To give my daughter meals she probably won’t like?

I did a little research into "picky eaters" as my DS2 is very fussy. It is linked to autism as a sensory thing for many children. (he is autistic)

I refuse to cook more than one meal, so just separate the components of the meal if possible (deconstructed dinner!), so he can eat something. I encourage him to try other things but don't make a big deal out of it. We sit together at the table and chat about random stuff. There is no pressure/focus on him.

We need to look at other countries though, who eat much less processed food. I think if kids are fed large quantities of bland UPFs, then they're not going to want to try other things. In China kids eat all sorts, but not so much processed junk. Same in France. I spent a lot of time in France and was amazed what little kids would eat.

So if toddlers/children were fed a diet with no UPFs, would they then be less fussy? (a child considered fussy in France would be considered to have a great appetite in the UK!).

If a child wasn't fed chicken nuggets and other bland processed foods, then they wouldn't know what it was to demand it.

(obviously this is not including children that have a genuine phobia of food, as that is something else altogether)

This

My son lived on Marmite sandwiches until he went to school, didn't do him any harm. 6ft healthy 40 years old now. Its really is not worth the hassle- I would kick off too if someone tried to force me to eat something I did not want or like. I don't consider her a picky eater, she knows what she likes. She's little . Why turn it in to a battle. Once she is at school she will see others eating and she may try other things, but she may not - pick your battles. You could cause untold damage over food doing this.

I work with children & have had fussy eaters quite a lot. I try & make food fun. One little girl didn't like veg so we went to the supermarket & I explained that the fairies hid all the sweetest carrots at the bottom of the display so I had her search for the nicest carrots & then she was more eager to try them when we got home. I grated raw carrots then cooked some so she could see how different they tasted. I made Princess mashed potato, normal mash with beetroot juice to turn it pink & made funny faces with other veggies on her plate. It took a while for her to try things but because it was fun she was more engaged & willing to try. For others we've had food play where I've grated veg & cooked pasta for the younger ones to play with. a lot of the time while they played I asked them to have a little taste & because they were distracted would have a little nibble. Try not to make a big issue about food around your Daughter & def don't withhold meals if she doesn't eat what you serve to her. Always have something on her plate you know she likes then add something new but don't mention it. Let her explore things at her own pace. If she eats certain sauces grate veg into it so it's not so obvious. Hopefully as she gets older she'll want to try more foods so try & hang in there for now.

This actually very much sounds like ARFID. Her issues are sensory and she's sobbing because the idea of eating this new/different thing is actually distressing to her. ARFID doesn't always come with ND diagnosis although it is more common in preemies and autistic children.

My 5 and 3yos are both a bit picky in different ways so we end up having mix and match kind of meals most nights. I usually serve up whatever me and DH want to have, plus one alternative, e.g. leftovers from the previous night or a simpler sauce (for example, if I'm making pasta with veg and meat/fish/seafood for us I'll serve some of the pasta with just butter or cream, plus some pieces of meat/fish and crudités so they can try ours but stick with a 'safe' option if needed). Bread and cheese or yoghurt & muesli are also always available. I try to avoid preparing entirely separate meals but I also don't do any encouraging/persuading/begging to try things. Instead I focus on mealtimes being calm and pleasant family time and what they eat is their choice.

I have two ASD picky eaters and one garden variety ratbag four year old, who has always loved his food/cooking/watching cooking/putting away the shopping and asking to try things. We are still going through this at the moment with him.

Four year olds going to four year old. My plan is to just not worry about it for a bit. The moment his world gets bigger again and he understands the story attached to food (this is granddads favourite so he sent it for you, pizza is from Italy country where the go jetters see the leaning tower...) he'll be into it again.

Keep trying in kind ways.
Ask her to just TRY the new food on her plate.
It is good enough to taste everything on the plate.
One day she will like something she did not like last time.

Water always available at meal times is important.
Do you all sit down together? Mirroring meal habits and seeing others enjoy new foods encourages confidence.

Does she like to drink plain milk?
If she is hungry, half a glass of milk or a square of cheese can fill her hunger.

If you know she isn't going to like it, isn't going to eat it, then refuse to give her something different, you're restricting her food, because the 'choice' she has isn't really a choice, is it?

She isn't being wilfull. She has told you she doesn't like it. She wants snacks because they fill her tummy and she's hungry and they taste nice and have a texture she can tolerate.

All this is teaching her is that dinner time is a miserable experience where she'll be forced to eat things that make her feel uncomfortable, or be hungry.

Mine all have ASD. They like and dislike things that the others don't like. I compromise by saying 'this has mushrooms in it, DD3 - you can pick them out. This has kidney beans, DD2 - you can pick them out.' I wouldn't put, for example, Worcester sauce in something because it can't be picked out.

It is frustrating. But it doesn't get better by saying 'this or nothing'.

We had what I think was a sensory issue with harder foods when younger. It meant most vegetables, some fruits, meat and other things wouldn’t be eaten. Whilst I could hide within dishes, I wanted to work on the core issue. I’d put a little bit of no-go food on the plate each meal and eventually her variety increase over time. It did take a good 1-2 years for the majority of foods. I also took her to the cheese counter at the supermarket for the samples and I’d say she’s probably eaten more varieties of cheese than quite a few adults.

We have food restriction issues when she travels. I just ensure we can obtain pasta (Hello Italy!!) and take lots of snacks

Hi OP,

I sympathise.

I have an 8 year old and we’ve had issues with his eating from when he was about 2 years old, all as a result of him having a lot of allergies from when he was a baby.

