2 1/2 year old

my baby used to eat EVERYTHING i gave him but since about a year ago he got REALLY picky. now all he eats is fish and more fish, rice, bread, crakcers, cookies (plain is what i give him), cheese and more cheese, apples, bananas, peanut butter, milk, juice, and sometimes chicken nuggets and pears. no meat, no veggies, not any other fruit. thats it. he recently started to not eat lentle beans which was his favorite (he ate that at least 2 times a week and wouldnt eat rice). spaghetti he loved to and now doesnt want that anymore.
everyday its so stessful.. how can i get him just to TRY other things? how should i react when he decides not to eat? do i not give him anythiing else xcept water til he eats what he has? should i jus give him what he wants? should i let him leave the table? should he wait til im done eating at least?...AND SO ON...:wall:

This will be interesting as I am having the same problem though not to your extent. My little boy has suddenly decided not to eat anything orange so no carrots, pumpkin or mandarins etc. Oh, and yes, if I put them in his potato etc, he won't eat that because now his potato is orange!

Any hints/tips would be extremely welcome.

Hi,
My eldest child would only eat peanut butter. I took him to the doctor and he said if he wants to eat peanut butter than let him eat it day and night he will soon get sick of it.
So I did and he eventually got sick of it and wanted to try something different.

Cathie

at 2.5yo, if they are hungry they will eat.
But often they will seem to eat like a sparrow. Some days DS barely eats anything at all. There are only a couple of things he regularly, like eggs, which he has never eaten if he knows what they are. He'll eat quiche though!?!
Probably start by talking to you dr if yu're worried it is or may affect his health.
If you want to take away the food (if he refuses to eat it) do that and let him know thats whats for dinner/lunsh etc, but dont get too outwardly upset or make a huge deal out of it, or he may start to do it to elicit the reaction from you?

What do you do when he doesn't eat his meal? Do you then give him something he will eat? If so, I would stop doing that. I made that mistake with my first son early on and we got to the point where he'd only eat about 6 things. After getting a lot of advice, I started giving him meals (or snacks) and if he didn't eat what he was given he didn't get anything else. It didn't take him long to work out that if he was hungry he had to at least try what he was given. As it turned out he actually like most things he'd been refusing, he just wouldn't try them when he knew something he liked was always going to follow. Kids don't starve themselves, they will eat what they need. HTH.