This can't go on. Does anyone else have a toddler who won't even try anything?

[Magneto]

And therefore will never get used to the taste of anything because I'm lucky if I can get food into his mouth once never mind ten times!

I have posted about ds's eating before but he's got worse now, he's 19 months old. We're now down to NO fruit or veg as despite asking for a banana or apple or even the mushed up fruit posts, he then takes one bite and refuses to eat anymore.

His diet is now consisting of weetabix, pasta, toast, milk, cheese, slices of ham and occasionally eggs. When he doesn't eat his dinner I have been giving him a slice of buttered toast so that he at least eats something, is this the right thing to do? I gave up trying to force him to eat anything months and months ago so if he doesn't eat it I don't push it.

I am going out to buy some vitamin supplements for him today because this can't be good for him.

How can I rehaul his diet? Are there any meal plans that might work? Please tell me this will get at least a little bit better! I don't know where I went wrong, he was eating fine until about 12 months when he just stopped.

Sounds like a tough situation, but one with hope! Seems like he's getting plenty of calcium, carbs, protein, fat and vitamin D in what he eats (and the weetabix is fortified with iron, isn't it?). Perhaps you could give him the vit supplement shortly after the weetabix so that the vitamin C can help to absorb the non-haem iron. I'm not a nutritionist or anything but because I have a son with multiple food allergies I've learned a bit about limited diets.
Is he drinking a lot of milk? If so, that may interfere with his appetite.
Also, is he going to nursery? My DS eats no veg (unless it's hidden in a tomato sauce) and only began to like fruit more when he saw other children at nursery eat it.
Unless your son shows signs of a mineral or vitamin deficiency (and your GP would probably be able to tell immediately even if you're not sure) then I don't think there's much to worry about at the moment...? But I wouldn't be shy about pestering your GP if you are worried.

I'm not saying this is what you should do, but its a relevant story. My best friend and I had our sons at the same time. Both were fab eaters right up till 18 months. Her son and mine both started to refuse foods. The difference with our reactions was stark. I would say ok then, if you won't eat the (previously liked) food, you can go without, and no pudding either. I was absolutely consistent about this. My son very quickly realised he was never going to get an alternative and after a few weeks gave up and ate everything given to him again. My best friend however would offer alternative after alternative until her son was pretty much only eating cheese sandwiches. She would get cross at me if I tried to tell her not to give alternatives and was horrified that I would let my child go hungry. Years later she is still doing this and is worn out by it. My son is now able to select his meals based on genuine likes and dislikes and is very open to new foods like curry, Mexican etc. My friend sees it as an achievement if her son will eat a different brand of frozen chip.

(I realise this makes me sound smug, but I'm not a perfect mum, for example I shout at my kids too much and am lazy with reading. I just know I got it right with the food thing).

My advice would be to offer the food and when its refused don't offer anything else, even toast. A child will never starve themselves, and will eat whatever you give them if hungry enough.

I forgot to mention that your son should only be having a single pint of whole milk per day including on his weetabix, so if hes having more your answer is there, he's too full from milk.

DD2 went to a phase like that, she is 25 months old now and getting better.
I completely ignored her, offered food small bits on a plate, always a bit of what we are eating + one thing I know she will eat.
A normal plate for lunch would be peas, pasta and fish. She would only eat the pasta but I refused to let her throw what she didn't like out of the plate I didn't care if she didn't eat it but it has to remain on the plate. (I had lots of spitting with I had to ignore too).

Have you try raw veg or tinned? DD2 still doesn't eat cooked ones, but will eat cucumber, RED pepper, carrot also tinned french bean for some weird reason. I offer the raw veg before lunch and dinner when she is still hungry and while she is waiting for me to cook. I don't make a fuss if she refused and eat it myself in front of her. "too bad it is good"

She has always like fruits so I didn't have to worry too much about the vitamins. Have you tried smoothies, ice lollies, sherbets?
Do you eat fruits? DD2 usually wants to eat what I have, if you bite into an apple or a banana does/will he asks for it?

I would let her come on my knees while I was eating and she is slowly tasting what I am having, she makes me taste and eat it first, and she has stopped spitting.

She is eating meat again and fish fingers, and magically today she ate about 5 bites of DH's salmon and broccoli quiche .

She was eating everything as a baby and it started to go down around 20 months, the worse was about 2 months ago when she would only have fruits, plain white bread, pasta, emmental cheese and plain yogurt (mainly to paint her face and leg with), and milk.
And some not good for toddler food: olives, cured ham (she loves parma ham ), salami, pringles, sausages, dark chocolate and chocolate cakes.

Good luck.

