If dinner has turned into a negotiation, if the list of foods your child will accept keeps getting shorter, or if you have run out of ideas that anyone actually eats, you are in very familiar company.
Most fussy eating settles with time and the right approach at home. Some of it does not, and telling the difference from inside your own kitchen is genuinely hard. That is what an assessment is for.
- ✓ Accredited Practising Dietitians with a dedicated paediatric team
- ✓ Sessions with your child, or parent-only, whichever works better for your family
- ✓ No lower age limit — babies on solids through to teenagers
- ✓ Six Melbourne clinics, home visits and telehealth Australia-wide
What fussy eating actually is
Fussy eating, also called picky or selective eating, describes an unwillingness to eat familiar or unfamiliar foods along with a narrow overall range. It is a developmental pattern rather than a diagnosis, and for most children it is a phase they move through.
Children reject food for reasons that make complete sense once you know them. Appetite drops sharply after the first year because growth slows. Taste preferences genuinely differ from adults, with a strong natural pull towards sweet and away from bitter. Deciding what to eat is one of the few areas where a small child has real control, so food becomes a place to exercise it. And a single bad experience with a food, whether gagging, vomiting or being pushed to finish it, can remove that food from the accepted list for a long time.
None of that is bad behaviour, and almost none of it is caused by anything you did.
How common is fussy eating in Australia?
Very. Research summarised by the University of Sydney finds that almost one in two children go through a period of selective eating during their toddler years, with the behaviour typically peaking around age three. The same research describes fussy eaters as children eating fewer than about twenty different foods.
That twenty-food figure is a useful anchor. It is not a diagnostic threshold, but it does help separate a child who is being difficult about broccoli from a child whose diet has genuinely narrowed.
The other useful measure is direction. A child whose accepted foods are increasing, even slowly, is on a normal trajectory. A child whose list is shrinking month by month is not, and waiting rarely helps.
When fussy eating is more than a phase
It is worth booking an assessment if your child:
- Eats fewer than about twenty foods, and the number is going down rather than up
- Refuses entire food groups — no vegetables at all, no meat at all, no fruit at all
- Becomes genuinely distressed rather than simply reluctant when a new food appears
- Gags or retches at textures, smells or the sight of certain foods
- Will not eat at childcare, kinder, school, or at other people’s homes
- Dropped foods after an illness, a choking episode or a hospital stay and has not got them back
- Has slowed on their growth curve, or seems persistently tired, pale or low in energy
- Has been like this for months rather than weeks, with no sign of movement
You do not need to tick several of these to be worth seeing. If mealtimes have become the hardest part of your day, that is reason enough.
What a dietitian can and cannot do
A paediatric dietitian can work out what is driving your child’s eating, check whether their current diet is meeting their needs for growth and development, and build a realistic plan for widening variety over time. We can also identify the things that quietly make fussy eating worse, such as constipation, low iron, an undiagnosed intolerance, or grazing patterns that flatten appetite before meals.
What we cannot do is make a child eat, or promise a timeline. Widening a narrow diet is slow, and it is not linear. Children go backwards during illness, holidays, new siblings and school transitions. Individual results vary, and any plan that ignores that is not being straight with you.
When we refer on
If your child has swallowing difficulties, such as coughing, choking, or wet-sounding breathing during meals, that is speech pathology territory and often needs a medical review first. We refer rather than attempt it.
If the eating pattern looks like ARFID, with restriction significant enough to affect nutrition, growth or daily life, that needs a broader team including psychology. We will say so and help you get there.
Never stop or change a medication your child has been prescribed without speaking to their doctor first.
What actually helps
The strategies below are the backbone of most plans we write. They are simple to describe and genuinely difficult to hold to, which is why having someone to work through them with makes a difference.
Split the job
The single most useful principle in child feeding. As the Raising Children Network puts it, you provide the food options and your child decides how much to eat, or whether to eat at all. Your job ends at what goes on the table and when. Theirs starts there.
This sounds like giving up control. In practice it removes the daily fight, and it is the change most families find hardest and most worthwhile.
Keep offering, without pressure
A child may need to encounter a food many times before accepting it, and encountering does not mean eating. Seeing it on the table counts. Serving a new food alongside foods they already accept, with no comment and no expectation, works better than any amount of encouragement.
