Sue (36) a first time mother is typical of the parents identified in the Haliborange survey. Describing herself as a coaxer, she has consistently struggled with her 4 year old son Oscar's faddy eating habits which began at an early age after a bout of sickness. From the age of 18 months, Oscar's point blank refusal to eat (anything but sweets and milk) has been a constant cause of frustration and family mealtimes turned into a battleground on occasion. It was suggested that his lack of eating was also impacting on his developing social skills and his ability to talk coherently. To solve the problem Sue turned detective to find out why Oscar was refusing his food. Now aged four Oscar is a very active little boy and Sue's constant efforts with his diet are now beginning to pay off. Although he is still reluctant to eat many foods, at last peace is beginning to reign at mealtimes and "green" is back on the menu!

"Ever since Oscar could walk he has always been full of energy. He's a very happy, healthy little boy - but he just doesn't like food. This means he is small for his age -at four he is still wearing 18-24 month T-shirts and he can't wear trousers without a belt! But more of a concern was that it was suggested that his faddy eating was partly linked to his slow speech development. Because Oscar didn't like to chew food, his facial muscles weren't strong and flexible which affected his ability to form certain vowels. Getting Oscar to eat became a major preoccupation and a major disruption.

"Our problems began when at nine months Oscar was hospitalised with bronchilitis and although he made a full recovery, he failed to gain any weight for a further six months and thereafter weight gain was slow. Despite the fact that other children his age seemed to eat handfuls of sandwiches and crisps, I wasn't overly concerned because he had a voracious appetite for milk. But during another routine hospital visit at 18 months, the resident paediatrician declared Oscar to be malnourished and referred him to a Sate Registered Dietician.

"After my initial shock that my son was under nourished, I was reassured by the dietician that I was doing most things right. We made plenty of time for meals, I was offering him a variety of foods and we ate together as a family as often as possible. I had also been supplementing his diet from 3 months of age with Haliborange multivitamin syrup and more recently with those little orange chewable tablets, Haliborange vitamins A, C and D, as recommended by my health visitor.

"However, at best Oscar only ate very small amounts and he never ate vegetables - he would even avoid green pasta. Meal after meal would be left virtually untouched. Meal times were spent persuading him to eat, stress levels were rising and I found myself resorting to sweets as bribes.

"The first problem I needed to tackle was to encourage Oscar to eat more. The dietician made me realise that I was allowing him to drink too much milk - so part of the reason he didn't eat was simple - he wasn't hungry! Cutting back on milk was difficult and initially caused far more disruption than we'd previously experienced. But slowly we began to see that Oscar was more interested in his food. Sweets were kept for special occasions and instead Haliborange (which he loved) became his daily treat. To ease stress levels at the dinner table, particularly my stress levels, I realised it was important to make mealtimes fun for the whole family. I'd make faces with his food on his plate and encourage him to eat different parts of the face. I gave him gold stars to reward him if he ate well. And if he didn't eat? Well - it was no big deal! I also found that if he could watch cartoons at the dinner table, he'd eat distractedly while laughing and chatting about Scooby Doo. Instead of overwhelming his plate, I only gave Oscar the food I knew he liked (pasta, sausages and fish fingers) and slowly began to add new tastes (vegetables in disguise).

"There's been no quick fix but eventually Oscar has begun to eat more and has been more willing to try new things. Last week he ate broccoli for the first time - a major triumph."