I'm not up to the fussy toddler state yet. But I've chatted to my mum and she said I was the fussiest toddler. She assure me to not worry about toddler fussiness. She always had bread for us if we didn't want to eat our dinners. Her theory is that, no one in their right mind will prefer plain bread over a tasty flavourful meal. On the other hand, DH's parents get all worked up on DH not eating his meals, cooking up alternatives, offering puddings as bait. I grew up to eat everything and anything, he's still fussy with food issues.

Actually I think my mums advice is very similar to BigusBumus. Try to not be upset about it, and keep offering the same family meal. Just to add the bread was simply there in the bread bin, it's never offered as an alternative to the meal. It's more like snack we can help ourselves to if we are hungry anytime of the day.

Thanks for the replies everyone!

Garliclover He has one 7oz bottle per night, plus milk on his weetabix. Until a few weeks ago his eating was so bad he had begun to wake in the middle of the night again for a bottle but we have weaned him off that now thankfully.

He doesn't go to nursery so doesn't get much of a chance to see other children eating well (he has young aunts and uncles but as they are all teens or preteens they hardly have the best diet in the world - ds can put away pringles and chocolate biscuits like there's no tomorrow thanks to them!)

BigusBumus (love the name btw) thanks for the anecdote it is really helpful. I will stop providing any alternative at all but I think I will keep including at least one thing on his plate that I know he will eat, even if it's only something small.

LeMousquetaireAnonyme I have tried so many variations of veg I can't even remember them all. Ds now picks veg out of his dinner and feeds it to me because I have shown him how very yummy it is so many times he seems to think I should eat his too

He always has to share the cereal dh and I are eating but he doesn't tend to be interested in what I am eating unless it's sweet/crisps, which is not very often anymore because while I have no problem with him having a little bit of cake or chocolate once or twice a week, I am aware that he won't want to eat normal food if he knows there are sweets around too. (I actually think my new treat free house is to thank for finally being able to fit into my pre-baby clothes!!!).

TerrorNova thank you too for your/your mum's useful advice. I do worry he will starve himself (which I know is silly) so I always feel I have to offer him something! I will never cook an alternative meal (I hate having to cook one never mind too ) but ds's meals have tended to be more picnicky lately as that's the kind of food he's more likely to eat. I don't think it helps that dh and I eat late most days due to work so breakfast has always been our main "family" meal.

Thanks again for all the advice, it has given me lots to think about!

This thread's been great to read, some really good advice. I have a DS (2.3) who is driving me to despair with his eating, or lack of it. It's got steadily worse over the past 6 months but he's now at the stage where he rejects all former favourites and eats cheese, yogurt, bread, peanut butter, porridge and rice pudding. Most of the time when he does eat it's just a few mouthfuls.

I've tried it all; if he goes to bed having had nothing he wakes up in the night crying and asking for juice. If I do offer an alternative he usually has a bite and then says he doesn't like it.

It's driven me to tears, although I don't let him see it. It's so hard not to get cross with him when I'm so worried and frustrated. I wish I knew what to do for the best.

You can try the "disguised the food" method too.
It doesn't work with DD2 but it did worked for a friend's very fussy eater. She used to put bechamel onto everything because her DD liked it so much. You can try cheese sauce, pesto, ketchup... Ralph I have seen a peanut "butter" sauce from a malaysian cooking book it might be worth a try?

DD2 actually prefers adult tasting food, with pepper (she has been found to lick the pepper grinder as a baby ) and salt (not too much but a tiny bit put in her hand that she is allowed to sprinkle herself, very important, and of course I don't put any salt in the cooking), and will taste curries, only the sauce for now but I have hope.

Also I know it is very controversial on MN and in the UK. But try to replace the cow's milk by growing up milk which has less protein, so is less filling, then you will be sure that your DC has enough iron, vitamins and omega 3&6. I was a bit when the pediatrician told me but it did work for the morning as DD is now having a bit of breakfast instead of just milk.

DS, now 18, spent about 6 - 9 months where he would only eat cheerios.

Iron deficiency was what the doctor worried about until I told him DS only drank soy milk as he came out in hives when he had dairy. There is very little iron in cows milk. I second LeMousequetaire's advice.

How much running about outside does he get to do?

I tempted DS back into eating by making things like scrambled egg or porridge or toast and peanut butter for myself for breakfast and giving him a mouthful if he asked, or the odd speck of dinner from my plate, and I incorporated lots of things like vegetable protein powder into muffins that also had finely grated vegetables (carrots, courgettes) hidden in them, plus molasses and ground nuts. I would have something like pasta salad with vegetables and a vinaigrette dressing, or a tuna salad sandwich for lunch -- finger food that he could manage but it was good for me too. I also went back to feeding him baby fashion if he wanted some food, from my fork, and I used to put two chewy vitamins on my plate at every meal until he asked for one. I tried all sorts of things just in case he liked something, a wide variety of fruits, and developed a taste for pickled herring as I went along...

