Flinstone vitamins, maybe? Or any other kids gummy vitamins.
I would highly recommend talking with a child therapist before this becomes an ingrained habit, if you haven’t already.
It's also worth getting them checked out by a gastroenterologist. Sometimes picky eating is a subconscious thing to avoid having the shits all the time.
I'm not trying to downplay the reality of serious health concerns sometimes being behind food habits, but I think I need to say...
Picky eating is an absolutely normal part of child development. Anecdotally, both of my kids went through two distinct phases of picky eating, at around 3-5 and 8-11.
They gradually grow out of it. All you can do is try to make sure what they are eating is nutritious enough while they are going through it.
that's a good point, too.
Yes, that may be the answer. He's getting help through early intervention and on the waitlist to get tested for autism so see if that's what's causing his picky eating. Luckily his pediatrician is not urgently concerned about his diet because he's growing well enough and seems healthy, but since I've stopped breastfeeding I've been keeping track of what foods he's been eating and noticed how few vitamins are in all the things he'll eat.
Op, I agree with getting some gastric testing, if possible. I may or not be divergent, testing is cost prohibitive. But I was diagnosed as a child with IBS and still have occasional issues after food poisoning set backs a while ago. After getting that straightened out, a decent probiotic cap with fiber set me back on track until I could eat a mostly veggie diet, until the robber Barron corporate overlords started pricing decent food so crazily. You can add nutrition to crackers or bread with nut butters if your toddler will have them. If toddler requires more sweetness, try adding as little maple syrup as possible, and honey if his practitioner deems it ok.
Have you tried home made sweet potato fries (oven baked or air fry is fine, you'd have to look up how to oven fry them), or if your child will eat baked sweet potatoe with a little real butter they are highly nutritious and gut friendly. It's just hard to say because one of the many reasons I may be asd is it doesn't matter how much I like the flavor of something, if I don't like the feel or consistency of a food, I'm simply not having it.
That's not how autistic disordered eating works.
It may be spartan, but giving them a regular plate of homecooked dinner (with vegetables of course) and nothing else until they've finshed it, works most of the time. If not, they go to bed hungry which doesn't hurt them (it hurts your sleep though) if it doesn't happen every day. Like you said, they'll likely come around, but you have to out-patience them.
So, abuse the autistic child...
No, I guess I should've mentioned to not abuse your child this way. Just like a microwave manual mentions that you should not put your cat in a microwave.
Problem is, withholding food is abuse, period. You're telling someone who doesn't have the same neurological capacities you do to either starve or eat something they very likely have a visceral reaction to.
The other poster mentioned they missed the 'potentially autistic' part. While withholding food is abusive regardless,this for sure exacerbates the issues. I suspect you may have missed that part as well. It's okay, just have some humility to step back and say so. Or keep advocating for old school abusive parenting.
Quite the contrary. It's abusive to only feed your kids mcdonalds, because that's the only thing they want. You're telling someone who doesn't have the nerological capacities you do that they can decide whatever they want to eat.
My kids get a varied diet with all the nutrients they need. They can choose not to eat it, that's fine, but I'm not going to give them mcdonalds instead. Mcdonalds does not provide the same nutrients as a well balanced meal.
Sometimes I persuade them to "just eat a few bites" and than they can have desert as reward.
Sometimes we go to mcdonalds or some other fast food thing. But that's my choice, not theirs (mostly). And it's an occasional thing and a family event, like maybe once per month.
Maybe this approach doesn't work for neurodivergent kids, but I never claimed it did. If you have a neurodivergent kid, you should maybe look into other methods. I should add that I also don't know if this works for children of all ages, genders, races, handicaps, species, planets and dimensions. It works good enough for my kids and I'm taking that as a win.
Right. So maybe go back to the last paragraph, admit you probably missed the potential neurodivergency, and show some humility. Or double down and continue to offer bad advice.
No one here has said just let the kid eat what they want. Not OP, not me, not anyone else. We all want the kid to eat a better diet. That's literally the purpose of this thread.
The problem is that, for non-typical situations, typical solutions don't work. And, even for typical situations, starvation isn't the best option. We're trying to explore other possibilities, rather than the traditional ones, and being told "force the kid, you're the parent" is at best tone deaf.
I see were this is going wrong. The last sentence of OP's post says:
That wasn't there yesterday.
It was. I haven't edited my post.