When would you go to GP for picky eating toddler?

[ThedaBara]

My DS is 2.5 and over time has become very very selective with his food. He apparently eats most things at nursery, but at home he barely eats anything outside of bread, fruit and yoghurt. He will very occasionally have some tomato soup, baked beans or pasta, but that's about it.
The nursery aren't too worried and think that as he's eating a variety there, but they mentioned the GP might help.
Has anyone found this helpful? Thank you

Your health visitor is probably the person to go to for this sort of thing.

I don’t think they’d do a thing tbh. From experience.

How is his weight? They'll only intervene if it actually starts being a problem health wise(losing weight,low weight, malnutrition,deficiencies etc.)

look up solid starts for good advice around picky eating

We were in your position and GP was useless as were health visitor and eventually dietician. The advice we got was:

-Keep offering new foods
-Repeat offering things in case he changes his mind
-Don't make a big deal about food whether he eats or doesn't
-Just wait for him to grow out of it

Until the age of 18 his entire diet was:
Chicken dippers
Fish fingers
Fromage frais
Bread and butter
Potatoes
Crisps
Dry cinnamon cereal
Bananas

That was it. Every day. He was slim but perfectly healthy, it never seemed to matter to his physical well-being.

Then he got a girlfriend....and started trying a few things!

His diet is still limited but it is much much better.

GP won't be bothered at all.

HV will tell you to keep offers variety of foods.

Hmm, ds went through a similar stage

Are everything at nursery but only really bread, peanut butter, cheese, spaghetti Bolognese at home

Agree that GP won’t give a shit.

I had to raise my voice to a HV to get my DS referred to a dietician even after allergy issues.

My friend has a fussy 3 year old and she mentioned she paid for a private online course for this very thing which she said was very useful. It’s all about making food and dinnertime fun.

It’s also very common for kids to do and eat things and nursery that they won’t eat at home.

Thank you everyone for your responses. It's pretty demoralising, i thought there might be some support. His height and weight are fine but he can't be getting all the nutrition he needs!
Was just looking at photos from last Easter and back then he was eating most things offered, like the components of a roast dinner, rice, some veg etc. I'll try and follow up with HV

If his height and weight is fine, and he's generally healthy - ie not getting constant bugs, looks well etc, then I think your Dr will do little or nothing.

I'd also be hesitant about the nursery saying he "eats" at nursery. In my experience, a lot of children will have a couple of bits or just eat the one or two things they like, and leave the rest.

In the meantime, you need to keep trying to build up variety. The fact that he's eating fruit and yoghurt is a good start. If he likes pasta, can you try introducing more variety in the form of sauces? At this age, mine liked pesto so I used to do big vats of roasted veg, including tomatoes (for liquid) and then blitz with some cream cheese to create "red pesto" as a good way to vary nutrition.

As someone who has one brilliant eater and one fussy eater, I do think that the harder you try when they are young, the better. We were not nearly as good with DD for various reasons and we're still working on expanding her food choices now. She's 9!

I think most dc do go through fussy phases so the fact he ate more last year and eats well at nursery are reassuring.
The main things HV will tell you are as above, keep offering with no expectations/comments/punishment if this food is left. The challenge is to make sure you appear totally unfazed by his diet. If the child picks up even a whiff of you wanting him to eat new foods it gives them something to rebel against. At this age they are trying to be their own little person and one of the few things they can control is what they put in their mouths.

Give him a kids multi vitamin.

And just keep offering food alongside the food he will eat.

I wouldn’t bother. It’s quite normal for toddlers to get picky. As long as he is otherwise healthy just keep going.

Oh and one way to make food fun is to get him engaged in cooking. It will mostly be messy play but might make him more inclined to try things. So for example he might not want to eat fruit but maybe if there is some melted chocolate to dip it in he might try it?

Most kids grow out of fussy eating, so really no need to waste the time of the GP who can't do anything anyway, unless there are actually some physical problems being caused by it, i.e. severely over/under weight.

Our son was an absolute nightmare. He didn't even eat his first chip until he was 12. He refused fresh fruit and veg. It was all yoghurts, billy bear meat sandwiches, and tins of beans/sausage for many years! In his teens, he "discovered" McDonalds, and would eat a burger and chips there, and then went onto hot dogs and pizzas, but it was still mostly processed crap, and he'd still refuse fresh fruit/veg, "real" meat, etc throughout his teens, and would pick off pieces of meat off his pizza etc.

