I have read a number of posts here saying that it's all the parent's fault and of course children will eat healthy food if they're given it from a young enough age, etc etc.

Well, perhaps you could offer me some advice on my daughter. She is nearly 20 months old and refuses to eat anything apart from: Bread, Butter, Cheese, Egg Mayo (forget scrambled/fried/plain boiled), tomato ketchup, peanut butter, guacamole, hummous (but all 3 only if spread on bread), plain greek yoghurt with various fruits mashed into it, chicken nuggets, fish fingers and a small group of (ever-decreasing) fruits.

From weaning she has been fed a wide variety of vegetables and meat, all organic. She refused nothing and was a brilliant eater who loved her greens until she got to 14 months, when 6 teeth came through at once and suddenly she stopped eating veg. I have no idea if she associated veg with her teeth hurting, but now she will not even consider vegetables. She hates chips and other forms of potatoes, that is my one consolation, I suppose!

As for the chicken nuggets & fish fingers, she had them at a friend's party and quite frankly it's protein and at least they're pure breast meat/no additives these days. She won't eat red meat all all, where she used to love home-made lamb stew, beef casserole, lasagne, spag bol, etc.

So what am I to do? If I put a plate of 'unacceptable' food in front of her, she sweeps it off the table. If I try and feed her, the head shakes, the lips get sealed, the arms start flailing. She won't even try it. We eat together as a family, we are full of praise for her when she does eat something... but I'm at my wit's end. What do I do, leave her to starve? Hope that if I keep putting veg in front of her she'll absorb it by osmosis??

The health visitor is not interested because she's not underweight, but I'm so worried about her nutrition.

All of you who have made sweeping statements about how easy it is to feed a child healthily, perhaps you could share your secrets before I lose my hair through stress and she develops scurvy?

Your daughter has reached that stage where basic instincts regarding food are kicking in, so I sympathise. A child’s taste will reject bitter and unusual tastes for a time - this prevents them poisoning themselves by eating all and everything while getting independently mobile. A friend of mine had a similar problem with her daughter, who lived on egg, cheese, bread and tomato sauce for about six months! Yes, she survived.

I would strongly suggest that you stop the praise for eating as this can lead to real problems later in life. A child can develop the idea that to eat everything is a good thing and will bring praise and attention, and this could develop into a love-affair with calories as a substitute.

You could
1. continue to force her to eat and make each meal a battleground,
2. or you could serve up one food she has refused in the past each (or most meals) and not get into a panic if she does not eat it. Just ignore it. Put it on the plate - don’t say a word about it and if it is not eaten, just take it away afterwards.
3. Or you could bypass all the foods she is not eating - again without a word. As a family you could say things like - “Wow! These carrots are nice, Mum!”, “It’s the way I cook ’em!” - just so she knows that she is missing out on something. One day she will look at what you have got and be curious as to what she is missing. Then you could try step 2 for a meal or two to see what happens - “I thought you might like to try the carrots, love. Just this once. Leave them if you don’t want them.” (It might be an idea to let her see that leaving a certain food occasionally is not a sin by a family member doing it once in a while. Say a family member hates peas - add peas to a casserole-type dish and let them pick the peas out and leave them - something like that.)

MY suggestion would be to bypass number 1 totally, and try 3 then 2.

Be thankful that she will eat good foods still. Don’t substitute the good fish fingers and chicken nuggets for the cheap stuff made of rubbish. There are some very good cuts of meat and fish in some ff and cn out there, and the coating around them is not going to harm her, whereas the additives, salt, sugar and fat in the cheap stuff would.

Keep seeing the Health Visitor about her health, and believe her if she says your daughter is healthy. S/he will let you know soon enough if there is a problem and will suggest a solution. You might like to consult her about my suggestions if you want to try it out.

Good luck!

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everything that he just said!

Thanks for that, RDF (and f&caamy too!)

I've never and will never force her to eat (that way eating disorders definitely lie!), so your option 1 would never have been a goer. The last thing I want is a battlefield at mealtimes.

We've been doing option 2, I suppose, and desperately trying not to make a big deal about her eating or not eating (bizarrely, I find if I don't make eye contact with her she's far more likely to try something, so the OH and I tend to sit with our eyes averted either holding our breath or making extremely artificial conversation about something else while surreptitiously watching out of the corner of our eyes to see if she's digging in!)

Interesting what you're saying about the praise thing, I was always nagged at to clear my plate as a child (for the starving children in India!) so I was hoping that a bit of positive reinforcement (and lack of negative comment when 99% of it was still left on the plate)would have the opposite effect... but I'll bear it in mind.

Btw, I wouldn't dream of giving her cheapo nuggets/fish fingers - I'm very choosy about meat and fish for myself, I'm even more paranoid about what goes into her food!

As it happens, today she ate 4 teaspoons of carrot/swede mash with onion gravy and even took a bite of the steak it was served with (all organic)! She may even have inadvertently eaten a bit of green bean!! So progress is slowly being made...

Thanks again for replying. My original post was partly sparked by annoyance at the pontificators who seek to solely blame parenting for children's food likes/dislikes.

While I agree that, unless a child is exposed to different tastes, veg/fruit etc, they will necessarily have a limited palate, when a child refuses to eat anything you give them, I can see it's only too easy to allow yourself to go down that slippery slope of giving them what you know they'll eat in order to make sure they've at least got something inside them... It's so worrying when a child won't eat, especially with all the info we're currently bombarded with about the importance of good nutrition in early life (mind you, I have distinct recollections of being fed a diet of cheese n' onion savoury sizzles (anyone remember them??) and tinned ravioli as a child - mum didn't really do cooking, I think I must have learnt in self-defence!).

Try and relax - she will only pick up on your tension. All the progs (eg Supernanny, House of Tiny Terrors or whatever it was called) show that mealtimes can be a real battleground because we are so desperate to get our children eating so they don't 'starve'. And we want them to eat healthily

You have said it yourself - when you ignore her she eats, you are 'paranoid' and 'choosy' about her food/meat and fish, and you find it worrying when a child won't eat. But as you point out, you ate an 'unhealthy' diet as a child but now you don't. So try to be relaxed (easier said than done, I know).

Our son, at the age of 16, is now getting quite adventurous, having been a bit fussy as a child. So don't give up - it sounds like you are on the right track, just stay calm!!!