Tegan I was going to say with Matilda's dinners it was all behavioural. I know Lily's strong willed as well and does quite a few of Matilda's tricks. With Matilda we developed a 20 minute strategy. We offered her one meal and made her sit in her high chair again and left it for 20 minutes, if it hit the floor we picked it up & offered it again & if she threw it a second time it went into the kitchen & she was taken out of the high chair. We showed no emotions. I developed a great poker face where if she threw it & I would be super angry at her after fixing something special for her. I would walk into the kitchen out of eye sight & breath for a minute & then come back indifferently and say "oh well, try again & if you won't eat it goes away. Too bad you must be hungry, and mummy would really love for you to eat." We also stopped all snacking unless she was really hungry and then we would offer a meal only. We didn't look at the clock... just offered her a meal when she was hungry but no snacks.

The only other thing we did was start eating together, some nights that meant DH eating dinner at 5.30pm when he walked in the door with Matilda and sometimes it was everyone having a great meal together, but it meant a more social eating, sitting together at the table. She enjoyed that a lot more.

I hope something there helps!! It is so extremely frustrating when they won't eat, for some reason that is what gets me upset more than anything else. I guess because Matilda is lean and I worry about her loosing weight, but when it is a behavioural response you have to address it differently than if its an illness or molars or something like that.

BTW this advice was given to us by our Triple P consultant because it all happened around the same time as those extreme tantrums.