Hopefully your toddler has started his second year with a diet that is varied in texture and flavours. Food in itself gets easier, as from one year there is nearly nothing that your toddler can’t eat, but new challenges also arise. Your toddler will become increasingly independent, mobile and easily distracted – all of which can impact on his eating behaviours. Fussy eating – a normal developmental stage – starts to become apparent after about 18 months of age. While some toddlers show virtually no signs of fussy eating, others become very cautious about food. The good news is that there are things you can do to keep your toddler’s healthy eating habits on track and help to minimise fussiness.
For a start, you can keep food interesting. Try to make your toddler’s plate look attractive by having foods of different colours. For example, white fish with mashed potato looks much more appetising if you add a green vegetable and some slices of tomato. However, I wouldn’t go to the extent of building model butterflies, caterpillars or other creatures out of food, unless it’s for a party! Have different textures and continue to offer finger foods alongside foods that require the use of cutlery. Ensuring food is varied keeps it interesting.
As food is now dominant in your toddler’s diet, not milk, it is important to think more about food quality. Your toddler should be eating the same foods as you. There are good guiding principles to help you offer the right amount and right range of foods to your child.
At one year old, your toddler should:
Eat three meals a day of two courses. Breakfast with a fruit or vegetable, lunch and a healthy pudding, and dinner and a healthy pudding. (A healthy pudding is generally something such as milk pudding – perhaps a natural yoghurt, rice pudding, Vanilla Custard with Raspberry Coulis (R) or a fruit-based pudding.)
Be offered two snacks a day. Remember snacks are there to make up your child’s energy and nutrient requirement so don’t rely heavily on repetitive commercial snacks and try to keep up the diversity of foods offered. Starchy foods, fruits and vegetables should be included in snack times.
Have vegetables and fruit four to five times a day
Have starchy foods four or more times a day
Have meat at least once a day or non-meat protein foods two to three times a day
Have two breastfeeds or up to 400 ml (14 fl oz) of full-fat cow’s milk in a cup or beaker. If your toddler eats well you can move to semi-skimmed milk at two years, and skimmed milk from five years.
Have two dairy portions each day. This can include the milk your baby drinks.
Drink water from a cup or beaker. It is recommended you offer your toddler six to eight drinks of water throughout the day, although many don’t drink that much
Be having the recommended supplements (see here)
Although fat is not restricted in the diet at this age, do ensure you make healthy choices for your toddler. If your toddler eats a variety of foods from all food groups, he is likely to be meeting his dietary requirements. One exception to this is vitamin D, which was discussed in the previous chapter (see here). Your toddler should now be eating what you eat as a family. Continue planning meals over a week and use the guide above to help you achieve a healthy family diet.
You may notice that your toddler’s appetite hasn’t appeared to increase much despite his new levels of activity. This is because his rate of growth has slowed considerably in comparison to his first year of life. Continue to feed him to his appetite. Try not to compare him with other toddlers as they will all eat different amounts. A smaller child is not going to eat as much as a bigger one.
When you are cooking at home from basic ingredients you are usually using the ‘right’ foods. Ingredients don’t have to be ‘fresh’; you can use canned, frozen and dried foods. Processed, convenience or takeaway foods often contain high levels of sugar, salt and unhealthy fats, and should not be part of a child’s diet or a regular part of a family diet. Overreliance on these foods can actually reduce the number of nutrients in the diet. Lifetime eating habits get set in these early years, and the origins of some adult conditions, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity may start in childhood. Don’t underestimate your job of providing and role-modelling healthy eating habits. Bad habits are easy to form and hard to break, and they’re much harder to break once you’re an adult.
All of the recipes shown are family recipes and suitable for any age. You may need to adjust quantity or texture.
