Am I wrong about this...

[Willow01]

Charlie is 11 months and is pretty experimental with food but some mealtimes he will refuse whatever it is we are eating. I know that he loves cheese spread on bread and at times of refusal I have been offering him this instead, should I be doing this? I feel he needs to have something and if that is what he wants then that is ok. My oh disagrees and thinks I am caving in and should give him nothing if he won't eat what is offered to him and that he will eat if he is hungry! What is your advice on this? He still gets formula milk (morning, lunch, bedtime) so I know he is getting nutrition from the milkx

 

[liz1985]

If my toddler refuses a food a know he likes he doesnt get anything else. If it was something new that he genuinely didn't like I would offer him something else. Its upto you at the end of the day, I always think if I offer him something else he'll start getting too fussy food and I dont want to make lots of different meals. However ds is 2.5, not sure if they think like that at 11months. Maybe take his food away and offer him something an hour or so later, so he doesnt think your giving in and you know he isn't go hungary.

 

[Aidan's Mummy]

At 11 months I would offer something else. As adults we don't fancy certain foods somedayS and others we do. X

 

[familygirl30]

At 11 months I would offer something else too,I do with my boy but it's not often he turns down any food lol.

 

[Pearls18]

At that age I offer something else too, I don't with my toddler, he has to eat what's on his plate. Once we learned what he liked (which is obviously a long process) what I started to do was introduce something new alongside other foods I knew he liked, so for example if he had never had lamb before I would still cook the same vegetables and potatoes he liked so if he didn't like the lamb he would still eat other things on his plate so wouldn't be hungry, I always get him to try one bite.

Obviously at this age you're still learning what they do and don't like and if you're like me I'm paranoid if they don't eat they will wake up at night haha (plus I guess they can't really tell you they're hungry the same way a toddler can iykwim) so yeah definitely don't worry for a while yet in my opinion.

I was told the other day it takes 20 times of trying to find out if they *really* don't like something lol, so don't give up after a couple of goes (although I know it is demoralising when you've made something!)

 

[MindUtopia]

I don't think it's wrong sometimes as long as it doesn't mean you end up in a slump and limiting his diet overall. I think it's good to have some fallback foods that you know you can offer along with other foods that he might explore that he hasn't experienced as much in the past, but don't feel like you have to always give him something he likes just to get him to eat. If he's truly hungry, he'll eat. If not, he'll make it up later in food or milk, maybe even try again in an hour or two. It could be he's also getting to the age when he might start to drop another bottle so he might just not be hungry enough sometimes to want to try something new (but will be if you try a little later). There can also be rough patches where they go through phases of not wanting to eat a wide variety of foods, especially around teething or illness or other big changes. I found that when we hit one of these phases, if I offered the usual variety of foods (many of which would be refused) along with the few foods I knew she would likely eat (for us this was porridge, yogurt and fruit), she eventually got out of that funk and was back to eating normally. But I think the key was that I still offered a wide variety of foods and when I did offer things I knew she'd eat (which wasn't all the time), I tried to keep the variety up and didn't do it all the time. That worked well for us and my daughter is a really adventurous eater now that eats things even some adults won't eat! I'd say it's fine if it's a healthy food to offer an easy option sometimes, but don't feel like you always have to. If he's hungry, he really will eat, and like you said he's still getting plenty of milk. I just think it's really important to keep offering lots of variety and not get into a slump when you only offer a limited range of a few things he likes. Otherwise, sometimes, I'd say it's totally fine, maybe just not every meal or even every day.