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 :(

I would either stop giving snacks or heavily reduce them or give normal food things for snacks that would be a part of dinner any way, like a snack of chicken breast or a bit of rice with veggies he sits and eats as a snack. I would go cold turkey on the nuggets etc and only have them very occasionally. This is my technique and (perhaps luckily) have two good eaters.

No snacks close to mealtimes and throw out the nuggets etc. He's 16 months old not a stubborn 4 year old. This is your chance for him to forget about those foods altogether. Bin the lot and serve him whatever you're having.

He’s is just a baby! Your husband is being an idiot here, trying to force feed him is just going to cause upset and then food into a battle.
What I have always done is make a meal, everyone gets the same thing, we sit and eat together. I never fed my dc just pop it in front of them and let them eat it(or just play with it), I make sure there is something they liked included in there, be it peas or some garlic bread or whatever. If they didn’t eat it that’s fine, I would clear it away after a reasonable amount of time, no cajoling or making a fuss.

Another thing you could try is to do dinner type meals at lunch when he may more relaxed and less tired.

Keep introducing new flavours and textures. When mine were small I tried to introduce at least one new thing each week. They still love to try new things now they are tweens/teens.

My DD went through a picky stage. I started serving all our meals buffet style at the table. For example, bowl of pasta, bowl of salad, bowl of sauce, plate of bread, bowl of grated cheese. Then DH and I would tuck in and wait for DD to point to what she wanted. Sometimes all she'd want was bread and carrot sticks and that was fine. We didn't make a fuss as long as she ate something. She gradually got better and wanted to try more of what we were eating. Apart from a weird phase around age 4 of refusing to eat anything made of potato (even chips!) she ended up a really good little eater.

And yes, as PP had said, your husband is a prick for trying to force feed him. Serving what you're having isn't the same as making him eat it. Just have healthy food on the table and let him decide what he wants to try. Your husband is making food a traumatising experience and compounding the problem.

Your son is 16 months old. He's barely existed on this planet and your husband is attributing intentions and feelings to him that he's not capable of. Just have healthy food around your child, no expectations, no pressure, model healthy eating, and leave him to explore. And remember, his stomach is only little. Let him choose what he wants to eat from the healthy food you've put on the table.

Don't overcomplicate it.

Do kick your husband in the bollocks for being a bloody idiot though.

Thank you for all your help - we’re going to throw the nuggets and try again tomorrow with less snacks in the day. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t being too sensitive about it all, I don’t want to make food a negative thing for him and I told my husband that too, so told him to stop trying to force our son to eat. I figured he was in the wrong mindset to be trying food he hasn’t had in so long after he started getting upset. I do think that the in laws have said something (my husband hasn’t said as much but I know what they’re like and they were both over there for dinner yesterday), so going to retry tomorrow! Thank you again, the advice has been super helpful ♥️