| Breakfast | Scrambled egg with wholegrain toast fingers and fruit slices Breastfeed or 150 ml (5½ fl oz) of full-fat cow’s milk | |
| Snack | See ideas below (here) Offer water | |
| Lunch | Spaghetti and Stripped-Back Bolognese (R) with cucumber and carrot fingers Fromage frais and fruits Offer water at each lunchtime and throughout day | |
| Snack | See ideas below Offer water | |
| Dinner | Broccoli Jacket Potato (R) Easy Baked Apple (R) Offer water with each evening meal and throughout day | |
| Before bed | Breastfeed or 50–200 ml (2–7 fl oz) full-fat cow’s milk |
| Breakfast | Porridge with fruit pieces Breastfeed or 150 ml (5½ fl oz) of full-fat cow’s milk | |
| Snack | See ideas below Offer water | |
| Lunch | Poached salmon with mashed potato and green beans Rice Pudding (R) Offer water at each lunchtime and throughout day | |
| Snack | See ideas below Offer water | |
| Dinner | Lentil and Potato Purée Soup (R) with mangetout Bananas and custard Offer water with each evening meal and throughout day | |
| Before bed | Breastfeed or 150–200 ml (5½–7 fl oz) full-fat cow’s milk |
Things with/without dips:
Plain Oatcakes (R)
Water Biscuits (R)
Cheesy Biscuits (R)
Sticks of Roasted Vegetables (R)
Toast or pitta bread with cheese
Mini sandwiches
A mini Pastryless Quiche (R)
Your toddler will have changed a lot since taking those tentative first tastes of solid foods, and hopefully will have become a competent eater.
At some point after his first birthday your toddler is likely to be: walking or close to walking; easily distracted by other activities; and more able to indicate what he does or doesn’t want. He may even have some words. This can affect mealtimes in a number of ways:
Your toddler becomes harder to pin down so you need to put the rule in place that eating is done sitting at a table (preferably) or at least sitting down until the meal is over. This isn’t just to install good manners and give your toddler time to eat, it is also relevant to safety. An additional risk to choking in this age group is your baby’s increasing mobility and eating on the move. Where possible and in an ideal world children should be sitting when eating, but we know this isn’t going to always be the case, particularly with snacks. Give a thought to what you are giving your toddler to eat while he is moving around.
TV, toys, computers and phones can distract your toddler from eating well, so ensure the place he eats is free from distractions and the TV is off. Not only can your toddler be distracted from eating by the TV, or toys, but you can be distracted too. The best thing you can do while your toddler eats is eat. Realistically it isn’t always possible to eat at the same time as your toddler, and if you can’t then at least sit at the table. If you are trying to encourage your toddler to eat a particular food, you sitting and eating it is a big incentive for him to copy you.
Your toddler can now very clearly indicate ‘NO’, and sometimes likes to practise this. If your toddler refuses to eat, leave it and then move on to the next mealtime. What often happens is parents start to worry that their toddler hasn’t eaten and offer extra snacks and biscuits; this quickly turns into a vicious circle of not eating, having extra (less nutritious) snacks, not being so hungry at mealtimes, not eating, and so it goes on. In the end you have a toddler who grazes throughout the day, but doesn’t eat a meal properly. Stressful mealtimes do not help you, or help your toddler want to eat. If your toddler refuses to finish a meal, he really isn’t going to starve before the next routine snack or meal is due.
Tantrums are common in two year olds but can start from one year. Tantrums generally involve crying, screaming, kicking, lying on the floor and, in the most dramatic form, breath holding. It can be frightening to behold, especially the first time. It would be unusual for a toddler never to have a tantrum, although some children are certainly more laid-back than others. Tantrums are an expected part of development, occurring when your child feels cross or frustrated, maybe because you said ‘no’, or maybe because he thought lunch was going to be X but it turned out to be Y. Your toddler does not have the skills to explain how he feels, and a tantrum follows.
Like all other things in life, your toddler needs your input to help him through this stage, and you will want to show him that this is not how we respond to problems. Do not reward the offending behaviour; stay calm, take the food away and move on. Don’t feel tempted to offer a second-choice meal – that is a reward for the tantrum and your toddler will learn ‘if I do this – I get something else’. What you want him to learn is ‘if I do this, nothing happens’. Nothing happening includes not getting cross. If your toddler throws food on the floor, firmly say ‘no’, pick up the food and take it away, then move on with the meal. When your toddler eats all he wants (which is not the same as finishing everything on the plate), praise him for eating nicely. In general, praise good behaviour, ignore bad. Your toddler will learn that you have met your responsibility – to give healthy foods – and it is his choice how much to eat.
Thoughtful planning can avoid tantrums. Toddlers can’t tell the time, and routines help them to know what is happening next, so a predictable build-up to a meal will be alerting your toddler to the fact that it will soon be time to eat. Involve him in ‘preparing’ – even this is putting a small cloth and bowl on the table to start with, or sitting him where he can watch you set things up. Grabbing him from the middle of a game to sit in a highchair without notice is much more likely to lead to frustration.
Mealtimes usually last about 20–30 minutes – don’t string them out in an attempt to get your toddler to eat more. The stress caused through coaxing your child to eat another mouthful will increase your toddler’s anxiety around mealtimes and eventually you will both grow to dread them.
