r/toddlerfood
What are we feeding our toddlers and ourselves for dinner?
I’m truly at a loss. I work full time and husband works later shift so I do evenings alone. By time I get home I am totally exhausted and have no idea what to cook. 3 year old ends up eating buttered noodles, yogurt, bread. No actual balanced meals. Feeling like a total failure in this department.
Frozen foods- kid friendly
I am asking for recommendations (with links) for any frozen foods you use for dinner for your kids that are relatively healthy. Looking for non processed or oganic meats. Working busy mother who doesnt know how to cook but trying. Would also take any very easy quick healthy kid friendly meal ideas. Thank you.
New mummy trying to sort out meals
how do you all manage meal planning for toddlers without losing your mind? I’m running on fumes trying to figure out what to cook, whether things are safe with allergies, and I feel like I’m constantly googling the same things. What actually works for you? Or am I just really bad at this
what snacks are you feeding your kids?
Hello, so apparently nothing is safe anymore. I liked goldfish as they were a dry snack easily portable.
Anyone have suggestions that are similar? she doesn’t like almond crackers. she’s 16 months if that helps. She has 4 teeth and more slowly coming in.
I want to also say that I want to avoid harmful additives so that’s why I’m boycotting goldfish. Do you know what they put in these crackers? I also am a no on Cheerios.
Looking for easy calcium-rich recipes for my kids
I'm looking for some simple, healthy recipes that are naturally high in calcium and suitable for a child. Nothing too complicated or with hard-to-find ingredients.
What are your go-to-calcium-rich meals or snacks that kids actually enjoy eating?
Almost 3yo suddenly refusing milk, lost 700g — what worked for your toddler?
My son is 3. He used to drink ~6 oz milk 5+ times/day, plus snacks, and ate 3 bowls of rice a day.
For the past month, he completely refuses milk (started breaking molars) and almost all snacks. He still eats a full bowl of rice 3× a day and seems hungry, but when I offer snacks he refuses almost everything: yogurt, banana, bread, biscuits, cheese, fruit, even another bowl of rice.
He’ll occasionally eat yogurt, tofu, fruits, and yogurt drinks but not everyday. I always to include chicken/fish and some vegetables on his rice.
The biggest issue is that he refuses anything unfamiliar as soon as he sees it. We’ve tried different milk brands of milk (even fresh milk), tetra packs, chocolate drink, cold milk/ with ice, different bottles and cups. He won’t even take a sip and gets upset if we encourage him.
His weight:
12.4 kg (May 11) → 11.7 kg (Aug 17)
We saw his pediatrician today. Doctor said he needs more calcium and prescribed appetite stimulant.
Has anyone had a toddler suddenly become this restrictive with food/milk? What actually worked? Did you stop pushing milk and focus on other calcium sources? Did feeding therapy help?
I’d really appreciate hearing your experiences.
Hardest part of safely eating out with allergies
My toddler daughter has peanut and sesame allergies, and there are some things that she can eat at basically any restaurant, but there are so many types of food we just need to avoid because there’s a risk of contamination.
I’m really curious to see how other families have navigated the moment from arrival at a restaurant to eating your meal and walking out the door safely. I want to be able to explore more foods with my girl but need advice for how to do it right.
>!Question to the parents:!<
Let's say you've already decided a restaurant is safe enough to try. What's the hardest part after you arrive? Is it explaining the allergy to the server? Making sure the message gets to the kitchen? Feeling confident everyone understood? Finding safe menu options? Something else?
How to teach toddler to take bites?
My son is 13 months old and a pretty good eater. Since he developed his pincer grasp, he’s always preferred small pieces of food that are bite sized. He chews well, but doesn’t actually take bites out of his food. He has 8 teeth, so he should be able to take bites.
We’ll sometimes give him toast strips, and he’ll sort of suck on them until a piece comes off, but I feel like he’s not actually biting it with his teeth. Anytime we give him something that requires taking bites, he’ll either try to shove the whole thing in his mouth or just not eat it. He’ll take bites out of a whole banana but as soon as it’s small enough to physically fit in his mouth, he’ll shove the rest of it in his mouth, which makes me really nervous.
Any tips for teaching him to actually take notes? Or is that something that will come naturally with age?
15 mo won’t eat
Reposting here because my original post was removed from r/toddlers (ok? no idea why?)
Hi! It feels like my 15 mo won’t eat anything 🫠 She is the captain of the 2 bite club and doesn’t really have any favorite foods besides Cheerios, yogurt, and pouches.
She will usually eat a few bites of pancake in the morning. I send veggie straws or something comparable for snack at daycare. Lunch is always leftovers from dinner the night before with yogurt and/or hummus. She eats what we have at dinner but this usually isn’t more than a couple of bites. She’s more interested in playing with her food.