Give the day some shape
Constant grazing is one of the most common reasons a child is not hungry at dinner. Regular meals and planned snacks, with water rather than milk or juice in between, restores an appetite cycle. Many families see something shift from this alone.
Watch the language at the table
Praise for eating, visible disappointment at not eating, and running commentary on how much is left all raise the stakes. Neutral is the goal. Talk about the day, not the plate.
Bring them in before the meal
Children who shop, wash, peel, stir or set out food arrive at the table already familiar with it. Exposure earlier in the day lowers the barrier at mealtime, which is the same principle behind our hands-on feeding therapy sessions.
Myths and advice worth ignoring
Some of the most confidently offered advice about fussy eating makes it worse. These are the ones we spend the most time unpicking.
Make them sit there until they finish
Extending the meal turns the table into a place of conflict. Children learn that mealtimes are unpleasant, which is the opposite of what widens a diet. Twenty to thirty minutes is enough for a child, and ending a meal calmly is not a defeat.
You can have dessert if you eat your vegetables
This teaches exactly the wrong lesson. Vegetables become the price and dessert becomes the prize, which raises the value of the sweet food and lowers the value of the vegetable. It can produce a bite tonight and less acceptance over months.
Never make them anything separate
There is a real principle here, which is that short-order cooking on demand does not help. But it gets applied too far. Including one food you know your child accepts as part of the family meal is not caving in. It means they can come to the table without dread, which is a precondition for trying anything else.
Cut out snacks so they are hungry enough at dinner
Structure helps, but an overly hungry child is a dysregulated child, and dysregulated children do not experiment with unfamiliar food. Planned snacks at set times work better than removing them.
You caused this
Fussy eating has a substantial temperamental and genetic component. Parents of fussy eaters are usually doing more, not less, than parents of children who eat easily. Guilt does not improve mealtimes and it is not warranted.
Fussy eating rarely travels alone
By the time families come to us there is often something else in the picture, and it is frequently the thing keeping the eating stuck. Worth mentioning when you book:
- Constipation — extremely common, easy to miss, and it flattens appetite while making eating uncomfortable
- Iron deficiency — both a result of a narrow diet and a cause of poor appetite, so it becomes self-reinforcing
- Food allergy or intolerance — where genuine discomfort has quietly taught avoidance of a whole food group
- Coeliac disease — worth excluding when restricted eating comes with poor growth
- Autism and ADHD — sensory preferences, and separately the appetite effects of some prescribed medications
- Anxiety — particularly after choking, vomiting or a hospital stay
Your dietitian looks at these alongside the eating itself, and liaises with your GP or paediatrician when something needs investigating.
Our approach
Every family receives a clear, personalised action plan and a defined pathway, so you know what you are working on and what comes next. We do not run a fixed program, because the right starting point for a two-year-old refusing vegetables is not the right starting point for a twelve-year-old with a ten-food diet.
- Get in touch. Tell us what mealtimes look like. We will let you know whether an assessment is the right next step.
- Initial assessment, 45 to 60 minutes. Growth, nutrition, feeding history, medical background and how meals actually run at home, not how they run on a good day.
- Your action plan. Practical objectives with agreed goals and milestones, chosen with you. Usually two or three changes, not twenty.
- Your pathway. What happens next, how often we meet, and what you are working on between visits.
- Review. We look at what moved, adjust the plan and change the pace as needed. Goals are agreed rather than imposed, and we do not set fixed numeric targets.
With your child, or without
Some families bring their child so we can see how they interact with food. Others prefer parent-only sessions, which many parents find more productive because they can speak freely. Both work well, and you can move between them as things change.
If strategies are not enough
Sometimes a child needs hands-on work rather than a plan for home. Where that is the case, feeding therapy is available within the same practice, from the same team, with no re-referral and no new waiting list. Our therapy rooms have ovens, and baking is part of how children build familiarity with food. You can read more on our paediatric nutrition page.
Workshops, childcare and kinder
We also run group parent workshops and work with childcare centres and kindergartens on mealtime practice and supporting children with restricted eating. Contact us to talk about what your centre or group needs.
Why families choose NutriBlooms
A paediatric team, not one clinician
Our paediatric work is led by Monica Ng, Accredited Practising Dietitian and Feeding Therapist, alongside Kineta Sulemani, whose background covers responsive feeding and home enteral nutrition, and Simon Salerno, who works across paediatric nutrition and tube feeding.
