Toddler very limited diet

[Correlation]

Hi all
My youngest is nearly 20 months and up until a month or so ago would eat decent meals and veg. Now he will only eat the foods from the list below (and it is shrinking all the time). I've tried to be relaxed about it and I don't let him see that I feel anxious but it's starting to really bother me. Can anyone offer some advice please? Should I be seeing the GP ?

Readybrek or Shreddies with whole milk
Plain digestives or oat biscuits
Those kids' veggie straws
Hula hoops if I let him
Fish fingers
Breaded chicken breast (sometimes)
Completely plain pasta
Bacon
Frankfurters (sometimes)
Plain rice (sometimes)
Pears
Apples
Sweetcorn
Cucumber
Yogurt
He will occasionally drink whole milk from his cup but rarely

Thanks in advance

GP won't care with a diet like that.

I'd bin the biscuits and crisp snacks. Do not replenish them. Serve whatever you're having for lunch and dinner with some fruit and veg that he likes on the table too. Leave him to it. He eats or he doesn't. Don't make anything out of it- nothing positive, nothing negative. The food is simply there. Chat away about other things, anything but food.

This has taken our toddler, who was exactly the same, to one who now eats what he's given. If we have curry and rice and he only wants to eat the rice, that's fine but I'm not serving anything else. He now eats all sorts of things he didn't before.

Bin the snacks.

Thanks for the reply @Yourethebeerthief
Just wondering what you do/would do if your toddler ate nothing at all that was on offer? We've had meals where I've served at least one thing I thought he'd eat and it's all ended up on the floor or just completely untouched. In those circumstances I've made him some Ready Brek of given him a yogurt...

We've been there. I really do get it. But it's easy to forget that they only have little stomachs. My son will happily fill up on snacks and not bother with meals whereas he has friends who will eat all the snacks and the meals. So we ditched the snacks as they were just empty calories.

I finally saw sense and binned every processed toddler type of snack (seemingly healthy or otherwise) and just feed him breakfast lunch and dinner. If he chooses not to eat anything for dinner, that's fine. He goes to bed and survives until the next day. He does that sometimes still and usually the next morning he eats a big bowl of porridge and then wants something more. A lot of young children stack their calories at the beginning of the day and progressively eat less. Sometimes my son eats a huge amount for breakfast, bit less for lunch, then little or nothing for dinner. It doesn't matter. Their appetites are not linear and it can be feast or famine. Let them trust their own appetites, not what you think they ought to be eating.

Now that we've cracked it and his eating is better I've eased up on snacks. But instead of the stuff marketed as for toddlers he has fruits, cheese, rice cakes, humous, sugar and sweetener free yoghurt pouches and so on.

I would go cold turkey and start eating whatever you want for breakfast lunch and dinner. He eats it or he doesn't. Have fruit and veg about that he can freely eat when he pleases.

My son is now 3 and will say "I don't want X for my dinner."

I say "that's fine, you don't have to eat it if you don't want to but this is what we're having and I'm not cooking anything else."

8 times out of 10 he'll eat it or at least some of it. The other 2 times he survives on a cup of milk until the next morning. He's perfectly healthy and full of energy.

We don't ever force him to eat anything, say "if you eat this you can have a pudding", try to cajole or encourage him, or negotiate with him "just 3 bites". It's simply "this is what we're eating for dinner, if you don't want any you can go and play" and we stay at the table and eat without any further discussion about food. There is always something he will eat if he's genuinely hungry. Today it was chicken fajitas with guacamole and corn on the cob. He ate a little of the chicken, a couple of wraps, and two corn on the cob. His choice.

And when it's his favourite dinners like spaghetti bolognese, or soup, he scoffs the lot.