I’m sure this is something every parent goes through, but my daughter has never been the best eater and my wife and I are becoming increasingly frustrated at the situation.

She’s quite a small thing for her age – not worryingly so, but she was only 5lbs 15ounces when she was born and she’s still small for her age.

ATM her general routine is as follows:

7am – 6 ounce bottle of milk
8am – half a Wheetabix with cows milk, half a slice of toast
12:30pm – ham and cheese sandwiches or 8 small sausages (which she loves – seems to be the only thing she wants for the last 6-8 weeks. Any more and she’ll turn into a bloody sausage!) 2 yogurts, half a banana
5:30pm – typically pasta bolognaise or more sausages, followed by 1 or 2 yoghurts and then maybe some white chocolate buttons or some skips/quavers
7pm – another 6 ounce bottle of milk

There are days where she’ll eat everything you give her, but other days when she just doesn’t seem interested.

Some friends have said that when kids start walking and discovering etc, they aren’t interested in sitting and eating as it’s just not fun.

On the whole she seems really fussy, which is a problem in itself. But my mum said from 2 years until I was about 14 all I wanted to eat was bread and butter and I turned out OK (6ft 2″ and 13 stone).

Anyway – any advice from the STW parents? Please!

I’m no parent, but that doesn’t sound too bad to me… Ive had a fair few young cousins-ish and they’ve had massively varying fads, whims and moments.

I read the title initially as 17 YEAR old daughter… and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of 17yr olds ate less than that lot!!!

My little girl preferred self catering, and insisted on browsing in the kitchen bin for tasty morsels :o) There’s nothing wrong with not eating if you’re not hungry, and a bad idea to teach nippers to override this instinct!

Just don’t worry about it, some days she’ll eat, some she won’t, don’t make it a big deal, I feel it can become an attention thing rather than a food thing, like she’s showing you who the boss is.

No two year old ever died of hunger if food was on offer, be firm, don’t let her win – the food on the table is what’s she’s going to eat. If she doesn’t want any, no problem: but that’s it until next mealtime. No biscuits, toast whatever between meals!

That said, don’t go out of your way to put food you know she won’t like on the table, and don’t feel massively guilty if every now and then you let her win!

I’m not a parent, but that seems not too bad, from other people’s kids I’ve seen.

Is she very lively, or more of a quiet sit-and-thinker? As long as her energy levels seem ok, then don’t worry too much. That’s quite a few calories she’s having. If anything, cut out the sweets, and definitely the crisps, and get her onto dried and fresh fruit. Pieces of peach and strawberries go down well, this time of year! and a lot of sausages have a fairly high fat content, so again, full of calories. I hope you’re grilling them!

And are you feeding her fruity sweet yoghurts? Maybe try natural yoghurt, with honey or jam mixed in. Try and keep her away from processed foods, and steer her towards more natural stuff. More easily digestible and broken down into essential nutrients.

She sounds ok, though, really!

but that’s it until next mealtime. No biscuits, toast whatever between meals!

I think this is unnecessarily restrictive. I eat when I like with scant regard to mealtimes, which are modern artifact …

yeah, but you’re an adult, not a 17mth year old…

Well, physically, maybe, mogrim…

Sorry for long answer but by coincidence, I was at the Children’s Food Festival yesterday with the family and we saw a demo and Q&A session by Annabel Karmel who is (one of) the gurus of children’s food / eating.

Her exact take on this situation is that kids if pandered to will home in on about 3 foods that they will eat to the detriment of all others. Over time these 3 favourites may change but if left unchecked, they’ll resort to about 3. And as she says, currently my 3yo will gladly eat pasts with grated cheese on top for every meal, refuses to even consider just about anything else, but thankfully will eat soft fruit by the pound as well (strawberries, raspberries…)

According to AK, dish up a variety, at the meal table at meal time, let her take it or leave it. If she says she isn’t hungry, fine, don’t force it. Let her go and play and take the food away. Don’t give in and automatically go back to what you know she will eat; and later on when she is hungry, don’t give in and snack her until next mealtime. Put up with the complaining and then serve up a meal at the next mealtime. She’ll do well to turn that down if she’s genuinely hungry, but if she does, she clearly isn’t that hungry yet.

