Is This just a phase?
Hi
My 2 year old has recently decided that she doesn't want to eat my home cooking any more. she is refusing to eat any potatoes, meat or vegetables. We usually have our main meal at around 5pm and if possible all eat together, although some days this is not possible as hubby works shifts.
In the past she has been more than happy to eat just about anything I put in front of her and usually she can't get enough of vegetables. It's not as though I'm giving her food she doesn't like. Lunchtimes are never a problem. It only seems to be evening meals. For lunch we ususally have something like sandwiches or toasted teacakes, cheese on toast, pizza, soup etc and she always gobbles it up with no problems. In the evening we have things such as meat, pies, fish, salads, pasta dishes, curries (although nothing too spicy for Freya), the list is endless. Her favourite is pasta dishes and she would eat them every day if I let her (she doesn't seem to have a problem with pasta).
When she refuses to eat her tea (and she acts as though I'm trying to poison her) I don't usually offer her anything else apart from her dessert, which she would have had anyway, and is usually a yoghurt or fruit. I try not to make a big thing of it. I just take her dish away and make it clear that she won't be getting anything else until the morning. Am I doing the right thing and is this just likely to be a phase she's going through? It's annoying when she won't eat pefectly good food and I end up throwing it away which I can ill afford to do. 
Replies
Mia got like this when she hit 2. It's terrible isn't it when you've cooked something so nice that they'd eat the week before. We found that we were still putting Mia in a highchair as we don't have a dining table (we bought a fixer-uper that's taking a lot more fixing so we live inwhat looks like a builders yards). She also had her own china plate that had some rabits on. We got a her a small table and chair so she could still eat with us and gave her a plate the same style as ours and ignored her food twizzling (spinning but not eating) antics and she snapped out of it after about a week.
After that, when she does it now without trying there is no pudding and no budging on it but as long as she tries something new and eats a fair amount of what we know she likes she gets her treat. I feel its a bit of a rip off as I always think of a chocolate pudding but she tends to get fruit. Lol.
My friends little boy is super picky with his food but she gets him to help. Again, he's 2. She gives him jobs like breaking spagetti into the pan before the water goes in for spag bol and he seems to like eating stuff he's helped with.
Oh, one last one. I get Mia to be a taste tester while cooking. If I'm making something with veg she trys little bits of raw carrot or pepper and it gets her chops going for the finished meal.
I hope your ok, it'll work out soon enough.
Big hugs.
Hi Sym
Thanks for your reply. Frustratingly she did exactly the same thing last night. At the moment Freya's still in a highchair but I'm thinking of buying a booster seat so she can sit at the table properly. I've noticed she's always eaten more when we've all sat down together.
If she plays up in the future she won't get her dessert and hopefully she will realise that if she eats her main meals then she will get her dessert as a 'reward'. I don't expect her to eat every last scrap but just a few mouthfuls would please me.
I think it's just part of her 'terrible two's' and she's trying to stamp her own little authority (believe me when she digs her heels in she digs them in), which is why I try to ignore her awkward behaviour as I don't want mealtimes to become battletimes.
On the other hand she may just take after me. I remember when I was a child I barely used to eat anything until I was about 7 or eight years old. It wasn't that I was fussy I just didn't need a lot to eat.
Anyway thanks for the reassurance and the ideas. Hugs too x
Lol. I was the same apparently. I would only eat boiled eggs and rice crispies. Lol. What a choice. My mum bought Mia a Mamas and Papas booster seat (she pinched my dining table) for when we are there. it was from Argos & it's excellent.
Hope you have a great meal time tomorrow.
X
I hope that the stage of playing with food will go sometime seems good when at grandparents house and we are not there she will not eat proper food only wants crisps and other things so we tell her that she needs to eat her main meal first and will see about a treat later
I'd like to think it's a phase, I also give him a multivitamin/omega 3 syrup/supplement, hopefully I'll be on here in a year or so's time complaining he's eating me out of house and home lol!
I think it is just a phase they go through some kids will eat without a
Problem others decide they do not feel like eating i have trouble getting my little girl to eat a normal meal first before she has treats
Something we do not do is give her a different meal just because she is
Not eating the first one she is not a fat girl
sarah Cardiff cm
My eldest daughter did this too when she was 2, (now almost 5) we put her in a booster seat at the table, made sure we always sat at the table when she was eating, even if it was only a cup of tea, when daddy was home in time, everyone ate the same food and she helped to prepare it and was very good at setting the table with her spoon. I also noticed that she would eat her breakfast fine, anything with pasta was gone in seconds but come tea time it was a battle, especially if we had been out and busy that day.
I started to write down everything she ate through the week on the advice of my Gran and found that I was always giving her a snack on the way home to stop her falling asleep before tea and she was having more to drink in the afternoon so she was probably still full and not hungry. She was also being given sweets and treats by doting granparents and great-grandparents whilst we were out. I started to do a quicker tea of sandwiches on those days instead of a big dinner and she seemed much happier.
My youngest started her rebellion early by refusing to even sit in the highchair, had to replace it with a highchair with no tray that is adjustable to our table height. From being 9mths old she has been at the table with both her sisters and having been left to get on with feeding herself because I don't have enough hands sometimes she is much better at eating by herself than either of her sisters were, she does seem to think she is as able as them to have an open cup though but at 20mths is not getting it at teatime! She did have a stage of pulling the tablecloth when she wanted our attention and couldn't ask which infuriated my husband, now she either squeals or says thank you and points.
Overall, so far we have not had any of the fussiness about food from our youngest that we did with her sisters, from the very beginning she knew dessert was an occasional treat and would not be offered at all if she didn't at least try her main course first. We treated all 3 girls the same from the youngest being 1 yr old and 8 months on it seems to be working, my middle daughter is a very slow eater and doesn't want to eat once her food has gone cold but will happily eat salads and sandwiches eventually.
I still try to keep a record of what they eat and how much through the week and after years of stressing about it I can know look back and see some days they drink too much and other days I could empty the kitchen and they would still be looking for food! My eldest now has school lunches, rarely tells me what she's had except for the new food she tried and loves lining up to choose her dinner for herself and is much happier with a proper dinner at lunch.