17 months refuses dinner. Fussy eater?

[sharanb]

 

My little girl Madison is 17 months old and for the past 2 months has been refusing dinner. She is great at eating breakfast, fussy at lunch and refuses dinner. 

For breakfast she will normally have milk and 1 slice of toast with Marmite. She always eats all of it.
Then for lunch she will typically have something like this:- chopped up ham, fruit, 6 x chocolate buttons and some cheese
Then at 3pm I will try and give her a yoghurt but she mostly wont want anything.
At dinner I put her in her high chair and have tried to spoon feed her and as soon as i put the spoon near her she turns her head and says NO. Without even trying it, but she will have a look in the bowl first. I have also tried finger foods for dinner, mini hot dogs, small potato etc but she will just squish these in her hand and then drop them on the floor.

The only food I can guarantee she will eat at dinner time is Weetabix with warm milk or porridge but I can't keep giving her these.  I don't know what I can do to get her to eat properly. It's not even as if she is snacking too much inbetween meals, as some days she will have hardly eaten anything for lunch, refused a snack at 3pm and refused dinner again at 5pm, so the only proper meal she will have had was breakfast.


Can anyone give me some advice as I don't want her to not eat enough.  If my 4 year old was doing it I would tell him if he doesn't eat dinner then he won't get anything else to eat, but you can't do that with a 17 month old yet I don't want to have to keep on throwing food away and making different food all the time.

[Lolly]

My DD is 17 months too and we definitly have better meals on some days. Tonight she has had a few mouthfuls of mash and not even finished her bed time bottle so she really can't be hungry. She is also refusing to be spoon fed unless she decides to ask for help so all her food is self fed now - gotta love toddlers self feeding weetabix .

How much milk is she having during the day? Could that be filling her up a bit? How much is she sleeping during the day, could she just be too tired by tea time to be bothered to eat?

Laura

[anna*]

Id also try moving her main meal to lunchtime - lots of times LOs are just too tired to eat properly by the end of the day.

[momtonb&ab]

I was going to say as Anna did - often by the time of day they can be too tired to eat. Move the veg to breakfast if you have to and let her have toast and marmite for dinner if need be.  As she gets bigger she will grow into it more and have more stamina ( although even at 3.75 our LOs are still really tired at dinner some nights)

[sharanb]

I don't think she is having too much milk that is filling her up as she only has milk first thing in the morning when she finishes a 8oz bottle and then again before bedtime at 6.45pm when she will only take 2-3 oz if we are lucky (even if she hasn't eaten dinner).
And I also don't think it is a tired thing as she has one nap a day at 12.15 - 2.00pm. I give her dinner at 5pm so she has only been awake for 3 hours.

I have just tried to give her her evening meal for lunch to see if she would take it at a different time and once again she turned her head and said NO then started crying until I got her out of the high chair.

She is very independent and was wondering if it could be a wanting to feed herself thing but she take weetabix and porridge by spoon easily.  I also gave her mini hot dogs yesturday and she just squished them in her hands and then played with it before throwing it on the floor. Not one bit went anywhere near her mouth /

I really don't know what to do. Meal times are so hard, especially with 2 children to feed.

[anna*]

Honestly, I'd just give her finger foods and leave her to it. She won't starve herself. Put a few bits on her tray (not too many), then walk away and let her get on with it, dn't hover, don't watch, if she doesn't eat then get her down and don't worry about it.

I KNOW this is easier said than done - nothing makes me angrier faster than mucking about over eating - but I do also know that the less attention and fuss I made over mealtimes, the better my LO ate. She's just getting on for 18months too which is when the real battles of wills start, so I would seriously recommend just removing this ias a source of conflict. You can't force her to eat - all you can do is offer her food and trust that she will feed herself when she's hungry.

[Lolly]

I agree with Anna - they won't starve themselves however frustrated we are at the not eating and messing around. Have you given much finger foods so far? We started with DD around 6 months and really everything she has is finger foods now, she can use a fork and she can feed herself things like custard,yoghurt and cereal.

I have to let DD do it herself as she just point blank refuses any help and I'm not going to battle her on it. What sort of foods is she eating at the moment?

Laura

[sharanb]

I know what you are saying is true. It's just hard and you do worry when they are little and don't eat as you don't want them waking early in the morning because they are hungry. She has had finger food for a long time now but mostly at lunch time and spoon fed at dinner as it was always something sloppy. I'm going to make pancakes later and hopefully she will have some. I think I need to stress less. Like you say she won't starve herself.  :0)

[Lolly]

It is hard - I still stress about how much she eats (she's on the 91st centile so clearly wasting away ). It does amaze me that some days she will literally have 1 bite of something for tea, maybe a small yoghurt, only drink half her bedtime bottle but still sleep through. I think I read somewhere that their tummies are about the same size as their fist, so it really doesn't take a lot to fill them up!

Laura

[anna*]

((((hugs)))) believe me, we really DO know how hard it is. I think there is something instinctive about it, which makes it so hard to ignore when they're not eating. A survival thing, mama bear making sure her cub eats.

For us, the key thing was to stop watching him. If he got any hint that I was checking up on how much he was or wasn't eating it was game over and he wanted down from his high chair. If I just left him to play, eventually, sometimes, some of it found its way to his mouth.

[momtonb&ab]

Everyone has given great advice here. I am still a little stuck on the tired bit. 1hr45mins seems low for a 17 month old nap-'could the morning ew be OT related ( followed by a realization the she is hungry)?  How is night sleep?

[sharanb]

She never has been a good napper since birth. She wakes at 7.30am and bed at 7pm. She will not nap in the morning, just lays there and screams until you go get her. This is what seems to work for her as if she sleeps later she isn't ready for bed at 7pm.

[sharanb]

Well today for dinner gave her 2 potato smiley faces and a chopped up hard boiled egg.OMG the mess she made and not one bit managed to get to her mouth. All got squished and flung on the floor. Then she used her hand to wipe it all around the high chair top and even in her hair. Still lost on what to do. Not going to make a big deal though.

[BeasMommy]

I have a 14 month old and have just been through the same problems, flatly refusing to eat, squishing, throwing etc.... until I discovered she wanted to feed herself, not finger food, but with a fork! Clearly been watching us eat and decided that she wants to be a big girl. i'm 'allowed' to help her by putting the food on the fork, but if I try to put it into her mouth she closes her eyes and shakes her head until I give her the fork. We even have to eat a sandwich with a fork at the moment!

Needless to say, mealtimes are time consuming at the moment, but she is eating!

Just something else to maybe try.

Jennifer