3.5 year old son restricted eating

Hi @SJAR and welcome to the forums.

Parenting is such an incredibly difficult role and we hope that despite the challenges you also reflect on the extraordinary work you do. The stress of parenting can be a struggle for anyone, let alone with any additional complications. It is good that you have an appointment next week with a paediatric nutritionist and they will have a lot of advice and support on how best to help your son achieve a nutritional balance and continue to thrive.

As carers it is often easy to forget it is just as important to look after ourselves. You'll know how caring for a toddler places huge demands on your energy, so being able to take a break is really beneficial if you can manage it and especially if you have a friend or family member who can help out for an hour. Are there any things that you like to do to get some time to yourself, like walking or heading to the gym?

I agree that parenting can be frustrating at the best in times. We want to do the best we possibly can for our children and sometimes it just doesn’t work out the way we expected and not due to anything we have done.

when my son was about 3 we had similar issues. He is still very restrictive in tastes, but is a little bit more adventurous now at 18. My saving grace was tomato sauce when he was very little. We put it on anything just to get him to try things. Perhaps a curry based sauce might help in your case. Good luck and don’t fret. If he is a good weight, he is doing ok.

Dear @Ali11 and @Boo13

My sincere thanks for your care, concern and wonderful, reassuring advice. It has warmed my heart and given me much food for thought.

I will indeed take your advice about mixing things into curry and keep persisting. He he the most wonderful, vibrant and gorgeous little fellow and we just love him so very much. I think at the end of the day, like every parent, we must want to make sure he's ok, he's getting everything he needs nutritionally and that bit by bit we can feel him widen his palate. Slowly but surely.

I completely agree that the self care element is extremely important, thank you for the kind support and reminder. Yes we are and will continue making sure that we can look after our emotional wellbeing also.

My sincere thanks to you once again, I am so humbled and grateful that there are such wonderful, caring and insightful people such as you to help us along the way.

I'm actually pinching myself. I pureed three zucchinis and half a broccoli into the curry sauce. My son scoffed his whole bowl and my daughter had three (smallish) bowls! It's early days and there's a long journey ahead but at least there's a small win.

That's fantastic @SJAR, what a real positive. Hope you can enjoy the moment and see it as reassurance that you are on the right path