Eight Accredited Practising Dietitians across the practice, with in-clinic case conferencing to our Principal Dietitian, so a complicated presentation gets discussed by a team rather than carried by one person.
Recognised in primary care
NutriBlooms received the Dietitians Australia and Griffith University Quality in Primary Care Award in 2025, from the body that accredits the dietetic profession in Australia.
We also received the Local Business Award — Outstanding Health Improvement Services and the Quality Business Award — Quality Rating Over 95%, both in 2025.
Every dietitian at NutriBlooms is an Accredited Practising Dietitian, and NutriBlooms is a registered NDIS provider.
Funding, fees and referrals
NutriBlooms is not a bulk-billing clinic. Medicare pays a rebate on eligible appointments and a gap fee applies. Contact us for current fees before you book.
Medicare and the GP Chronic Condition Management Plan
From 1 July 2025, the older chronic disease care plans were replaced by a single GP Chronic Condition Management Plan. In practice:
- Your GP refers by ordinary referral letter — the old structured form is gone
- Your GP no longer names the provider or specifies how many services you use, so the choice of clinician is yours
- Up to five subsidised allied health services per calendar year, or ten for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, shared across all allied health providers rather than five per profession
- The referral stays valid for eighteen months from the first session
- Plans put in place before 1 July 2025 can still be used until 30 June 2027
Other pathways
- Private bookings — no referral required
- NDIS — registered provider supporting self, plan and agency managed participants
- Private health extras — on-the-spot claiming where your cover includes dietetics
- DVA and WorkCover — accepted
Where we see families
Six Melbourne clinics — Blackburn, Ringwood, Lilydale, Dandenong South, Roxburgh Park and Epping — plus home visits within approximately 20 km and telehealth Australia-wide. Home visits are worth considering for fussy eating in particular, because seeing a meal in your own kitchen tells us more than any description can.
Frequently asked questions
For most children, yes. Almost one in two children go through a period of selective eating during the toddler years, and it usually peaks around age three. Appetite swings, refusing a food they liked yesterday, and suspicion of anything new are all part of normal development. What matters is whether the range of accepted foods is slowly widening over time or steadily narrowing.
It is worth an assessment if your child eats fewer than about twenty foods and the list is shrinking, refuses whole food groups, is distressed rather than simply reluctant at mealtimes, cannot eat at childcare or at other people’s houses, or if growth has slowed. Duration matters too. Months rather than weeks, with no sign of improvement, is different from a passing phase.
Fussy eating is a common developmental pattern that most children move through. ARFID, or Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, involves restriction significant enough to affect nutrition, growth or the ability to take part in normal life, and it does not resolve on its own. The distinction is one of severity, persistence and impact rather than a hard line. If your child’s eating fits the second description, tell us when you book.
Not always. Some families bring their child, which lets us see how they interact with food. Others prefer parent-only sessions, which many parents find easier and more productive because they can speak openly. Both work, and we will talk through which suits your family. You can also switch between the two as things progress.
There is no lower age limit. We support families with babies establishing solids, toddlers in the thick of food refusal, school-aged children with narrow diets, and teenagers. The approach changes considerably with age, but the assessment always starts with growth, nutrition and what is driving the eating.
General advice assumes a typical child with a typical appetite. It does not know whether your child is iron deficient, constipated, has an undiagnosed intolerance, or is anxious after a choking episode. An assessment identifies what is actually driving the eating in your child, checks whether nutritional needs are being met, and builds a plan around your family’s routine rather than an ideal one.
Yes. We run group parent workshops and work with childcare centres and kindergartens on mealtime practice and supporting children with restricted eating. Contact us to discuss what your centre or group needs.
NutriBlooms is not a bulk-billing clinic. With a GP Chronic Condition Management Plan you can claim a Medicare rebate, and a gap fee applies. NDIS participants can often fund support through their plan, and private health extras cover may apply with on-the-spot claiming. Contact us for current fees before you book.
Dinner does not have to be the hardest part of your day
Talk to an Accredited Practising Dietitian about what is driving your child’s eating and what to do next. Sessions with or without your child, at six Melbourne clinics, in your home, or by telehealth.