SA mother to face trial over starving boy

A father has admitted endangering the life of his four-year-old son who weighed just 8.3 kilos after being kept in a squalid bedroom and fed under the door for 12 days.

The boy's 23-year-old mother denied the aggravated charge, but admitted a less serious charge of criminal neglect when the pair appeared in the South Australian District Court on Monday.

The malnourished boy was hospitalised after police were called to the family's Adelaide home last October.

The house was filthy and littered with rubbish and rotting food.

Prosecutors dropped the criminal neglect charge against the 27-year-old father on Monday, after he pleaded guilty to endangering his son's life.

They refused to accept the mother's guilty plea to the lesser charge and she will face a trial on the endangering life count.

In his interview with police, the father said the young boy had been kept in his bedroom for 12 days.

"We fed him under the door," the man said.

"We actually fed him pretty much every day, in that room, by sliding the plates under there, so far as we could hear, he was happy."

In response to police questions as to why the boy was being kept in his room, the man said he had not been naughty and said he and his partner were not "negligent parents".

"The time just flies past that fast," he said.

The man said the boy had been fed with sachets of food as well as bars and biscuits.

Asked how the boy was getting any fluids, he said that came only from the food he was supplied, which included yoghurt.

"He hasn't learnt to drink out of a sippy cup yet," the father said.

"We tried teaching him, he just won't snap to it."

He faces a sentence hearing on June 17, while the mother's case was adjourned for a directions hearing on June 18.