I didn't serve him any food at all on his high chair, but would sit down beside him at the table with food on my plate and eat cheerfully and slowly. Gradually I would give him more than a tiny morsel, and I found he was interested in it more if he could use something like a toothpick to stab it with, or spoons from a play set of DD1's, or even my wooden spoons and measuring spoons. I found he also liked to have a snack if we were out at the playground. Maybe it was less formal -- who knows.

He never got to be a fantastic omnivore and had an aversion to vegetables that lasted years. However, when he hit his teenage years his appetite was phenomenal.

Ds drives me mad with this, especially as I suffered bloody BLW to end up here.

To be fair, he is good with vegetables and fruit, but otherwise his diet consists of either chicken or beef meatballs or sausages or white fish with rice (doesnt like potato or pasta). He eats the same thing, day in, day out. His sole acceptable breakfast food is bananas. He wont eat cereal other than dry, piece by piece. He wont be spoonfed or spoon feed himself except if it's a yoghurt. He doesnt like cheese or eggs

The most annoying thing is that whilst he is like this at home, if we go out (to someone else's house or a restaurant) the little ratfink will eat anything. He eats sushi FFS.

SO annoying.

There wasv a BBC programme called Fast Food Baby were a nutritionist and play therapist tackled children with narrow diets with freat success. See if you can torrent it. It appears on iplayer occasionally when they repeat it.

takes deep breath in anticipation of very long post

I know what you're going through. I have been in that exact situation. I'm not sure what use I will be as I continue to struggle but here we go...

Having previously eaten anything that was put in front of him then ask for more, at about 19 months DS1 had a 4 weeks bout of illness - cough/cold, stomach bug, another cough/cold & an awful bout of molar induced teething. Suddenly he would only eat white foods; pasta, cheese, bread, bananas, cereal, potatoes & occasionally beans. He stopped eating yogurt & other kinds of fruit too. I never offered an alternative; if he didn't eat it he went hungry but tried everything to tempt him into eating. Nothing worked. I hid vegetables in things which worked until he got old enough to notice the change in colour/consistency meant I had done something to it. Eventually I went to the HV who told me it was a phase & would pass & that actually because he was eating something from each food group his diet probably would not be deficient. Around this time I went back to work and my bloody soft touch of a MIL despite having strict instructions not to would offer him toast or cereal if he didn't eat his dinner. Raaaaging.

I have tried everything. I have bought books. I have implemented every suggestion or routine going. I have made food into patterns and faces and pictures on a plate. I have eaten with him, had him eat alone, in front on the TV, with the TV off. I have blended, hidden, bribed, coerced. Nothing. I went to the HV again when his choices had widened slightly who said the same thing. I went to my GP & begged to see a nutritionist/dietician, but because each food group was represented, he was within a healthy weight range and not showing any signs of deficiencies it was deemed unnecessary. So at a fairly hefty expense I took him to see a dietician privately who could suggest nothing I hadnt already tried & again said it was a phase & his diet wasn't that bad. He is stubborn as a mule.

Slowly though we have got somewhere. He is now 3.9 & every month or so he adds a new food to The List. To the white foods we've now got up to gnocchi, sausages, fish fingers, chicken, meatballs, spaghetti, beans, all fruit, chocolate flavoured yogurt, pizza, homemade soup, ham (occasionally), eggs & filled pasta. He eats much better when we eat as a family at the weekend and is now willing to taste things, although he makes a huge song and dance about it. I'm sorry if this is a bit negative, I just wanted to be honest and show you that sometimes you can do absolutely everything and it still makes naff all difference. One interesting thing I did read though is that it's evolutionary. Our neanderthal children would need something to protect them from ingesting things that could be poisonous and so they stop eating "new" foods. This made me feel a lot better!

Flossiebella, what a fabulous post. Really interesting, as well as entertaining.

I'm glad I'm not alone (but not happy that you're all going through this too )!

I think the catalyst was when he started teething at about 12 months. He went from eating three meals a day plus pudding to only eating weetabix and the 4 month plus jars of spaghetti carbonara (nothing else!). I'm sure it was obviously because his teeth were making eating difficult but I've had to work to get him back on lumpy food. I just never thought it would last this long.

I tried him on the growing up milk but he wouldn't have it. He was ff so I didn't think there would be much difference but apparently there is .

I completely sympathise with soft touch grandparents! My mother always brought a packet of quavers for ds when she was looking after him and I have it on good authority (my sister) that that's all he ate while with her .

I saw that fast food baby programme it was very good.

I will admit that I have even offered ds almost every type of fast/frozen food in an effort to get him to eat something... But he spat it all out probably for the best even the chips and gravy

bigus thanks. I aim to please