Apologies in advance as this is long to provide the background.
Ds (now almost 6 and coming to the end of year 1) ate everything when I was weaning him, there was nothing I found that he wouldn't eat, but gradually he just started refusing more and more foods once he hit about one and a half.
He won't eat any veg except for sweetcorn (this includes any form of unprocessed potato - though unhealthier options such as potato waffles and alpha bites are sometimes acceptable. Obviously these have to come from a packet in the freezer because if I make them they are the work of the devil). Nothing spicy or with herbs, nothing involving bread or bread-related products, nothing hot - if it's cooked this will provoke a breakdown and the food must be allowed to go stone cold before he'll even make eye contact)
In fact thinking about it, it's quicker to list what he does eat:
Ham
Chicken
Cheese
Picnic eggs
Cocktail sausages
Occasionally pasta or rice as long as it's plain
Yoghurts
Most fruit
Chocolate/sweets.
He sees me, his dad and surrounding family eating healthily (I have checked this with his dad as we are separated), we have tried saying no puddings unless he clears his plate, then tried ok if you try one bite of x then that's fine, this results in about an hour of very upset crying and if he actually brings himself to put something in his mouth he retches instantly. I have tried sticker charts and ensured he understands why it's important to eat healthily, I've tried hiding veg by blending it/hiding it in food, tried making it into fun things, tried growing our own and getting him to help make the food. Tried taking him to the supermarket/showing him recipe books to encourage him to pick something he fancies. Tried saying ok well if you don't eat it you go hungry. For about a year I put a lot of emphasis on the healthier eating, but I do now go with gentle reminders that eating more healthily should be an aim for everyone - I have read about a gazillion articles and am well aware of the school of thought that making it a big issue makes it worse so I don't. Nothing has worked (I am open to suggestions). GP isn't concerned as he will eat fruit. However he is slightly overweight (this isn't a massive issue as far as I'm concerned. He has registered at 99th percentile since he was born and he isn't massive, he just isn't slim, I just am conscious that if his attitude towards food doesn't change, it will become a bigger problem later on in life). The GP did mention that and say to restrict the amount of fruit he has because of the sugar content.
When he started school we got the list of acceptable lunchbox items - usual sort of list. With his limited diet there's not much I could pack that he'd actually eat and I hoped that if I signed him up to school dinners that he would try new things if he saw his peers eating them. This has worked a tiny bit. He loves the school meatballs and spaghetti and the lasagne - obviously will not touch this at home. But there remains a lot of things he doesn't like. He is desperate to take packed lunches but when I explain to him what he would be allowed to take in he says he wouldn't like that either. I asked the school when he started to let me know if he wasn't eating enough and I'd try and find enough that he'd eat to fill a lunchbox. They've never said anything and I've checked at a couple of parents evenings and they've said its not been a problem, so I presumed everything was fine.
This morning I was completing his lunch options at school. He got particularly upset about one day where the options were sausage and mash or salmon salad and new potatoes. His teacher saw and came over and decided to make the ever-so-helpful and unreasonably judgey suggestion of "well that's fine, mum can send in a packed lunch that day, I know it's a bit of extra work for you mum but I'm sure you can cope with it for a day. To make him happy" rude.
He was ecstatic, I am now panicking hugely about what he can take in that he will actually eat. As it happens, he's with his dad that day so I text to let him know and he called and said he'd been meaning to talk to me about it as he went in to have lunch with them the other day, ds ate 3 bites of jacket potato grudgingly and then the cheese, flat out refused to touch the salad. After he went to play his dad went to speak to the dinner ladies who told him that was normal for ds and although they tried to encourage him to eat more and try new things he never does.
So my request for advice is two fold really -
- Can anyone think of anything we haven't tried that has helped with their fussy eaters?
- What an earth can I put in his packed lunch? At the moment I can only think: ham, a selection of fruit and a yogurt.
I'm getting to the point where I am beginning to find this quite a problem, if it's a phase it seems to be lasting years and just getting worse and I am a bit sick of all the judgey comments I've started to receive from people who presume we just don't make the effort to address it. Not to mention being really bothered that his teacher thinks I don't provide a packed lunch purely because I can't be arsed.