toddler food

[danmae]

my little boy was always a great eater, enjoyed a healthy balanced diet.

when he was 18 months i had my dd and he became very picky in what he would eat. some days eating well, others refusing. i know i gave in to him and would give alternatives ie banana on toast, fish fingers, sausages. things i knew he would eat.

now i am at the stage where he will only eat thing like smiely faces and fish fingers or saugages and wedges or waffels with a good whole grain cereal for breakfast bananas, apples or raisans for snacks and bread and butter. no veg.

i am making stews, fresh fish, pasta for my dd who will soon turn 1 and crap for 2.8ds

both myself and dh are a little over weight but not obese since we hit our 30's and i am so worried we are giving him a bad start.

until now we have been of the opinion that him eating something is better than nothing and agreed that we would not make food an issue but we are now thinking since he has not come back to eating with the rest of the family eat of offering him no alternative.

he is stubborn and will prob only eat breakfast and super for a few days. i know this will do him no harm but has anyone else tried this approch? am i better to go with the flow and hope he will eat better when he see his friend at school eat a varied diet

he is a happy healthy boy, normal weight, very active so am i fussing over nothing?

Hi.
I was in a similar situiation up until recently.
My ds1 was a very good eater from a baby. I fell pregnant again when he was about 7/8 months and then got lazy with food and gave him fish fingers/nuggets with waffles every night.
I got to the stage where I decided this just wasn't good enough.
I started cooking proper family meals, we all started eating at the same time, at the table.
8 months later, we are still having a few issues but he is getting so much better.
There are no alternatives, if he doesn't eat what I've cooked, then he will be hungry.
I also don't give too many snacks through the day and strictly nothing after 3:30pm (dinner is at 5pm)
Your ds will get used to it. It will be hard for a while but once he knows you won't give in and get the fish fingers out, he will eat.
Quite recently, my ds1 spent just over 2 weeks having a bowl of cereal and yoghurt at breakfast, for lunch he had a few cubes of cheese, a handful of grapes and that's it. Dinner was "yuk" and he refused to eat it.
he is getting the idea now and I'm finding overly praising when the littlest bit goes in his mouth is working, but I don't put any pressure on either.
I put the plates on the table, and tell him to eat his dinner, I'll say that once and then it's up to him.
I read somewhere that it takes someone 62 days to starve to death, so both my ds and your should be just fine.
Goodluck

It isn't about food it is a control issue, he has reached the age where he has realised that he has the control.
Take all emotion out of it and do not discuss it at all. Serve up what you are having and if he doesn't eat it let him get down. Don't coax him, get annoyed or even mention it. DO NOT serve any snacks (other than possibly having fresh fruit available). If he moans about being hungry just tell him calmly and unemotionally that you are not surprised, he didn't eat his dinner and change the subject. Serve the next meal and do the same. He can't argue if you refuse to argue. He will not starve. Once he realises that you mean it, he will eat when he should eat. Let him have control by having things in bowls to help himself-e.g. put on his own potatoes.

I see that I cross posted with silverymoon to the same effect. He really won't starve-try it.

thankyou both, "yuk" is a favored word in our house too.

i will do the eat or starve thing. money is tight at the moment and i make good food a priorty. it's heart breaking to see it go to waste when he would benifet so much from it.

Bless him, he wont know whats hit him today.

My ds1 is really fussy one day and fine the next, can't remember where I read it, but twas a doctor saying loads of kids only eat peas and bananas fruit and veg wise, my boy does love fruit so try to push this.

Also I do the tomato sauce for pasta and pizzas with carrots, sweet potato and blend it all up. I know it sounds strange but DS1 loves garlic and have friends whose kids are the same so roast stuff with garlic.

Saying all this, we seem to live on fish fingers and pasta.

And it's the law that if you have spent time, love and care preparing a special meal you're sure they'll enjoy, they'll turn their noses up at it.

danmae How did dinner go?
FWIW I get really frustrated when I've spent an hour cooking dinner and good knows how long menu planning, but the way I try to think is that it won't be forever.
Sooner or later, it will all work out.

What I'm doing atm is keeping a track of all meals that the whole family are enjoying and putting together my own recipe book.

My DS is 16 months and has started to be a lot pickier. I'd be totally up for doing the "eat this and no alternatives" thing, but it does mean he's either up screaming in the night because he's hungry or up at 5am for the day for the same reason. Has anyone else found a way round this? Or maybe 16 months is too young to start playing hardball?

