Picky 16 month old??

[NoSleepMum7]

Our son is 16 months old and has become fairly picky with dinners. During the day, he’s usually fairly good. He has breakfast which is usually a weetabix and some fruit, he has sandwich and some other fruit bits for lunch, he snacks a bit between meals as he seems quite hungry some days, but then for dinner he doesn’t want (and refuses to try) anything other than nuggets and bits like that.

Now, I am aware this is mainly our fault here for introducing nuggets and stuff to him, we started giving him those bits for dinner when we were moving house as the oven broke at our old house close to us moving and we didn’t bother getting it fixed as we wouldn’t be keeping it. Because of that we ended up just doing him basic stuff like nuggets and potato waffles or smiley faces, that kind of stuff, that we could do in the air fryer. I really regret even starting to offer that kind of food but now he’s super picky over dinner time. He will eat nuggets, sausages, waffles/faces/alphabet potato bits, sometimes pasta, and he will eat things like carrots but overall he refuses most other things and starts to really cry or throw a tantrum when we try to offer anything else.

I made a cottage pie tonight for us all and he just would not touch it, we tried feeding it to him
and he just kept turning away, crying and screaming. I’m cautious of not wanting to make dinner time a bad thing to him, so I don’t want to try and force him to eat things if he’s in that state. My husband however thinks he should eat it and kept trying to put spoonfuls in his mouth while he was upset, which I stopped him from doing as he then got to the point where things he would usually eat (watermelon, his favourite) he ended up throwing too because I think he was just too upset to really understand what food was what by that point.

my husband says (and I’m sure this comes from the in laws) that he HAS to eat decent food or he can’t have anything else, and that he’s just spoilt. I know he has to eat proper food but I don’t know how to go about getting him to do so and I’m just not comfortable leaving him to go hungry if he doesn’t eat what we’ve offered because he doesn’t understand that yet. What is the best course of action with this please? And PLEASE don’t go too hard with abuse over starting those bland unhealthy bits in the first place because I’m already blaming myself and regretting it, I just need to know how to start changing it :(

Well your husband is completely in the wrong and shouldn’t be trying to force feed the poor child whilst his mouth is open from crying!!

A couple of initial thoughts: at the end of the day he might have tapped out his calorie needs having had a good breakfast, lunch and lots of snacks. Plus he’s also likely to be tired, by dinnertime especially if you’re mid the 2->1 nap transition that is typical around this age and/or he’s newly walking.

Firstly, I would cut right back on the snacking. Only one mid-morning, one mid-afternoon. Healthy if you can, realistically I know that sometimes if you’re out for the day packets that can sit in the bottom of your bag are easier, but a snack is 1 item only so 1 banana between breakfast and lunch, 1 pack of veggies straws mid afternoon (for example). Then if you can I would introduce new stuff, or stuff that you might think would be more of challenge, at lunchtime. At every meal make sure there’s something you know he’ll eat on the table but let him decide what he wants to eat, let him see you eating all the foods but don’t pressure.

And most importantly don’t worry about it- remember fussy toddlers are very, very common but truly fussy adults are actually pretty rare. Plus what he is eating so nuggets, sausages, carrots, watermelon, weetabix with milk, carrots, potato products, fruit tick pretty much every food group and he’s got variety of tastes and textures. Yes ideally you’d be enjoying your homemade shepherd’s pie together but it really isn’t that bad and he will almost certainly outgrow it. My 7YO was worse than that as his age but is super adventurous now.

I agree he is probably over food by the time you are trying to feed him in the evening. No one needs to eat their largest meal at that time, so look at what he is eating across the whole day. It is very common for kids to stop eating much variety when they become mobile, but they usually expand their repertoire again as they get older.

Also, remind your husband that nobody ever learned to love something if it was shoved in their mouth while crying! It would greatly increase the chance of choking however.