Hit a brick wall - 12 months

[DeepDeepFlavours]

Need some advice please - DS is now 12 months. He used to eat quite well and would try most things although he has never been a great eater and never seems to be that bothered about food.

Now at 12 months he is becoming very fussy. He has started to only eat about half a Weetabix for breakfast, doesn't eat much for lunch and eats generally OK at tea-time. His food intake has halved in the past month but he weighs 10kg so a normal weight.

In the past 4 weeks he has started to refuse all fruit (previously he loved fruit). He won't eat pureed fruit and refuses to eat any fruit finger food (apple slices, banana slices). I've tried mixing fruit in with other things (custard etc.) but the little minx somehow knows and turns his nose up.

Refuses anything new (cherry tomatoes, strawberries etc.) he just touches them to his lips, gets a look of disgust on his face then throws them on the floor. They don't even make it into his mouth. He is OK with the HIP jars and sachets of Ella's kitchen. But now only eats half rather than the full amount. Same with our home cooked food.

I'm really at my wits end as he is only happy when eating toast, fromage frais or chunks of cheese. He would happily live off them and I'm worried about giving him too much dairy. Does anyone know if this is normal and do you have any new tactics I can try? Thank you!

my ds is the same but he loves fruit and hates veggies. he used to eat everything then one day he just decided he wasnt going to anymore. i think try and alternate pudding and not always give a yoghurt because they soon know they always get a yoghurt even if they dont eat anything.
i change what ds has for pudding from fruit, biscuit, yoghurt ect.
cc crying? i dont understand how such a young child will understand the consequence of not eating a main meal then letting them scream.
if my ds does not eat his dinner then thats it. he will eat when hes hungry and it goes up and down day by day.
one day ds will hardly eat anything then for a few days hes pigs out on everything.

To the OP just out of genuine interest how much do you put on dd's plate? maybe she's not being fussy maybe she could just be full? think i remember reading somewhere a long time ago that a newborn baby's tummy is the size of a walnut so i'm guessing a 1yr old's won't be that much bigger? I think the key is to try not to make a fuss about it with her, sorry if this sound's patronising it's not meant to, I speak from experience as a mum of 2 fussy eaters x

Using food as a reward is a really bad idea. As is generally associating food and emotions. Food intake naturally drops in many children. You can make it a battleground if you like but you're setting both you and your child up for some deeply unpleasant times. I struggled with dd1 but then rationalised that the limited food she was eating covered her basic needs and eventually things would change. I strongly recommend others do the same.

pink4ever - what, plain yoghurt? Really? Or was it sweetened yoghurt, or those petit filous things that people call yoghurt when it's not [pedant]

FWIW DS eats loads of plain greek yoghurt (massive tub from Lidl only lasts him a week), he rounds off most meals with it, and even if he hasn't eaten much he gets it anyway. What's the point in making him go hungry?

DD is 13 months and will only eat food she can feed herself - she's mastering a fork but not interested in a spoon.

this is all very well but she has started waking for a midnight feed and is waking for her 7am feed at 5am!

Any advice? I was thinking of reintroducing the daytime bottle of milk but not sure if that is just prolonging the problem?

hahahah i would love it to be, but unfortunately there is no roundup this week...

Queen I totally agree. Very unlikely to be plain yoghurt. My ds is also a Greek yoghurt fiend - the more fat the better! I think it is an excellent food, but then I do also give him things that others would be about, like liver, cod liver oil and bone broth.

because you are living in 1880, ginnie.

Using food as a reward is a really bad idea. As is generally associating food and emotions. Food intake naturally drops in many children. You can make it a battleground if you like but you're setting both you and your child up for some deeply unpleasant times. I struggled with dd1 but then rationalised that the limited food she was eating covered her basic needs and eventually things would change. I strongly recommend others do the same.

Completely agree.

Yup agree with above. CC for not eating and refusing to give food is just plain cruel.

Expecting to eat a "plateful" as a baby is just nuts too. When a teen is learning to eat politely at dinner parties, yes you eat what is on your plate. When you are learning about good eating habits, stopping when you are full etc being told to eat everything on your plate and using food as a reward is just setting your child up for eating issues later on in life.

Poor child :(

I don't think anyone should ever be told to eat everything on their plate. You eat til you are satisfied, no more. That's how people end up overweight. It sets bad habits.

Thanks for the advice everyone....good to know I'm not alone! I'm continuing to offer all the normal stuff and patiently cleaning up when he throws it off the tray.

Just to clarify, I (the OP) am not the CC advocate...that was someone answering the thread. Whilst I don't agree with CC a hungry baby I can see why the poster would get frustrated and resort to desperate measures...even if it isn't something I would personally do myself.

Ah yes. He only gets his cod liver after his daily two hours in the pram down the bottom of the garden.

Ahem.

arf.

DS got really fussy from 12 m.o. after previously eating anything except chilli. He refused all veg from then till 15 or 16 months. I just kept offering what we were eating, and if he didn't want dinner, would offer a nutritionally equivalent alternative e.g. crackers & cream cheese. At around 16 months he started eating veg again and has become much less fussy since. He's never actually asked for crackers & cream cheese, and now at 20 m.o. it would be very, very rare for us to offer an alternative.

Oh my goodness I am SO glad to know I'm not alone. DS is nearly 14 months and has always been a little star- eaten everything, finger food, fed himself from early on (only getting yog or reddy brek on a spoon from me) -and suddenly he wails the moment he goes into his high chair (JUST when we start eating, of course) and then on and off the whole time. He even refuses his favourite foods (PB on rice cracker, yoghurt, reddybrek). I was just starting to get worried when I saw this thread! He drinks a lot of milk, but really eats in little fits and starts, if at all .. .he's eating maybe 1/2 to 1/3 of what he was putting away a month ago.

