6 year old eating issues

[wind-river]

Hello,

My 6 year old son has never been a big eater and we were reassured by a health visitor that he wil grow out of this but things are getting worse.

He has a very limited diet:

Breakfast - frosted flakes or toast with chocolate spread

Lunch - ham or cheese sandwich only on white bread

Dinner - pasta with cheese, cheese pizza or hotdog

Fruit - green grapes, occasionally strawberries or banana

Vegetables - cucumber

Snacks - pom bears or cheese and onion crisps.

Drinks - water, milk and squash

He refuses to try different things, he looks at a dish and says he doesn't like it and that's it. This is the same when eating out a nice restaurant or fast food doesn't make any difference.

He'd rather go to bed hungry than eat his dinner. We tried school meals, hoping that as he sees his peers enjoying their food he'll try it but it got to a point when his teacher raised concern that he eats nothing all day. We had his friends over for playdate and tea but his made zero difference.

We keep the language around food light, we explained how important it is to nourish his body and never pressured him into eating.

I cook from scratch every day and we always sit at the table with no screen time.

It is getting to a point where this affects his digestion, he is the shortest in his class and he goes from suffering with diarrhea to having very hard bowel movement.

I'd be grateful for any advice because I am at my wits end.

Thank you.

[MrsHello Community Ambassador]

Hi, my children when they were younger all really struggled with being quite picky. It sounds like you are doing a really good job trying lots of different things. I tried a lot of things you listed. We did a lot of providing small amounts of separating foods on the plate using small bowls. We would always ensure we had foods they liked and then just prioritised them. It’s so good that your hv was able to support you in the past. I’m not sure when that was but it may be worth going back to them. For me I generally always sought a bit of extra health advice from the gp or hv if I had issues with their digestion/constipation / diarrhoea or the eating reached a point where they didn’t get much calories or drinks in.. There is a lot of good advice out there and support and I know I found the times of picky eating quite worrying. The just one number is 03003000123 . Also I’m not sure if you saw this info on the website but there may be some extra advice on this link justonenorfolk.nhs.uk/healt...

Big good luck to you 😊