‘Meal’ implies microwave?

Do they cook from scratch at nursery? It might just be nicer.

Taxi to the orphanage without delay.

my dear old mum adopted the eat it or it goes on your head approach. Only carried out once but worked a treat.

That was before child-centricity took over mind

I think there’s a point when they are supposed to be fussy eaters from an evolutionary point of view. It stops them eating all the random stuff they start picking up as they become mobile.

Its just a phase , try not to worry and avoid making it an issue , if he/she is eating plenty at nursery all is good.

If she’s eating a few mouthfuls and then refusing, at least she’s trying. You need to reward that rather than get frustrated with her for not eating any more. Maybe introduce new food as “here’s a spoonful of something new, once you’ve had that you can have a big pile what you like”?

16 months is very young. I’d respectfully suggest that the worst thing you can do is make a big deal of it. Further reading:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/fixing-a-weird-relationship-with-food

We’ve got a 16 month old – first thought was that your description of a “normal” day of eating today at home isn’t that far off ours – how much more are you thinking she should be eating? New stuff, yeah it does seem to take a while. I probably only introduce something new maybe twice a week and a fair bit fails to impress her (unless it’s cake-based, but I can’t count that!)

My experience of nursery feedback of how much they’ve eaten can be variable too. Their view of “eaten loads today” might not be the same as yours?

We also leave her to it for a bit and expect some meals may take a while and lots will be played with or just flung! I tend to give it a good while with the thing she doesnt want to eat before I try anything else (if I’m worried she needs more, teething is putting her off, etc) and try not to just revert to the Soreen straight away, cos she loves that but I doubt it’s a good idea to raise a child on it… 🙂

I wouldn’t be particularly worried though – from what you’ve said it sounds like most of the 16 month olds I know. I suppose it’s just finding an approach that works for you and you are happy with, nutritionally.

😀

Ours went through it, she was a sod – I reckon we’d get one decent meal into her every other day if we were lucky.

Few things:

In hindsight when she wasn’t eating we’d let her graze during the day because we were glad to see her eat something, anything.

Re: Nursey, ours ate ‘most’ or ‘all’ most of the time, however turning up early now and again whilst they were eating showed it was a total bun fight (literally) and you couldn’t really say who’d eaten what and when. I read ‘all’ when I’d seen “a little bit, a bit more fed to her friend, some thrown on the table”.

She grew out of it, eats like a trooper most of the time now.

Oh and PS with 20-20 hindsight is avoid offering them more and more choices until they eat something, it will only end in snacks and sweet stuff which just makes it harder to get them to eat proper food. If they don’t want it, just leave it. No small child is daft enough to starve themselves because they’re being awkward.

/\ may not be best placed to offer advice on this…. 😆

Are you matching the mealtimes that the nursery do? We had similar issues and particularly with dinner, we were doing it too late – tiredness just made it worse. Moved lunches forward to 11:15ish, and dinner to 4:45-5ish and immediate improvement.

We don’t do milk at bedtime, only first thing in the morning. And no dessert/yoghurt unless she’s finished, or at least had most of, her dinner. We have a “you don’t have to eat it, but there’s nothing else” policy. If they’re hungry, they’ll eat. I suspect that knowing a yoghurt and milk are still to come before bed allows a lot more fussiness.

Don’t go too bland with their food either, ours loves a bit of spiciness and I think by that age we were mostly making curries and the like for us just toned down a little (and without the salt – we’d add it to ours later). Their tastes change by the week though, so just because something was rejected in the past, do try it again after a little break.

Fret ye not, sounds pretty normal, the nursery eating sounds familiar too. Often kids eat more when there’s others doing the same.

Kip Jr is 7 and a bit now and eats just fine but I remember worrying about it loads back then ad well. Turns out that actually, yep, kids will usually eat if they’re hungry.

Bear in mind that allowing a child to stop eating when they feel full is healthier than making them clean their plate too.

FWIW, she’s better than I was at 12.

You’ll figure out pretty quick what are the foods they genuinely won’t tolerate if you take this approach.

That’s right. We had this problem with our first. My grandmother took a look at him and told us he’s not skinny, he’s just not hungry. A hungry kid will eat.

So don’t stress on it. Every kid goes through it. No need to over feed them or turn food into an issue.

They’ll anything when they’re hungry. You don’t like it that’s fine, don’t eat it. There’s nothing else.

Wouldn’t have worked with me. I’d have starved to death.