Refusing to eat

So declan turns 3 next month and he refuses to eat anything that isn't Fruit, Bread or Snacks which is either Shapes, Strawberry Chew or LCM Bars. he gets 2 of those a day...1 at morning tea & 1 at afternoon tea along with the usual fruit.

For example:

Last night we had little red sausages with Dinner Rolls(DH FAV) he screamed and carried on the minute i asked him to eat the sausage, tried with and without the skin on but still carried on.

Tonight we had Lasanga, he used to eat it but the usual scream and carry on and at one point threw the fork at DH.

he has been doing this for nearly a Year and im sick of it. we tried just ignoring him when he wont eat it and he doesnt get anything for the rest of the night, we tried making a game of it.. like the whole airplane thingy. tried bribing him with yummy desserts and nothing has worked..

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE share any tips you have..or what you do with your toddlers

TIA
Cate

I don't have any advice but am going thru this with DS also! He is 18 months and I just dread meal times!

I try a variety of different foods cooked different ways, I feed him, I let him feed himself....I'm about to tear my hair out with frustration!!!!! Is this going to get any better or is he just going to be a grazer of an eater for ever???

I will be watching to see if anyone has any great ideas to get him interested in food!

What about vegetables?
GS loves going out to the garden to pick peas and beans to eat straight of the plant. Also grape tomatoes, not to keen on the lettuce and loved the carrots when we grew them.
Try using a grain bread.
Don't worry, he won't starve, they never do. My MHN said to give the girls bake beans when they wouldn't eat years ago. I used to mix things (small amounts) in with the beans and got food into them that way.
Smoothies and juices are another good way to get a bit of substance into them
Frustrating I know and you are offering healthy food so don't stress to much. :)

what is he like eating during the day??

maybe fill up those feeds, give him his dinner at lunch...

DD has just turned 2 and she eats like a little bird at home but at childcare she will happily eat seconds! Maybe we don't serve meals up to her standard :lol: It makes me worry sometimes but she eats fruit, fresh and dried, and has a little something during the day, just not a proper meal.

he will happily eat anything i mentioned above during the day, but if i offer him Lasanga thats in the fridge(which im gunna do tomorrow) he usually has a big sook and tells me he isn't hungry or he doesn't want that/doesn't like it..which is the most common saying..even tho he has never tried half the stuff.

Is it all meals that are causing a problem, or mainly dinner time? My DS tends to be fussier at dinner, generally because he's tired, but is usually pretty good during the day. So maybe make lunch his big meal of the day and just let him go with the flow at dinner time perhaps?

The other thing I do with my DS is to say "this is dinner" - if he says he doesn't want it, that's fine, but there's nothing else for him to rely on, so he knows not to hold out for something better IYKWIM. It can feel like you're being really mean, but the power struggles will probably stop when he realises you won't give in. If I'm concerned that my DS has been really light on for food during the day, then at most I'll offer yoghurt or smoothie before bed. But that's it.

I've also found that there are pay-offs for having him "help" with dinner as well, it can take more time, but if I'm cutting up salad for example, I'll casually offer him bits to taste, which can be a sneaky way of getting extra food into him as well. And it helps if he sees me snacking on these bits too.

Good luck though - they can be determined little creatures ;)

Just a quick one, have you tried the 'if you have 3 mouthfulls of lasagne you can have x,y or z'. It works wonders with my neices, then as they cotton on to the negotiating you can gradually increase the number of mouthfulls.

Just dinner time causes heaps of problems.. tells me he is SO HUNGRY and then when we sit down to eat weather its at the kitchen table or in the lounge room he wont eat.

We tried offering a bigger meal at lunch time.. even if its something that we would usually have at dinner he will still carry on :(

I always say if u have some of this then u get jelly,fruit,chocolate etc but nope doesnt work.

im just so stuck with him.. If he doesnt eat dinner then he doesnt get anything for the rest of the night..i feel bad and if he hasnt eaten enough during the day i sometimes give in.. but im just gunna keep stocking him up during the day and not worrying if he eats dinner..but im gunna keep offering him a "dinner" type meal at lunch and then again at dinner.. he will HOPEFULLY eventually get the point.

Thanks Ladies

Our standard fall-back is vegemite toast. I refuse to cook different meals. Ds gets dinner put in front of him. If it's something he hasn't had before he HAS to try ONE mouthfull. If he doesn't like it he can have a piece of vegemite toast. We used to do the go to bed with no food but found he was waking up at 4am starving!!!

Good Luck!

My DS1 was similar. At 15 months all he ate was sandwich, weet-bix, banana, cheese and yoghurt. He'd refuse anything else. At that stage we saw a paediatric dietician and MCHN who recommended that we offer him what we were eating, and if he refused he got nothing else. We'd also been giving him too much milk, so we cut that back, and also gave him vitamin drops as they can stimulate the appetite.

It was really hard to not give him anything else. He'd been so used to knowing that if he held out he'd get yoghurt or a sandwich, but amazingly it only took a couple of weeks before he realised that what was in front of him was all he was getting, and he was trying things he'd always refused before -and shock horror, he even liked many of them! The day he actually asked for salad I was sure my son had been kidnapped and replaced by an alien. Especially when he ate it all and asked for more!

One thing I have learnt over the years is that you can never fully understand or guess what your child will do next. Food is a great mystery in this regard. What they ate yesterday and loved won't be eaten today because it's "yuk" or they 'don't like it'.
Our standard line a few years back was "what's for tea" with my reply "yuk" but they ate it as that was what we were having.
Will he eat the food off your plate, as I sometimes found they would eat what was on your plate but not theirs even though it was the same :rolleyes:

My son is the same. All he'll eat is Porridge with mashed banana, sultanas, apple, grapes, vegemite toast and home made fried rice!!! I'm going round the twist! I offer him whatever we're having for dinner but he 9 times out of 10 refuses what we're having, so he has porridge with mashed banana instead. I'd rather he has something(it's pretty healthy too) than nothing and be hungry and wake up 500 times a night for extra bottles. hopefully it's a phase and he'll get over it soon.