Hi all,
My 3 year old little man has a very restricted diet and I was hoping to get some advice from other parents/carers who have been in a similar situation. This post has stemmed from our attempt to get the little dude to eat a toddler meal (spaghetti bolognaise) and his reaction to it. He won't eat anything wet or sloppy at all.
We sat him down at the table and put his meal in front of him. He panicked and scrambled out of his seat. I put him back in it repeatedly until he did just stay put. I then started playing with his food, not putting the spoon anywhere near his mouth at all but showing him that mummy and daddy could have fun with it. We covered our hands and faces with the meal and stuck our fingers in it, stirred it around and made pictures on the table. Offered him a bit after showing him that we could eat it and it was safe. He was terrified. He got really upset when we put the food on his hand. Eventually we gave up.. I don't want to make the problem any worse but I do need to find a way to get him to eat something different to what he does eat. He's not getting enough of the foods he should be getting and I'm starting to really panic that he's going to make himself unwell.
Going back to weaning I think I did everything I was supposed to. We started at 6 months and gave him pureed EVERYTHING. There isn't a fruit, veg or meat that he hasn't tried at least 10 times. I let him get his hands in it and get really messy. We moved to finger foods when he was around 8 month old but kept feeding him sloppy food though with more and more lumps. He didn't have a traumatic experience (choking) and all seemed to be going well. At around 13 month he started refusing to eat sloppy food and wanted just his finger foods. I thought it was a phase and his way of gaining some independence so I let it happen and just offered him a big variety of foods he could eat without assistance. He ate lots of fruit, sandwiches with anything in them, cereal with yoghurt mixed in. Yorkshire pudding and onion rings were firm favourites. Of course, anything sweet was acceptable and he enjoyed his pombear crisps too. He never ate a vegetable after I stopped feeding him and he's never eaten a potato product of any kind since I stopped feeding him. He also won't eat anything that isn't room temp or cold.
It doesn't seem to matter what we offer him now, he eats only what he eats and the list is tiny.
Breakfast - Toast w/ peanut butter, jam or cheese spread (melty cheese on toast is acceptable)
Snack - cereal bar of some kind
Lunch - greggs sausage roll (At least it's protein and a bit of iron right?) or pizza as long as it's flat based like toast and cold.
Snack - rice cake and dried fruit (raisins etc)
Dinner - Cheerios with sliced banana and sometimes yoghurt mixed in.
He has 2 cups of Big Milk each day.
That is his diet daily. I know he needs to be eating more green stuff, meat and fish but I just don't know how to enforce it and I can't hide it in sloppy food because he won't eat sloppy food at all. I'm scared to try the approach of starving him out until he's hungry enough to eat what's given to him because I genuinely think he would starve himself to death.
Can anyone offer any advice/suggestions on how to expand his diet please? I'm tempted to take him to the GP but I'm not sure that's where I need to go for this kind of help, is there any specific professional to approach for this kind of problem?
