To fuck off out for the day when MIL visits tomorrow

There is no need to have pudding every day. My two don't have pudding, and if they don't eat what is on offer, they go hungry. My aunt allowed her two to be fussy but eat pudding. They stopped eating any healthy food and just ate sweet foods. Elder cousin v fat, younger has battled with anorexia since early teens, and i've seen that pattern replayed recently woth friends' DC. I take rather a hard line on ensuring decent food and not allowing children to get a taste for rubbish.

So what happened in the end OP?

Weaponising food and potentially permanently demonising veg is not a "perfectly valid" threat.

Food is life, fuel, a pleasure, a lifelong relationship. Not a battleground. Making it one isn't the good parenting flex some think it is. The foundations start here.

Crudités before dinner, raw fruit and veg as snacks, and keep offering small amounts of any veg at dinner. Eat your own, and normalise doing so in peace and calm. It's really stressful, but kids go in phases for their tastes. Getting the vitamins and fibre in and preserving drama-free future meals is what's important now.

As adults we often don't fancy what's on offer either, but it's a smaller part of our day and we often just accept it/make it work for us somehow. When you're 4 and 6 it's a bigger deal. It'll continue to be so if the adults determine that.

Your MIL is coming to visit. You don't see her often. And you're planning to avoid the visit altogether. Yeah, that's bad, dragging her into an uncomfortable situation. Either cancel or be polite.

My kids would refuse point blank to eat curry, but would wolf it down if it was called spicy stew.
My dad got a very fussy friend of my brother’s, who would only eat cheddar cheese to eat Brie (soft cheddar), Red Leicester (orange cheddar) and emmental (holey cheddar).

Glad you’ve sorted it out for now.

It wasn’t until my dd was in her teens that she explained why she wouldn’t eat veg she liked (eg peas or broccoli) inside a sauce (eg cheese sauce or tomato pasta sauce)- it’s the texture. She’ll eat loads of veg when they’re separate and plain, but not in sauces or gravies. It’s still frustrating because curries, casseroles, etc are so easy on work days and she won’t have them, but I just do her veg portions separately and it works out ok.

When she was little it often worked well to have the things she would eat all out on the table- bowl of tomatoes, sliced cucumber, some peas, some green beans, etc- and she would help herself. I would put out hummous, nuts, or fish fingers as well and she’d end up with a decent balanced meal. If you’re having something the kids don’t like, maybe try doing this? Gives them a bit more control.

She snapped first?
They were both wrong.

You are again reaching in your comments telling me to reflect... I said nothing about shouting or being triggered. I merely said that getting kids to eat veg isn't abusive. You've added legs and tails to a comment unnecessarily.

This. I'd get my MIL on side. She was great.

Shouting at your kids at the table because you cannot control your own behaviour and forcing them to eat anything is abusive behaviour. If this triggers something in you about your own behaviour, maybe reflect on it.

Telling your kids to eat their vegetables is not abuse.

You took a big leap there and landed nowhere near the truth.

FWIW, I let things like this slide and I wish I hadn't. I really, really wish I'd taken a stand about DP throwing his weight around with the DC, and not discussing things and working as a team with me sooner.

It was a significant nail in the coffin of our relationship, and I wonder if it's partly the cause of DD's anxiety as a teenager.

This stuff doesn't just get better by itself. DC are - and will continue to be - challenging at times. It's up to the adults to make sure they're not instilling anxiety into their DC or taking out their frustrations on them.

I think this is completely wrong. The kids are not 'playing them off against each other' - that is such a ridiculous and overused trope. Most adults don't have the conscious manipulation skills to pull that off, children certainly don't. They are scared of their dad trying force them to eat something, they need protection from that, which is a far higher priority than presenting a 'United Front'.

How will kids ever speak up about being abused if they see everyone in their lives colluding with abusive behaviour. If you wouldn't do something to an adult, you really shouldn't be doing it to a child.