No child with access to food ever starved themselves; what you need to rid them of is their own habits which you are mainly to blame for giving in to. There no problem really with the food she has settled on, but obviously not as every meal, so don’t feel you have to cut them out completely, just serve them up as often as they’d appear on a normal meal rota.

Day 1 of the regime today. Lunch was spaghetti admittedly, but with a proper cheese and vegetable sauce. Tea was barbecue with home grown new potatos. She didn’t wolf it down, but whe it was made clear that was all on offer, knuckled down and ate some, which is already better than most days.

Good luck!

And the plane needs to land on the runway… worked for me!

just read SfB’s comment – yes that is true and there is a lot to that, just eating what you want when you want instead of at 1230 ‘cos that’s lunchtime.

Unfortunately that’s not the way the world works, and we do have mealtimes. The answer to that is you shouldn’t force yourself to eat a full meal at lunchtime every day if you aren’t hungry since that isn’t healthy either but you need a balance between a ‘grazing’ diet and a 3 meals a day regime….

The issue here isn’t whether we are really desigend to work on a 3 meals a day system, it’s more that AB’s daughter needs that routine and periods without food to understand the process and then you can relax it as you choose.

I’m more of a hunter gatherer, actually. I’d happily kill and eat a whole cow, sleep for 12 hours and then go and kill another the following day . Except instead of ‘kill a cow’ I mean go down the Hong Sing Palace and load up the car!

According to various things we’ve read you should view your toddler’s diet collectively for the week as opposed to each day as it will all even out over the course of the week. They’re a bit like hamsters and store up their food for when they need it. They have some good days and some bad days. Also, at the moment, the heat will zap their appetite.

If there are a few things she likes then try and ‘enhance’ it with healthier stuff.

Ours (20mths) sounds just like yours and it is, on the whole, pretty normal so don’t freak out. We even watched her devouring a roast dinner complete with seconds of broccoli when, in the past, she’s refused the exact same platter.

Guys, my wife and I have just read this and feel very reassured. Thanks for all your advice and for letting us know that this seems (on the whole) pretty normal.

theotherjonv – think we’re going to try and take some of those tips onboard and see how they go.

Thanks again folks – it genuinely never ceases to amaze me how useful (and funny!) this place is! 🙂

Im quite shocked you didnt get flamed for feeding your baby crisps and chocolate every day! 😀

A fave trick of mine is to sit down with a bowl of something you want her to eat (usually fruit) and start eating it whilst ignoring her, but making some ‘ooh this is lovely’ noises.

It’s never, ever long before she’s up wanting to devour all you have.

My advice – she’s doing fine for her age, don’t stress it.

It would be lovely if they all shovelled in raw organic goodness in all it’s forms, but very few kids are like that in real life. As for the sausages, when Jnr went through that stage, we made sure we only bought good quality ones and not cheap ones with who knows what in! Cost us a fortune, grown ups had some great BBQs though!

He still won’t touch fruit of veg willingly, not even juice, except raisins and yoghurt coated fruit chips. We still put pureed pear in his cereal, (he’s now 6), and he will eat peas and carrots under protest with lots of ketchup. And he drinks a lot of milk still

You can hide a lot of pureed veg in a bolognese sauce, mind!

As insurance, he’s had a kiddies multivit since he started school.

Unless the health visitor starts tutiing at slow growth patterns, I’d not worry about yours one jot, though I share your frustration.

(The good news is babyswadey has my genes dominating, and will try and eat anything once, and has a taste for fruit and most veg!)

AB, that’s absolutely fine mate! She sounds like she’s getting all the calories she needs. Our son ate much more sparsely than that until he was about 24 months, got bags of excercise every day, and still stayed bang-on average weight for his age and birth weight throughout that period.

Without a doubt, however, he ate better when we just let him get on with it and stopped fretting.

Interestingly, a doctor friend’s son refused to eat very nearly everything but bread and honey for about two years, and he turned out just fine…

Good luck!

chill out, she’ll be all good.

Same as Nobeer here,if they ignore it, they’ll soon be back to eat when everybody else is in the kitchen having some food. Our little man has a spell of eating very little for a week and then whole horses go missing after it’s over. If they’re hungry then they’ll let you know, usually at 3am IME 😀

We started sitting the slimtubling at the table with us at roughly that age and feeding her what we were eating, fantastic improvement in eating habits. She felt all grown up and wolfed down all sorts of meals that previously were ignored.
What you describe as her daily intake seems ample TBH, as mentioned above, some days they just don’t seem to want to eat, don’t fret unless you can play a tune on her ribs!