My ds2 is 14 months and I do the same as with the older one.If he doesn't eat his dinner, he doesn't eat it.
He has 8/9oz of milk before bed though which seems to see him through regardless.
If he is up through the night, I only feed him if we are up for a 2 hour block as a last resort.

You are a stronger woman than me, SilveryMoon, I've always gone with the "whatever gets the most people in the household the most sleep". the thought of a two hour block awake makes me quake in fear! Must think long term...

It can be hard going! Sometimes if my dp is working nights I put whichever child wakes up in my bed and they settle quickly, and then I move them back to their bed.
The only reason I do the feeding like that with ds2 is because I really don't want him to get how ds1 is and if I was to give ds2 something else, I'd have to give ds1 something else too.

There was alot of pressure put on me to eat as a child and I really won't do that to my children. i still now vividly remember how much I used to dread meal times and how much I hated my parents at dinner

The rule here is that I decide what they eat and they decide how much they eat.

this was not good. not a bit passed his lips at 5pm asked for a pancake and banana which i refused. i simply said this was tea [spag bol which he used to love] and he would get nothing else. tantrum, tried to leave table, put him back and told him he had to sit until everyone else was finished weather he ate or not.

could not keep him at the table. just put his tea in the bin when every one else was done.

found him drinking dd's bottle at 6.30. cried at 7pm that his tummy was empty. made him porridge. felt sorry for him. could not send thim to bed hungery.

silvery moon i like your recipe book idea. might steal it.

I saw a supernanny episode where this boy would not eat what the family ate, only bread and butter. Turns out, his mother kept feeling sorry for him, giving in to his tantrums and feeding him the bread and butter. Once she stopped this, he started eating normally after a while.
Have yet to try the hardball approach myself, but I've heard it can work.

i know i was backing down and he won the battle. any other time of day i would have made him wait until his next meal.

bed time is 7.30 -8 in our house. would anyone really send their child to bed hungery. he would have been hungery as he had cheese on toast, yougart and an apple at 1.

I think that it was a mistake to keep him at the table. It was getting emotion into it and making it a battle of wills. I would just let him get down without comment.
If it was spag bol I think that I would have kept a portion back and then when he said at 7pm that his tummy was empty you could have said calmly 'I'm not surprised, you didn't have the spag bol-would you like it now?' and heat it up. If he refused it at that point then -yes I would send him to bed hungry because it was entirely his choice.
Keep one step ahead so that you win! In fact for the next few days I would plan the sort of meal that you can offer again later.

danmae Personally, I don't allow any crying, tantrums or whinging at the dinner table. If ds1 doesn't want dinner, he can get down from the table and I tell him to sit on the sofa.

I also find letting ds1 know what is going to happen helps. When I am cooking, I call out to him that dinner will be ready in 10 mins. then dinner will be ready in 5 mins and he should start putting some toys away.
When I've dished up, I take him to wash his hands and then he sits at the table before I bring the meal out. If he then doesn't want it, he can get down and we ignore him. We tell ds2 and each other (me and dp) how good we are being eating our dinner nicely and ds1 gets ignored.
If he comes back to the table, I ask him if he wants to eat some dinner and sit with us. I tell him what a good boy he is for coming back to the table.

I know it's not nice to send them to bed hungry and I do feel sorry for my ds1 sometimes, but they really will learn.
be strong, or trust me as someone that used to do it to my mum, you will be making him food after dinner time for the rest of his life!
Once my dad moved out when I was about 11, we got away with murder because my mum allowed it. If we didn't want dinner, she'd cook something else.
Up until I moved out at 22.

And yes, I have sent my ds1 to bed hungry many times. It will not do them any serious harm and they really will learn. Like I said before though, he still has a cup of milk while I read them their story.

I agree with Silverymoon. Don't let him manipulate you-he was the winner of that round! You wanted him to eat his dinner, he didn't-he wanted something else and he got it. He also got the attention.
He will only go to bed hungry once and it won't hurt-be ready with a big breakfast.
As the adult-plan ahead. At this stage, when you are breaking bad habits,plan the meal so that he can have it half an hour, an hour later. Don't argue, don't discuss just keep calm and sound mildly surprised at his choices.Tell him that you cook the meals and he has the choice-he takes it or leaves it-but not in a confrontational way-just as a calm statement of fact.