Quick question: how do you deal with it when 10mo refuses food?

[BotBotticelli]

DS always been a good eater and has enjoyed a range of finger foods and spoon fed food.. He is now 10mo and is largely served the same as what DH and I eat for dinner. Trouble is, he has suddenly become very opinionated and liking/not liking foods.

He has taken umbrage at a few things I have served him recently (smacking spoon out my hand, throwing finger food on floor, shouting, spitting out very deliberately!). Just wondered how to deal with this? Should I offer an alternative or should I just clear away the food, knowing that he will be hungry later? Seems cruel to let him go hungry but also don't want to get him into habit of thinking that if he kicks up a fuss he will eventually be brought a hot cross bun or something he really likes!

And should I just keep offering different foods? Ie it has got to the stage where all he will eat in a sandwich is dairy lea...other cheese, ham etc all get spat out and thrown around. But don't want to just given him dairy lea every day :( gah, this used to be so easy!

Ps - please don't suggest that I give him more milk feeds, or not to worry cos he gets most of his nutritional needs from milk...unfortunately he has not read the current guidelines and has very definitely/wilfully dropped all but 2 bottles of formula per day and cannot be persuade to drink a bottle at any time other than on waking and going to bed (yes am giving vitamin drops and make lots of dairy rich meals for calcium).

I have tried to be led by him during this weanin process and he is a very strong willed/spirited baby...once he decided he no longer wanted his mid morning bottle (7mo) and mid afternoon bottle (8mo) there wa really nothing I could do about it :(

Bump. No one?

DS became very fussy for a while when he was about 1. Like your son, he was a good eater till then so I was pretty sure it was fussiness rather than a more fundamental issue with food. My approach was not to react, and I just cleared away the food calmly. I've never offered an alternative but I did offer pudding (fruit or yogurt) regardless of how much he ate of the main course.

With new foods, I kept offering them but I made sure there were also things on his plate that he liked (or at least, that he liked last time I offered them...!) So in your sandwich example, I would do a small one with Dairylea and a small one with something else.

Thankfully it was just a phase for DS and after a couple of months, he started eating a bigger variety again. Until the next phase anyway

My ds is 9.5m and like this. I think it's there age. I try and preserve a little bit and probably react too much. I offer somethings else savoury and then leave what he has refused for a few days and then try it again. Like the previous poster I always offer A pudding but do try to get him to have something savoury first as I find he tends to gobble the sweet stuff up when he didn't want the savoury. Sometimes I end up offering 3 things but if he eats none of them I leave him with nothing.

if doing blw I offer a selection of stuff he likes as well as new stuff.

i just cleared it away.
figured they'd have enough milk to make up for it later on.

don't go down the route of offering various different options, they soon learn that if they spit it all out they get their fave and then it's very hard to persuade otherwise!