Are you crossing your fingers and hoping your child’s fussy eating will go away, that like many have maybe told you (perhaps those of an older generation who also tell you that they don’t understand what the problem is because they would have just eaten what they were given?), they’ll just grow out of it?

And are you now thinking, how much longer can this go on?

For a lot of children, it’s true, fussy eating is just a normal phase of development that starts around 2 years old and can last until they’re 3 or 4. How you handle this phase can determine how severe and how long it will be. Sticking to meal and snack routines, not caving in and cooking a different meal for everyone, and continuing to offer a variety of foods will stand you in good stead.

There are some children for which fussy eating is a response to an underlying health condition or other issue which makes eating and sitting at the table difficult, uncomfortable or scary. In these cases, a combination of strategies to combat fussy eating combined with expert nutritional advice is needed.

For others, the fussy eating phase can be prolonged and/or severe. This could just be normal picky eating behaviour that has escalated and now they’re set in their picky ways or it can be that they simply find new foods challenging for a whole host of reasons and they can’t explain.

Most of the parents I work with are experiencing this and are, unsurprisingly, at their wits end. For these families, the fussy eating is something that can be worked on and, over time, the pickiness will reduce and can eventually go completely, given the right approaches.

If you’d like to help your fussy child turn fuss-free, it would be an honour if you were to invite me into your family life by joining my How to feed your fussy eater online programme so that I can explore those approaches with you. Term starts on Monday!