@Myeyeisnotokay great update. Good for you! And great your DH has taken on board your comments. I agree with the no pudding if they don’t make a decent effort. But I always tried to give them things I knew they liked. If it was something new I’d insist they try one bit. If they didn’t like it, fair enough. Mealtime is such an important time, it’s hard sometimes to get a balance. You sound a great mum.

I will add a caveat that I have autistic children, so my advice comes from that experience.

Do not set your children up to fail, casseroles, curries and things all mixed together are very challenging for children. You know what they like to eat, and as long as it is balanced, give them that. My DC needed elements of a meal to be separate until they were 12/13.

If there is a new food or food that is not on the approved list, put it in the middle of the table so that they try it if they are curious.

Always make sure there is enough approved food for them at every meal, they need the calories, you have an obligation to keep them fed.

My DC3 is very thin, he absolutely needs a pudding if he hasn't eaten much main course. Never use food as a punishment, DH is setting them up for a lifetime of food issues. It is abusive behaviour.

Lastly, how much actual caring, shopping, cooking, attending appointments, does DH actually do? If you are doing it all, I would say he can't expect even a 50% say, never mind expecting to lay down the law entirely. Does ge actually love and care for them or does he just want them to comply and present him in good light?

This is not about the vegetables, not really.

This is about DH's anger, control and attitude problems.

Instead of working as a team with you to try to solve a very common childhood issue, he seems to think that the DC not eating veg is an affront to him, and that it's on to try to control them and gets angry when they won't bend to his will.

This is much more damaging, psychologically, than skipping a few veg is physically when they have a balanced diet.

It's also an issue that he's ignoring your request for him to be nicer to the DC.

This won't improve unless he takes a long hard look at himself.

Your DH sounds like a bullying twat.

I feel stressed just reading about what meal times must be like in your house. Would MIL be supportive? Would he behave differently in front of her?

Even kid's yoghurts can be very sweet. My kids would have deliberately skipped dinner at that age if they thought that they were going to get a sweet yoghurt.

Mealtimes are no place for threats. You'll give them the message that dinners are something to be suffered rather than enjoyed.

he just couldn't help it and kept on and on at the girls until I snapped at him and he was then swearing (mainly at the situation eg. It's fucking ridiculous).

He could help it, he just didn't want to.

My mealtimes were like that as a child, I got so anxious that I'd start getting butterflies in my stomach the evening before knowing what was coming. It kicked off a lifelong eating disorder.

OP, batch making a tomato pasta sauce with loads of veg puree'd saved me when my children were small.

I bagged it and froze it, 20 bags at a time.

I fried chicken pierces, fish, sausages, add the sauce and pasta for a fast easier dinner.

Sometimes I just added the sauce to pasta and grated cheese.
They loved it and it wasn't the worst meal.

Stress around food IS the worst.

Grated boiled eggs into pasta, having added some frozen peas into the cooking pasta was a great easy meal that my friend told me about for small children, with a dollop of butter or mayo to mix it up. So easy.

My adult children love all fish today.
I started out with fish fingers when they were tiny.

Fish finger sandwiches is a comfort food to my youngest to this day.

Go easy on yourself, you are doing great.

Specifically asking him to completely shift his mindset to give you an easier life and then snapping at him when he didn't do that.... is undermining him.

Absolutely he shouldn't have swore. But you shouldn't have snapped.

Ye need to get on the sane page and stop patenting against eachother.

I think I prefer him to my stupid SIL who tells my grandchildren not to eat their vegetables, making vomiting noises at the table, to put them off.

My DS didn't want to eat veggies. I would 'hide' veg by mashing swede into mashed potato, grating carrots into spag bol, cottage pie - anything really. I would also quietly put a bowl of cherry tomatoes, carrot sticks, a peeled & segmented orange or grapes next to him while he was watching TV or playing on his Play Station & he would pick at them without really noticing what it was that he was eating.

I'd also get him involved in shopping & cooking asking him to pick some fruit & veg when shopping, getting him to help cook also made him feel more invested in the meal & more likely to eat the veg.

As PP have said, nagging a child to eat something isn't going to work. Offer veggies that you know they enjoy, don't praise when they eat it, don't try to persuade them to eat them, just make it all low key.