She hardly drinks any milk as she’s pretty much gone off it on her own ever since we weaned off bottles. We have her 15 mo appt this week so we will see where she stands on weight.
She’s never been super excited about food from the beginning but I figured her appetite would pick up once we got her off formula/milk. She HATES fruit. Not a fan of pasta either.
Will take all the advice and reassurance 😭 I hate relying on pouches but I feel like sometimes that’s the only thing with nutrients in it that she eats all day.
Do any of you hate kid's menus?
I certainly do! It's just boring and unhealthy stuff for picky kids like pizza, burgers, and mac and cheese. I think that they underestimate kids a lot. Many kids would love to try new things. I'm nearly a teenager, 5'4, and I wear a bra, and I STILL get offered the kid's menu at restaurants. This sucks!
May I Introduce: Peanut Butter Milk
It's a smoothie, but not really? For my 18mo who is obsessed with peanut butter, but I'm not obsessed with cleaning it up and making sure he doesn't choke on it.
In an immersion blender cup or regular blender: 1c. Milk
4 *heaping* scoops of peanut/nut butter
A few slices frozen banana for sweetness
Make extra and stick it in the fridge for later. You're welcome.
How do you manage dinners, when you don’t eat dinner yourself?
My son is 13 months old. He has had issues with solids due to him teething constantly, he has all his front teeth now and had most of them by 8 months old. Now he also has 3 molars. He still eats 3 bottles of formula a day.
Anyway, now that he is finally more interested in food, and actually enjoys food and is able to eat it, it is time to actually start making proper food. But I have no idea where to even begin.
I myself haven’t eaten proper dinner since i was 16 (i am 26 now) and moved out and started living on my own. I have ADHD, and the medication makes my appetite absolutely crap. I also only work nights, so any form of eating schedule is out the window. I probably also have a case of ARFID. There is a bunch of food that makes me feel sick, I have no interest in food, I don’t enjoy any food. My only motivation to eat is because I lift weights and want to gain strength.
I used to enjoy cooking for my partner before I got pregnant, but pregnancy made me very sick, and I had to avoid most scents and food to try not to vomit 24/7. This has eventually led to a complete aversion to cooking to be honest, I dread it more than anything, and any joy I used to have is completely gone. I used to enjoy cooking, even if I didn’t eat it myself, but now I can’t imagine spending any sort of free time cooking instead of cleaning, painting, working out and so on.
I know I have to force myself, for the sake of my son. We often visit in-laws so he has had many normal dinners around the table with them, but it has absolutely not been enough of it at home. Like I said, I don’t even know where to begin. I have googled «dinners for toddlers/1 year olds», and my brain just goes blank. Most of the meals I have never even heard of (I’m norwegian), and when trying to research in my own language, all options are just… fish. And I litterally still vomit if I smell fish.
I see recipes that to me just look like «baked lentils with pureed lambskin topped with grated salmon made in a crockpot» or whatever, and I just don’t even bother looking at the recipe because none of it makes sense to me. And often times it’s so much work and expensive ingredients. I stumbled upon one site that seemed to be british, and it was all just curries… with peas?
Does anyone have any links to recipes, or just the name of a type of meal, that is straight forward and simple to make? I *can* cook, so it’s not the skill-level thats missing. It’s just that the names of the meals or the ingredients make no sense to me, or that they take for fucking ever to make. I feel like if I just had some links to recipes, or websites that aren’t so overwhelming, I would have something to start with.
My only ideas, that I also have made so far, has been homemade pizza and lasagne, the bonus is that it creates a lot of leftovers. But he can’t live on only tomato sauce and ground beef in different forms.
21 months old not wanting breakfast
I guess the title said it all. But I’m just kind of wondering if anyone else have the same issue. My toddlers have never been a breakfast person ever since she was a baby. Her first bottle in the morning was never the one that she wanted to take. And it has been the same thing now that we’re entering toddler stage. She just woke up wanting to play and doesn’t really have an appetite until lunchtime at 11:30 or her snack time in the morning 9:45AM. For context she slept 10-11 hours at night. I try to give her breakfast every day, but it’s a hit or a miss, we never knew. I’m wondering if anyone else have the same issue or maybe she’s just not a breakfast person?
She does eat very large portion of dinner. Maybe that’s why! Would love to hear your thoughts
Soups for 12m old
Hello, my son hates water. He's coming off formula now and I'm worried about his water intake. He has maybe 10 sips a day, and we've tried everything to increase it. The doctor suggested soups, has anyone given their toddler soup? Any suggestions on the type? Anyone in the same boat?