At around 18 months there is often a marked increase in fussy eating, and some toddlers start to show disgust at certain foods. This is a common problem and is discussed in Chapter 7 (here).
You can only learn to use objects by actually trying them out yourself, and cutlery is no different. Using cutlery is a skilled job requiring good co-ordination skills. Some general points to remember are: ensure your toddler has the right tools for the job, ensure he is sitting comfortably (preferably at a table with support for his arms) and ensure that the food you give him when he is learning is ‘cutlery friendly’. Eating with others who are also using cutlery, such as parents, childminders or older siblings, will encourage him to want to do the same. It will also show, by example, what he is supposed to do.
It is worth investing in child-friendly, age-appropriate cutlery, which will work with him and increase his success. Another point about age-appropriate cutlery is that it is safe for him to use. Your toddler will be more successful using cutlery when sitting in a steady, supported position – preferably at a table. When you introduce your toddler to a fork, ensure the food is soft enough for his fork to stab and stable enough that it won’t roll away when he tries to stab it! The same goes when you introduce a knife: ‘cutting’ isn’t easy and your child will feel more encouraged if he has foods that are soft enough to cut easily.
Most babies can grip and will try to use a spoon at around eight months, and some of the food will go in their mouths. By one year, most will go in their mouths, although it will still be a messy job. By two years, spoon use will be proficient. Toddlers can generally get to grips with a fork some time between 11 and 18 months of age – again they should be successful by two years. Knives are a bit more difficult – introduce them at around 18 months and see what happens.
You can help your child learn to manipulate a knife by cutting play dough, and hand–eye co-ordination can be helped by allowing your child to spoon objects from one container to another – this could be something like rice or dry pasta.
It’s inevitable that while your toddler is learning a new skill things may get messier for a while, and, of course, it may slow down mealtimes for a bit, but the more opportunities he has to practise, the quicker things will come together.
‘He hasn’t eaten his dinner but he still eats pudding.’ Nine times out of ten this is a true statement! It would probably be true for you and me too. It is possible to be hungry for something different in taste and texture to what you have just eaten. As mentioned here, pudding is an important part of a child’s meal, as it helps him get the right energy and nutrients, so you should provide your toddler with two courses for his meals. It is important that you do not try to bribe your toddler with pudding – ‘You can’t have pudding unless you eat your dinner’ – as you are highlighting to him that pudding is ‘something special’. If you withhold it, he will learn to desire it more. Without pudding he may soon be hungry and you will end up in the grazing situation described above (here). Let him have his pudding without comment.
It’s inevitable but at some point, as your toddler grows, he is going to have sweets – if not given by you then it will be someone else, or at a party. On top of this, confectionery and cakes are readily available. In my adult lifetime, campaigns to ‘remove sweets from checkouts’ have been run a number of times – indicating that the previous efforts didn’t last. You need to give your growing child skills to deal with the temptations of sweets and treats.
Research has been carried out to see how parents may influence their child’s likelihood of overeating sweets and treats, and the findings are consistent. Children of parents who over-control what their child eats and restrict all sweets are likely to eat more than the children of parents who allow some sweets. Allowing some sweets is not the same as giving your child sweets every time he asks, which certainly isn’t advisable. So as your child grows don’t deny him the occasional treat but do put boundaries around them. The simplest way to achieve this is not to have a stash of unhealthy foods in the home. Don’t have a cupboard full of crisps or a biscuit tin – your toddler will learn very quickly where they are and spend a lot of time nagging you for them. The other advantage to not having them at home is that you can’t eat them either! One mum did tell me that she gave up keeping biscuits at home after she started eating them with her head in the cupboard so that her toddler didn’t see her! You will have much more control over the sweet things if they are not to hand.
The idea is to educate your child that treats are a very small part of a normal diet, and that they can be incorporated occasionally, not regularly, and not before meals or as a substitute for a meal. You can help by doing simple things such as ensuring that your child isn’t likely to be hungry while you are out and about, reducing the temptation to grab something. You can practise saying: ‘You can’t have that now because you’ve already had a treat today,’ or ‘You can’t have that now because your dinner is nearly ready. Maybe we can have it another day.’ Hearing statements like this over and over will help your child learn that there’s a time and a place for treats, without you just saying ‘no’.
Feeding toddlers is a challenge and many mums feel worried at times. Try to remember that if your child is healthy, active and growing, things are usually okay.
