help!! all my ds wants is weetabix, he wont eat anything else!!

[4 under 5]

ladies im getting worried about him. hes still 3 very back teeth to get- but his food habits have become really bad.

he wont eat:
cheese,
ham, chicken, any meat
tomatoes
eggs,
potatoes
any veg really ;-(


he will eat
weetabix
bananas
youghurts
rusks
porridge
cheerios,
basicially he will eat cereal and dosent want to eat dinners at all.

i am so fed up throwing good food out because he wont eat anything. im so worried hes going to stay like this.

[Shiv52]

What age is your LO?

The best advice with eating and toddlers is to provide healthy meals and provide a good variety of foods, some you know he'll eat some be may not and if he eats great, if not fine. I would not be providing meals and then if refused make something else. It can lead to lots of control issues with food in the long term.

I would offer weetabix once a day and then just offer what you normally would.  There are other strategies but it depends on the age of your LO.

Hugs xx

[4 under 5]

thanks for your reply. he will be 2 at the end of october. i am hoping it just a long phase :-(

[Shiv52]

By this age I would be providing normal meals and not offering cereal if he doesn't eat.  Offer some things he will eat and may eat.  It may take a good few days for him to realise you aren't providing alternatives but he will get there. 

Any teething going on? 

[4 under 5]

so offer him dinner, if he dosent eat it, dont give him anything else then offer him something else at our next mealtime?

hes getting his last 3 back teeth. dosent stop him from eating chocolate the wee monkey

[Lemonthyme]

Yeah I remember reading somewhere that with toddlers the idea is to give them a choice but make sure you're happy with whatever choice they have, e.g. you can have a sandwich, some pasta or some sausages and vegetables iyswim?  Not that I've really got there yet.  With my (nearly) 17 month old, I tend to give him multiple courses, so something savoury, some fruit then sometimes a (sugar free) cake or cheese but the decision on what he has is more to do with the overall nutrition of the meal rather than whether or not he's eaten everything.  Some days he has it all, some days he only eats part of each bit, some days he refuses the savoury.

[We Three]

Yes..I agree.  Put 3 or 4 things on his plate, the thing you KNOW he will eat, then 2 other things that he SOMETIMES eats, plus one thing that he refuses most of the time.  Just to get him used to seeing it, maybe he will touch it, examine it, whatever...that's all great! 

  Will he eat macaroni/pasta? Will he eat pancakes/waffles? Toast?

[Etsy]

Hi. This is all too familar to me. My now almost 3yr old!!! sounds scarily similar to this. including what he will eat. I have tried putting new things on his plate with things he does like. He gets so upset that he wont eat anything until I have taken the offending food off his plate! He takes one look at something and says he does not like that, without trying it. I was wasting so much food. Any tips or ideas would be really appreciated. I would leave him if he does not like the food but can i really send him to bed with an empty stomach! He eats a cooked meal at school with no problems. Teacher assures me its because all the children are eating?

[anna*]

My guy is nearly four now but since he was about 2.5 we have had a rule that he has to taste everything on his plate even if he doesn't eat it. We make a game of it and we have set steps that we go through, and a song (from Yo Gabba Gabba 'Try It, You Might Like It!'). The steps are so that he doesn't just have to put a new or suspicious food right in his mouth and eat it. So:
First we touch it and say how it feels (hot, cold, wet, dry)
Then we smell it
Then we pick it up with our fingers and kiss it
Then we stick out our tongue and lick it
Then we put it in our mouth and take it straight back out again (might do this a few times)
Then if we've got this far, we'll put in a tiny bit and eat it.

If after all these steps he really doesn't like it, he doesn't have to eat it!

But to answer your question Etsy yes you can send him to bed with an empty stomach! Try it and see, my LO has never woken from hunger in the night since he turned about 18 months or even less. If you discover he does wake from hunger you could give him a banana right at bedtime and don't let it be connected in any way with what he did or didn't eat at dinner time.

[4 under 5]

thats ladies ill try those tips. today he ate some chicken for the 2nd time in his life!! wee monkey is v hard to get to eat meat but gradually im hoping he will. thanks again. yous have been great. as usual!:-) xx