Analysing your list of your daughter’s diet you appear to be feeding her a diet based around fat, salt, sugar and other cabohydrates. Summarising your list:

milk (fat)
processed breakfast cereal (sugar, salt, crap additives)
bread (I’m guessing white sliced)
meat (fat)
cheese (fat)
banana (sugar)
yoghurt (fat)
chocolate buttons (fat, sugar)
skips/quavers (fat, and crap additives)

There is another food group known as VEGETABLES which you might want to explore as a source of nutrition for your offspring – Google it if you’re not sure what they are

eldridge – thats a really constructive and grownup way of putting your point across

Smear everything with Nuttela, kids are mad for it!!

meikle_partans

That’s a really interesting forum name. What does it mean?

I’m guessing Scottish (meikle = mickle, as in little? partans = parts, as in genitals?)

Whatever. Someone has to be a bit grownup and point out to the original poster that a bit of research into kids'[ dietary requirements might precede ignorant postings on here

Guys thanks again for the useful posts. Mrs AB and I are feeling a lot better about the situation.

Special thanks goes to eldridge – being both sanctimonious and sarcastic in just one post clearly took a lot of effort, but demonstrating you are quick to resort to name calling in your last post shows you are clearly in touch your inner 12 year old. Well done!

AB
Our daughter was 4lb4 when born and she is now 6 and still only weighs 16kg and is small for her age along with being stick thin. We have had real concerncs with her eating seeing dr’s and helat advisers and where we have ended up is we give her the food she asks for and let her decied how much she eats and don’t comment or nag if she doesn’t want to eat. We do priase her if she does clear her plate. The only time we now have issues is when she is at her childminders as (understandably) they have less time to just let her get on with it.

my grandad had a technique called ‘like it or lump it’. you get so hungry you eat anything, including sprouts

We make the twins meals on a sunday for the week in advance, its a really good way to get the variey of food sorted in one go.

This week they are having Cod and Sweet potatoe, chicken and veg stew, Carrots, Mangoes, Avacados.

We live by Annabel Karmel at the moment, brilliant book

However I am considering Frying up the huge chip on eldriges shoulder as a family treat for the weekend

Nobber

Hi AB, Bit of a hyjack of the thread, but please review what you are feeding your little girl. She has no idea that crisps and chocolate are not normal food, and will harm her.

Do your best for her and cut out the junk immediately. Also look seriously at the amount of dairy. I hope she was breast fed previously, but after that, dairy products are setting your child up for alergies and health problems. Dairy is not necessary, it’s for baby cows, forget the nonsense you might hear about calcium and stuff. It’s a (hugely effective) dairy industry marketing campaign.

The most important thing isn’t how much she eats (that will sort itself out without you needing to worry), it’s WHAT she eats.

Chocolate might be a hugely useful tool in your future armoury if kept only for VERY special occasions.

I could go on for hours, but will stay off the really big soapbox. Best of luck with the little one.

Rgds

Whatever. Someone has to be a bit grownup and point out to the original poster that a bit of research into kids'[ dietary requirements might precede ignorant postings on here

Quality post, thanks for that. While your point is valid, a few extra vegetables would be really nice we’re talking here about changing habits so she will start to eat them. AB’s hardly claiming it’s a sensible diet for life, and I’d have said (for once) that the majority of postings included sensible grown up advice even if that advice was not to fret unduly about it.

As for your list, another take might be…..

milk (fat) – protein, calcium, essential for growing bones.
processed breakfast cereal (sugar, salt, crap additives). It’s weetabix FFS, not Coco Pops. Fibre, grains, roughage?
bread (I’m guessing white sliced) – maybe, you can get some excellent ‘seems like white but contains a lot more goodies’ stuff now – Best of Both for example?
meat (fat) – protein
cheese (fat) – calcium, protein
banana (sugar) – it’s fruit FFS. Do you only see the problems?
yoghurt (fat) – Not necessarily, there are some great kids yoghurts, Fromage Fraise, etc. giving yet more calcium, fruit, etc.
chocolate buttons (fat, sugar) – every kid needs a treat now and then. Keep the teeth clean afterwards though
skips/quavers (fat, and crap additives) – as above.

