Help with 3 year-old who will only eat potatoes and yogurt

[kmamma]

I'm desperate for ideas on how to help my kid learn to eat a larger variety of foods. He's 3.5 and since the age of 2 or so, his food choices keep decreasing. He started out happily eating all kinds of foods and then it seemed at the age of 2, perhaps sooner he got really picky. Actually this was about the time that I myself started cutting out  lot of different foods because I was having bad reactions to a number of foods. As I result I had limited my carbs to basically only fried potatoes, and he loves those. My husband worked a lot during this time so my son was offered my food choices mostly. Since my health was pretty bad at the time, I did not have the strength to prepare anything different for him. Then we moved to Sweden, just me and the boys, while their dad stayed behind for 8 months and it seemed that made things even worse.

At the moment, and for a long time now, his diet consists basically of yogurt with honey (2-4 times per day), fried and baked potatoes, pizza (on occasion) and hot dogs (I buy the better stuff). While I have a very restricted diet myself, my husband and my other son eats a very varied diet and he will often join them. In fact he LOVES food. He loves to talk about it, look at pictures, touch it, feed it to others. But not so much eating it:(. He nurses a lot still.

He has a lot of cavities on his front teeth so after reading Ramiel Nagel and other people on the subject of tooth decay I understand that his digestive system is out of balance with a result of blood sugar imbalance. And perhaps this is the reason why he rejects many foods, not being able to tolerate much. I try to push the hot dogs, even though I know it's not the healthiest choice, because at least it helps counter all the carbs he eats. And this follows a very typical pattern. He loves it for some initial first days and then he no longer wants it. Sometimes for up to a few months. Over the years, he's also eaten corn chips on a regular basis and don't ask me why I allowed this terrible food to be eaten by my children. They don't eat it any longer after I realized it could be the reason why their teeth are so horribly cavity prone.

What should I do? At times I try to encourage him to eat the pastured meat I slow cook but he will not even consider it. He's a very stubborn little guy, very hard to talk him into anything. And I do respect a child's desire to choose himself what to put in his body. I just feel like his system is out of whack and I have no clue how to help bring it into balance. I bought CLO last month and both kids took it the first time even tho it's the fermented and unflavored kind but since my oldest developed a nasty sinus inflammation the day after I haven't brought it out again.

It's very draining emotionally to always try and try, most of the time with no success at all. I need a plan or something, and especially to hear other people's stories to help bring me hope. I have been prone to thinking 'this is just a phase', but it doesn't seem to be case.

Oh, I should mention that he went to daycare last fall until february this year. Lunches were tricky, and many times he'd just eat yogurt or worse, bread. But on occassion he'd eat the food there. His favorite was fish gratin, which I think considering his pickiness is amazing. Both me and his dad came away with this daycare experience as having a positive effect on his eating pattern. It seemed that the more consistently he attended daycare, the more consistently he improved his food choices. Although of course, we prefer TF over daycare fare.

Another part to this dilemma is that I'm finding it very hard to even find the foods that we need. We moved from the US over a year ago and did pretty well there. If I didn't incorporate a certain food into our diet it was because I was too lazy and overwhelmed to do so. Here in Sweden, the reason is simply that I can't find it. We have managed to find pastured beef and pork. The pork is available pretty much all the time, but because he sells his hams to a fine food supplier, the pigs go into butcher at 6 months, being very very lean. The pastured beef is only available in the fall but I have ordered a box from an organic farm that obviously pastures the herd in summer months. I feel like the best solution is for my husband to hunt, but he's not yet proficient in Swedish and the licensing process is quite lengthy.

There is very little in the way of organic veggies, and our growing season here is about 2 months long.

Enough.

Any help and support is greatly appreciated:)

[craft_media_hero]

Gosh, I don't know----I'd try and introduce smoothies as a place to start, and hide stuff in them that he won't normally eat.

What about soup? Dehydrated fruit? Carrot/raisin salad? 

You might try on the ages and stages board, too.

Will he eat boiled eggs, maybe if he helps boil them? That would be a good source of nutrition. 

It's great that he's still breastfeeding a lot--at least that gives him some "insurance".

I hope other mamas chime in here . . .

Maybe google the blender pancake recipe--what kid can resist pancakes, right? I mean, it's still carb-y but at least high-quality carbs.

Good luck!