4.) I will often make myself a healthy snack and sit and pretend to eat it in secret on the sofa and curiosity will sometimes get the better of him so he'll come and steal some.

5.) I try and make homemade sweet treats where possible, my DS really likes dark chocolate chip muffins but they have hidden avocado and banana with only a little honey to sweeten so a million times better for him than what we used to buy, they just taste like cake to him.

I think I would try to reduce the snacks if you find she's not eating much at meal times but you could do it gradually or try and swap for some alternatives instead.

Sorry that was so long winded! I appreciate my approach is quite gradual and time consuming but it has really worked for us so just wanted to share. I'm sure you'll get some good advice on here. X

I don’t see much fruit or veg being offered just a lot of beige food. Maybe she is bored of beige processed food.

I have a fussy eater, although luckily their limited range includes some healthy foods.

One thing that has helped with both my children is getting out of the house and eating on the go. I fill a lunchbox with things I am happy for them to eat - mini cheese and chicken sandwiches, carrot and cucumber sticks, cheese or peanut butter and crackers, a few dry Cheerios, a handful of nuts, some strawberries and blueberries. I used to give the box to my fussy eater in the pushchair when aged between 2-3. Then we'd go for a walk or on an 'adventure' somewhere and I was always amazed at how much was munched, even things DC1 wouldn't have touched at home. The combination of no fuss whatsoever and the fresh air seemed to work wonders! And it avoided stressful mealtimes at home, though the pushchair did need a lot of cleaning.

Crisps and rainbow drops? You’re the adult. Stop giving her shit to eat.

Totally normal. My advice is to stick with it, they will return to eating, though we did have quite a few weeks of cheerios, carnation instant breakfast (like complan fortified milkshakes) and McDonald's fries ... the good news is the fussiness stops and they start rebuilding their diet

My dd is 2 next month and is a good eater. Here is a typical day:

Breakfast cereal, fruit, toast

Morning snack fruit

Dinner pasta with mixed beans and vegetables

Afternoon snack toast

Tea vegan sausage with sweet potato mash and vegetables. Offered some yoghurt as pudding but she didn't want it.

Never any more than 2 snacks a day as it's bad for their teeth and would affect my dd eating her meals. It's going to be tough to break your child's snacking habit but worth riding it out imo.

But at the moment you're also giving her chocolate, snacks and crisps.

Once you cut them out your daughter will hopefully start to feel hungrier.

Mine started this in feb 23. It’s been a YEAR and the last couple of days she’s eaten better. She went from eating absolutely anything (albeit slowly) to nothing except plain pasta/grated cheese and steamed vegetables. Fine. Until she stopped eating that too.
I bought a compartment box with a lid and filled it with fruit, cooked veg, salad, ydays leftovers, raisins, plain pasta, 1 meatball…you get the picture. I offered it throughout the day. She only ate the fruit and raisins. She’s not a big milk drinker either. It was a whole year, I was worried but what can you do?
yesterday for dinner she ate a chapatti with lamb curry, and tonight she’s had spaghetti/meatballs, cucumber/carrot sticks.
I hope I haven’t jinxed it now 😂

Maybe but he's not at that stage yet.

His child is asking for coco pops and then getting coco pops when she already has cereal.

She's not eating her meals but is eating chocolate, crisps and rainbow drops.

Ok this is probably going to make me sound like a bad parent, but I sometimes find if I give my daughter my phone and let her watch videos she'll then accept me spoon feeding her foods she wouldn't when the focus was on the food... I find this especially seems to help when I think she's refusing because she's tired and I save it for when I'm feeling a bit at my wits end.

For family meals we have some success when we make it a game with our older kid, but this might work between adults. Put the food in front of the toddler, don't make them the focus, exclaim loudly 'oooh I've got a carrot! Have you got a carrot daddy?' and then he goes 'yes, I've got a carrot!' and then we count 1, 2, 3... go!. This has a surprising amount of success with a previously refusing toddler suddenly saying 'i have a carrot too!' and shoving it into their mouth.

In a similar vein I think other peoples food is always more attractive to a toddler. She'll much rather think she's eating my food than hers, and is more likely to take a spoon offered from my plate after seeing me eat it.

I don't think that makes you sound like a bad parent.
Sometimes you do what you have to do.

Oh my god this is my daughter too!!

Don't worry, she sounds completely normal. A lot of toddlers love to refuse any reasonable kind of food but exist on air, snack puffs, the bit of dried up carrot or old cheerio they found under the sofa and a random leaf that you have to panic-google to see if it's poisonous.

Agree don't fill her up too much with milk and don't be afraid of her being hungry. Try to take the pressure off mealtimes, try to avoid too much processed/junk type foods (obviously some is fine although I would avoid very sugary cereal) and stay away from the "at least she's eaten something" mindset. Keep offering a variety of "real" foods, and try to relax about it all. Outside of allergies or serious sensory issues, the survival drive to avoid malnutrition is extremely strong.

If you've already got into the habit of things like coco pops one way to reduce that is to change the rule so that those things are considered "weekend cereal" and are not available during the week.

Love this too: https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/how-to-feed/the-division-of-responsibility-in-feeding/