Perhaps to round this off you might like to summarise the daily intake for your kids when they were 2, so we can see exactly how high your moral high ground is?

dairy products are setting your child up for alergies and health problems

Do enlighten us further?

meikle partans = big crabs

for what its worth eldridge i agree with you that kids should eat as much good stuff as possible and as little bad stuff as possible but why reply to someones honest question by just putting them down and being sanctimonius.

this thread started off as good advice and it will descend into a slanging match where people put across unproven nonsense about allergies etc etc and all the boogie men of modern parenting when the actual truth is it will probably all turn out alright in the wash.

dairy products are setting your child up for alergies and health problems

oh and definitely dont give your kid the mmr cause it will definitely get autism

children actually need more fat than adults anyway, it’s an important part of their diet – full fat milk, yoghurts, cheese etc is good for them. Also apparently they need to be offered new food quite a few times before deciding they like it so it’s important to keep putting things on their plate even if they don’t eat it.

Most importantly though, don’t worry too much. I ate nothing other than bacon, primula cheese sandwiches and chocolate pudding for about 5 years. Drove my parents up the wall. Now I will eat anything and everything. She’ll get there in the end.

Hi Theotherjonv

“do enlighten us further”.
This is a tricky forum to summarize what is really a whole life outlook eh? This guy (see link) is over zealous, and I wish to say he doesn’t sum up my entire view on the matter (I ain’t no vegan), but he does have some very enlightening pointers.

I also have made a personal observation over my childrearing years that the “snottiest” kids we see about us are invariably also the largest dairy consumers. (Snot is just one way of getting rid of toxins, just as happens when you get a cold. – In this case the toxins are ingested, frequently in the form of excessive dairy which the little child’s body is reacting against but continues to be fed it)

http://www.notmilk.com/a.html

As others have said just stop worrying about it. Our son ate very little for the first few years, some days he would eat virtually nothing. He’s 11 now, very healthy and eats will.

whenever someone starts talking about ‘toxins’ you know to start ignoring them completely.

moutaincarrot can i make a wild guess that you have absolutely no scientific background or understanding of human physiology and are willing to base all your opinions on random internet junk and personal observations.

Read some of this but at work so can’t read it all.

My tips would be

1. Relax – they will sense your frustration and either play on it to get what they want or get stressed over eating which leads to all sorts of other problems.

2. Have a structured meal times. We have Breakie at around 8am, snack about 10am (Strips of vegs or biscuit or pitta and houmous or banana), lunch at 12.30 then snack mid afternoon and dinner at 6pm. Routine is key as it will get their metabolism in order and they will know what to expect when.

3. No snacks outside of their mealtimes – it’ll turn everything to crap if you do.

4. Put dinner down and if they don’t eat it, don’t make a fuss (very important) just leave it with them for about 10mins (or until they throw it around) then if they don’t start / finish eating it then move it away – you can try to feed them if you like but don’t make a big issue of it. If they ask for what they prefer (sausages) then say “no, eat your dinner” and give them their dinner back. If they don’t want it and refuse dinner then get them down from the table – bit of tough love and they’ll soon work it out that they have to eat what is put infront of them. If you give into them then while you will be feeding them up for that one meal you’ll also be creating a rod for your own back without resolving the problem.

Mainly I’d say relax, lay down a routine and take control.

Oh, and buy Annabel Karmel’s book – she is awesome!

My 6yr old was always a picky eater. He had his favourites which thankfully turned out to be full roast dinner type things. I dont think he has ever eaten a sandwich and only recently did he start eating finger food like sausage rolls etc. He refuses to even enter macdonalds 🙂 It got a little worrying but we decided that as long as he ate a full meal, we didnt push it.

His sister is another kettle of fish. If its edable, she will try it, to the detriment of having a full meal and just picking at food. Is she any worse for it? Not at all. Is meal times any harder? Not at all. Its just that we are much more relaxed with her and mealtimes are fun.

We only have 1 rule with regards to eating (Aside from good manners)

If a plate of food is put in front of you, if you dont finish it you dont get pudding. I dont care what the excuse is i hate to see food thrown away. Same rule for myself.

With regards to your little un. Isnt she a little old for bottles of milk? Some kids find it easier to just insist on the milk rather than make the effort with food.