My kid has somehow learned to detect hidden veggies in EVERYTHING
I'm so done. Smoothies? "There's green stuff in it." Muffins? "These taste weird." Pasta sauce? Suspicious stare My kid has officially outsmarted all my attempts at nutrition by deception. Parents of Reddit who've lost this battle, what was your plan B when the stealth mission failed?
Food refusal from 18m toddler.
Hello brains trust!
Since about 10m old my now 18m old has become such a fussy eater at homrle
I was never really bothered because at Daycare he'd eat everything everyone else was eating, pasta, chicken, beef, rice, vegetables etc. It was only at home he was fussy even though we've always offered what we're having which isn't unusual food and similar to what daycare provides.
However now he's not even eating at daycare? Yesterday they gave him a slice of bread because thats all he'd eat? And the facilitators are showing concern. I asked if any other toddlers are like this and they said no which doesnt help!
At home he'll eat fruit and yoghurt, weet-bix. Crackers. Banana bread lol. But apart from that nothing??
He poops like no tomorrow because of all the soft fruits and yoghurt hes eating which is driving me insane because changing a nappy at this age is like wrestling a fish out of water.
Any advice? Anyone been through similar?
Please help!
Toddler dinner ideas for cooking with a broken arm
Hi, all. I'm a WFH mom, and I broke my arm earlier this month. I don't know yet if I'll have to have surgery, but either way, my arm (fortunately my non-dominant side) is out of commission for a bit. I still want to make dinners and help out at the house as much as I can—without injuring myself further. My spouse does a lot for us, especially right now (I haven't figured out yet how to help with diaper changes, how to lift the boy into the crib, how to get him into a carseat, etc.), and his work schedule is busy. I just want to keep household stress to a minimum if possible.
That said, I'm looking for truly simple dinner recipes that are likely to be somewhat toddler-approved. The main thing I'm trying to avoid is chopping, I guess, and having to manage multiple heavy pots/pans/bowls. And, of course, the current parasite risk in fresh (uncooked) produce. I did fajitas last night with pre-chopped veggies, and that was pretty successful. Would love to hear your ideas!
3.5 year old that’s a very picky eater.
So we have a 3.5-year-old son who is an extremely picky eater.
The kid loves hot dogs, chicken nuggets, fries, mini tacos, mini meatballs, strawberries, blueberries. He does sometimes eat hamburgers and cheeseburgers, unless there’s too much cheese, and then you have to scrape the cheese off lol. And he will sometimes eat steaks when I make them.
He’ll eat chips if you let him, some chocolate, fruit snacks, yogurts, and pickles.
He loves water and will randomly ask for it. He hates everything else like juice.
We cannot get this kid to try any other food. When he was younger, we would give him like peas and carrots, but he wouldn’t really eat them after like the third time. And then we would mix them into mashed potatoes or other foods, and he would realize it and spit it out, but he also doesn’t like mashed potatoes anymore.
We tried to give him different foods or try to give him foods to try like cheese or cheese sticks, and he doesn’t want anything to do with them. He really won’t try vegetables, and he won’t try other foods really in general.
It’s tough because at his day care, which he goes twice a week, they are very strict about what foods he can have from home because of other people in the class having “allergies.” They have some complicated lunches some days like yesterday was chicken, broccoli, and rice, which obviously is not stuff that he eats together and he won’t try. They have been trying for months to get him to eat the food they supply, but they can’t get him to do it. So we always send food with him, which because of all the restrictions, their lunch is usually some fruit snacks, yogurts, and pita bread.
We aren’t allowed to send anything that they have to prepare or heat up.
He doesn’t like to eat lunch meat or sandwiches. He can’t eat peanut butter and jelly there, but he also doesn’t like those anyway.
And he just recently started wanting bowls of cereal, which is a huge thing.
Making something and only that one thing and trying to get him to eat it has failed. He will just decide to literally not eat. I don’t know how he has the willpower or stubbornness to do it, but if he doesn’t want it, he just will shut down and choose to not eat.
He has tried some stuff after prolonged fights and then spits it out after a few bites. A few months ago, I got him to eat broccoli, and he ate it, and just one day he doesn’t like it anymore. He doesn’t want anything to do with it. He will luckily eat French toast sticks and pancakes for breakfast, but he doesn’t like waffles anymore.
Does anyone have any guidance or tricks? We have tried multiple things and are continuing to try, but then we have days where the one lady who helps teach class at his daycare gives us grief because he doesn’t eat the food they give. Which, looking at their menu sometimes, is stuff I would not eat as an adult lol.
Between the food issue and starting to try and potty train I feel like I’m aging 10 years a week