He only changed when he started at Uni. His flat mates started making jokes (in a nice way, not a bullying way) about the food he cooked in the communal kitchen, i.e. tins of processed crap all the time (baked beans, beans & sausages, all day breakfasts) and frozen pizzas, and when he went out for meals with them (or had lunch out with them), it was always simple sandwiches or pizzas etc.

One day, he just kind of "switched" and started eating everything. His first Christmas home from Uni, we gave him a full Xmas dinner and he just ate it all, including real meat, all the veg, etc. Ever since, he's like a human garbage bin and will literally eat anything at all, happily eating roast chicken, pork, lamb, etc., and looking at his fridge and cupboards in his flat (now living at the opposite end of the country in his first proper job), not a tin of beans in sight, a fruit bowl full, veg tray in the fridge full, etc.

I think you can over-think the eating "disorders". We were really worried through our sons childhood, right up to Uni, and both he and us were worried about his eating when he started Uni, but something just switched in him and he turned "normal" virtually overnight when he was living amongst his own kind!

My advice would really not to make a fuss, just let them be, let them eat what they want (as long as it's not ridiculously unhealthy and causing weight gain), and they're more than likely to grow out of it.

Thank you, i don't have any experience of this as our first has always been ok with eating. Not helping that my DH is from a finish your plate culture, so meal times are becoming the most stressful part of the day.
I will just carry on offering and hope for the best! Might mention to HV next time i see her. (Our blueberry bill is through the roof)

“. Not helping that my DH is from a finish your plate culture, so meal times are becoming the most stressful part of the day.”

The above could very well be the problem. Try to get him on side with a more zen attitude towards mealtimes.

When my DS was little he was like this - had a few bites of one thing, then another but not much of anything. Pretty much the only useful thing my health visitor ever said was that he had a tiny stomach, like making your thumb and first finger into a circle, so it's not surprising that he gets full up on small amounts of food.
He's a strapping 24 year old now - not a thing wrong with him!

If I were you I'd keep introducing variety, maybe give him some vitamins just in case he's missing out on something and keep an eye on growth. I'd probably not bother with the dr unless his diet becomes very restricted or you have health concerns about him.

Yeah, your DH being "finish everything" is just going to be adding to the stress. He needs to get over that ASAP.

it's one thing to say, "I'm not making you an entirely different meal" and another to force a child to eat.

Health visitor if he wasn't eating at all but if he's eating at nursery just persevere, they usually grow out of it by 4

One of mine saw a dietician a few times because they were not gaining any weight at all. Your DHs attitude goes against advice and could make everything worse.

As an aside my DD only eats about 5 foods but this covers the major food groups so they weren't concerned. If he's eating well at nursery and having fruit and dairy at home I'd not pressure him.

You can’t force them to eat, that’s exactly what toddlers realise around this age.

DS is 6, so not a toddler but has been picky his whole life. We’ve just finished a food diary for GP as he barely eats anything. He’s the right size and height and is doing well at school though, hence I hadn’t taken him to GP earlier. Eventually took him as he’s soooo tired all the time and wondered if diet could help. She said the food diary was one of the healthiest she’s seen even though he barely eats anything and very small quantities. So that reassured me. So people saying GP won’t do anything shouldn’t be so sure really. I got reassurance about his diet, remedies for his tiredness (an airways issue), and relatedly over the years he’s had a blood test (diet/tiredness related) as well. Worth asking OP, particularly if there’s a secondary issue or something that could be caused by his diet - in our case the tiredness.

We had exactly the same advice from dietician. Eldest was getting severely underweight at age 2 because of picky eating. Nursery were pretty flummoxed - they said not to worry, even picky eaters eat at nursery...... Nope. She'd eat nothing from waking until she got home at 7pm because she didn't like the food.

She's 7 now. She's still picky, but it's much less extreme. She always eats something from school dinner and she'll at least trt a bit of everythingon her plate at home. Still not many things she'll eat a lot of though and she's skinny but not quite underweight. We have "safe" foods at least 3 times a week to make sure her weight doesn't get too low.

Keep offering different things. Mine loves tapas. Also steak. These were NOT things I'd have guessed when She was little!