I know, in my saner moments, that he's a big, big lad and won't waste away. He's a very happy boy (when not faced with food) and always on the move, and he's still filling nappies like normal.... I am also vaguely reassured that he still breastfeeds and therefore is not likely to actually starve. But OHGOD he's gone back to waking 3 to 4 times in the night to feed, and I am KNACKERED (work ft) and ohGOD my bm supply has gone back up too. I'm facing leaking for the first time in maybe 9 months.

Sorry. Epic post. I wonder if the food thing is the sign of some other upset (he's gone back into nursery after having the summer at home) - but he's definitely also teething - chews on spoons, drools, will often be halfway though eating something like a rice cake when he spits it out, rubs his gums and cries.

I am resolving to NOT push food and him or hover anxiously. . . I hope I can manage it! It's so hard at suppertime to not get frantic cos I'm so tired and I look at him, knowing he'll wake up soon if he doesn't bloody eat something, and argh. It's not like I could force- feed him even if I wanted to! (which I don't, just to be clear).

This will pass, right? Right?

right. [confident]

but remember to try picnics on the floor. sometimes they can just go off sitting at the table as well.

I'm hearing you OP. I went through this with DS 3 years ago and DD who has always been a star with eating has started getting fussy, particularly with veg. Even her favourites like corn on the cob. She has barely eaten a thing today and totally refused tea, screaming as I tried o put her in her highchair. Pretty sure she is teething though as I can see one on its way and she has been unusually clingy. All she ate today was weetabix and yoghurt. I guess those foods don't hurt to eat. dS would only eat yoghurt when he was ill or teething.

Pudding in our house is usually fruit and or yoghurt. I see them as nutritional and not neccessarily treats so eating first course is.not compulsory. I can't believe anyone would use CC with a baby / young toddler in relation to food. All they know is the here and now and have no idea that the reason you are not feeding them when they cry is because they refused tea. They won't learn to eat their tea from it. They'll just learn that no matter how hard they cry they won't always get their needs met. I think too often we put adult logic onto young children and think they should be able to think through consequences and come up with the appropriate action. But they don't think, they just are. Sorry, gone all waffly there. Just saddenes me to think of a hungry baby being left to cry to teach it to eat its meals.

I have had a breakthrough with DD (14m)

She will eat if walking around (not ideal but she eats!) and a new trick is if I lay out a mix of food on the tray (fruit, pasta, meat, veg) she eats the bits she loves (fruit and broccoli (oddly)) and then absent mindedly eats some other bits

Yes- Aitch and Digging - I think there's something to be said with DS not enjoying his highchair at the moment.
DH is away for a bit so we're not all eating together anyway, and tonight I put him in his highchair at tea time (in from a hot hour at the park) and he drank a glass of milk and ate a bit of quiche. When he started chucking grapes and tomatoes around, and then yelling, I thought "why not believe him? Do I want to teach him to eat even though he's not hungry?" and lifted him down. All (relatively) calm. He wandered off to get some toys, while I had MY dinner, then when he came back and looked interested again I gave him his pudding (plain, wholemilk yoghurt, mmmn) and he scarfed down a big bowl of that.

Maybe it is teeth related. Pretty much everything he wants to eat is soft. If stuff is harder (even stuff he likes) he's often bit into it and then cried.

Poor wee man. I hope these bloody teeth come through soon. I can't see them.

Hello another poster thinking thank god it's not just me here!

DD woke at 2.30am tonight, and here I am nearly 2 hours later still awake

Food has been very up & down recently & I'm so pleased to hear I'm not alone, my2 closest friends with babies the same age whoof everything down!
DD is nearly 11 months old, has 8 teeth but I'm starting to wonder about the ones at the back, she's spending a lot of time fiddling back there & does seem to be in pain at night too.

I'm so glad I found this thread I just started one fairly similar. DS is 11 months and currently refuses savoury spoon food. He also seems to avoid vegetable finger food preferring fruit. Am I OK to just give him finger food for the time being?

DS is eating quite a bit now, it's just the highchair he spurns (and screams and thrashes in). He eats bite-size or fist-size chunks of whatever I'm offering him, while on a steady trot through the flat.

my place is a tip -a crummy, smeary tip. But he's eating, and the dog is happy!

I know this post is getting a bit long in the tooth but as it relates to my question I don't want to start a duplicate one. My DD is 13 months and we've been doing BLW. She is still BF too which I understand is quite normal for BLW and we co-sleep so she night feeds but I don't mind. However she seems to be eating less and she chucks most of her food on the floor which is really frustrating, seems like she's going to be relying on BF forever! Me and DH are butting heads as he sees her food flinging as naughty and wants to tell her off as she looks at him to see what his reaction is to it. I'm inclined to think it's best to ignore it so she doesn't learn to do it to get a reaction. Any advice would be gratefully received- and no CC please!!!

Maamaa you are right to ignore food flinging. If she gets any reaction, whether positive or negative, she is likely to repeat the behaviour over and over.

Try finding something positive she does at mealtimes instead and give her lots of praise for that. For example my friends son has Downs Syndrome and is a constant food flinger, recently they've been advised to only give him attention when he speaks or eats at mealtimes and guess what, the food flinging has almost stopped.

Can see your frustration with your DH though, mine really doesn't get positive parenting and its one of the only things we fall out about.

As for eating it could just be that she is getting most of her calories at night so there is not much of an urge to eat. I co-slept too and moved both of mine out at about that age. It was more to do with the fact that they both stopped sleeping properly at that age and wanted to play!

There is some info here on helping to deal with the all night feeding or have you considered night weaning?

As for the food just keep offering her a variety and praise her when she eats. She won't be like this forever and she is still so young and you know you are doing the right thing, take a look here at some of the advantages