Many toddlers are in some form of day care for all or part of the week, and this may make you feel that it is harder to control what, and how, your toddler eats. There are voluntary food and drink guidelines for early-years nursery groups in England, and you can ask your childcare provider if they adhere to these. These standards are available from the Children’s Food Trust, are free to download and contain good information about foods, food groups and portion sizes for day-care settings.1
If your child has an allergy you must, of course, inform your child’s carer and ensure they know exactly what to avoid and what to do in case of contact with an allergenic food (see here). Discuss with childminders what meals they offer and how they structure mealtimes. You need to have the same discussion with relatives who look after your toddler, reminding grandparents that you would like to do things your way and according to up-to-date advice.
If you are trying to work on a particular aspect of your toddler’s eating behaviour, such as introducing a wider range of food or stopping fussy eating, it can be hard if you only have two or three days a week when you have mealtimes at home. In these cases you must ensure that you are consistent with your expectations at home to ensure your child is clear about what will happen at the table. Discuss your plans with your toddler’s minder and agree with them what parts are, or aren’t, reasonable for them to carry out.
‘When my daughter asked us to look after Lily and Kit a few days a week I did feel a bit daunted, as at home they eat a diet that is largely vegetarian and what meat they do eat is free-range. I was obviously very aware of her choices before I agreed to look after them, and I would never have considered going against her wishes. I enjoy cooking so I took this as an opportunity to learn new foods. I initially relied quite a lot on lentils as they are easy to cook and versatile. I used them in soups as well as lentil shepherd’s pie. I got books from the library to learn more recipes. I now incorporate more vegetarian meals into my own diet. It was far more enjoyable to embrace something new than just give them a narrow range of foods.’
Mel, grandmother to Lily, five years, and Kit, one year
‘Tom is fussy and eats slowly. I work hard to give him new foods and I was worried that at nursery he would have nothing to choose from as the menu didn’t always suit him. I asked if I could bring food in but I wasn’t allowed in case I brought in a food another child was allergic to. I felt really upset and was worried that he would be hungry. The nursery had a cook and I was able to speak to her. She couldn’t cook Tom different meals but she did agree to ensure he had something every day on his plate that he liked for a while and to then review it. He was also allowed to have a bit of extra time at mealtimes; they achieved this by serving him first and collecting his plate last. It worked well, and actually his eating did improve at nursery. He’s still picky but he has tried new foods.’
Caroline, mum to Tom, three years
Q I’ve tried to change my baby from formula to cow’s milk but she didn’t like it. Any tips?
A There are a number of things you can try. Introduce it on cereal if you haven’t already. Try a different kind of cup – she may have got used to her formula in a certain cup and is disappointed when it’s something different. Mix the cow’s milk with the formula and gradually increase the amount of cow’s milk and decrease the amount of formula – you may achieve this over a few days or it may take longer. If you get to a point where your baby is becoming suspicious of the taste change, don’t go back to the beginning, just stick to the accepted point for a couple of days and then continue. Don’t serve the milk straight from the fridge – formula is usually room temperature or warmed. She needs to have two dairy portions a day, including milk, to drink. Mealtime dairy portions include cheese, yoghurt, fromage frais, a dish with a milk sauce, etc.
Q When my baby doesn’t eat what I’ve given her I feel quite frustrated. Sometimes I can’t persuade her to eat anything and it feels like it’s me who’s being rejected more than the food.
A Fighting with your baby at mealtimes is not going to improve the situation: it will make you both feel bad, and dread dinner times. Many mums spend a lot of time preparing their baby’s meals and, when baby decides not to eat it, the mum feels crushed and rejected. If you had made a special meal for your partner and they turned their nose up at it, you would have every right to feel disappointed. However, your baby does not know AT ALL that you went to any effort. Your baby does not know that you shopped, prepared and cooked the most tempting meal that you possibly could, in a bid to get her to eat it all. To your baby, it’s food, it’s in front of her, but she just isn’t that hungry right now, or maybe she was expecting something else. It’s enough to make you scream – but don’t! Keep calm and take the food away.
Keep up the good work. Give your toddler food from all the food groups to ensure he is getting vitamins, iron, calcium and other important nutrients.
Your toddler will continue to take vitamin supplements (one containing vitamin D), as recommended by the Department of Health.
Your toddler is growing in independence and this presents challenges around the table for many parents. Try to keep mealtimes calm.
In the not-too-distant future your toddler is likely to come across sweets and treats. Taking a sensible approach to sweets means ensuring they don’t become ‘forbidden fruit’, but equally not making them available every day.