He’s been under a dietician since he was 6 months old.

He has a very restricted diet and I used to find it so challenging and I found mealtimes so stressful and I would end up in tears quite frequently because I was so desperate for him to eat.

The one thing the dietician said was that I must not make meal times a battle and that anytime I put any kind of pressure on him to eat something he doesn’t want then it just makes things worse.

Fast forward to now and he still probably only has about 10 ‘safe’ meals that he will happily eat and the dietician is happy with that.

At one point she said to me that she doesn’t care if he has toast for all three of his meals as long as he’s taking a multi-vitamin, he’s growing well, his bloods are fine (they’re checked 6 monthly), and that he enjoys eating.

She said that when it comes to children with this kind of eating issue she would expect them to achieve between 4-5 “new foods” each year and that as long as we aim for that, then she’s happy for him to continue with just his safe foods.

It does mean he tends to have different meals to the rest of us at times but that then gives us the opportunity to say to him, “Do you want to try a spoonful of what we are having?” - and sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t. If he doesn’t we don’t make an issue if jt, and if he doesn’t we praise him massively, even if he spits it out or says he doesn’t like it. We also wrote down a list of all the “new foods” he tries (even if he didn’t like it) which he enjoys adding to as he knows it will be passed on to his dietician and he feels proud about being able to show her that he tried something else. So we try to turn to turn the process into something exciting and rewarding for him as opposed to making him feel pressured.

Christmas Day was amusing as we all sat there with our lovely traditional turkey dinner whilst our son enjoyed his peanut butter sandwiches and a packet of crisps 🤣 He did try a honey glazed carrot though so that went on the list!!

So that’s how we currently manage it and it’s going fine. His latest blood results were fine (although he has required iron supplements in the past) and we keep an eye on his weight and height percentiles (which he loves) and the Dietician checks in with us every 6-9 months just to see how we are getting on.

She said that being realistic we are unlikely to see any noticeable changes in his eating until he goes to Secondary school where he will be more influenced by his peers and see them trying new foods in the cafeteria etc, and so until then just keep going with his safe foods, taking vitamins, monitoring his growth, offering new foods but expecting them to be refused, aim for achieving approximately 5 new safe foods a year, and just keep meal times as stress free and as enjoyable as possible.

I've had this with both of my children at various stages (one ASD, one not)
My advice would be just let it go. Don't have the battle. I gave veggies and salad etc in a separate bowl and just gently encouraged them to have a little try. But the bulk of their meals, was what I knew they'd eat. They'd cook some things with me, that helped. And when they started to understand about healthy foods, they wanted to try more. By about aged 10 they both improved dramatically. My DS with ASD still prefers beige foods, but will also eat loads of vegetables and fruit (salad still has to be in a separate bowl though) Try not to stress over it.

For our SEN DD, the plates with sections were really helpful as nothing touched each other. We just kept putting out different foods to try and the only rule was the food needed to stay on the plate (she wasn’t allowed to push it off the plate onto the table). But we didn’t ask her to try the food, it was just there on the plate if she wanted to.

We found just serving different foods a few times then lead to her trying it now and again.

We don’t do puddings in our household and the only evening snacks are plain oatcakes so there’s nothing appealing to eat other than dinner which I think helped us.

@jey91 you refer a lot to 'snacks' and your dc wanting not to eat their meal but asking for snacks. What kind of 'snacks' are you offering? Some slices of apple and batons of raw carrot with hummus? Oat cakes with cheese? Or are snacks all UPF easy to eat, made palatable with sugar and salt? What is the difference between the snacks she wants and the regular food you are offering.

If all the snacks were veg crudites with a variety of dips, or fruit and yogurt. Then why not serve that, alongside the blandest pasta and veg sauce, or the pizza.

If the snacks your dc likes are crisps, try making cheese crisps. If they are tangy try mini silverskin onions or olives. I have one dc who loved olives at 4, and one who hated them.

None of this is meant as a criticism. But I grew up in an era where snacks were not a thing. We had breakfast, lunch and tea. Maybe an apple mid morning or after school, and maybe a milky drink before bed.

Also my own experience growing up was that I hated 'wet' food. No gravy, no creamy sauce (fish in mushroom sauce was my nightmare). So paella was fine (all dry-ish ingredients) but risotto was terrible. And I still have a thing where I don't like my food groups touching each other... I like a neat pile of potato, a distinct portion of meat, a side dish of veg. And I've learnt to like gravy!

..............the most reassuring thing for me to hear is that she will grow out of it so thank you for all those comments

She may never grow out of it though.
If it's ARFID it's there for life.

If your daughter knows other foods are going to be on offer she will play the game to get what she wants. If the only food offered is simply that she will eat it. Look at 3rd world countries and historically. Children eat what is offered.
Children (and animals) WILL eat when they’re hungry. Stop pandering. Keep it simple, if she doesn’t want it…. Finish and leave it alone. Don’t offer food again.

You keep saying you give her a snack later so she doesn't go to bed hungry. A snack is not a meal. Hunger arrives pretty quickly after a snack. She would be starving by breakfast time.

Just have some serves of her favourite pasta in the freezer and heat them up to give them to her if she doesn't like what is on offer. Ease up on both of you.

This stage is not going to last forever.

You are where I was 30 years ago with DS. I used to beat myself up about it no end and I do understand how stressful it is. Somehow we got through it - peer pressure helped when he started school - and he is now a healthy six footer who loves food and eats anything!
One thing that really helped was buying a set of divided plates. Although he was never really bothered about foods touching each other, he likes the idea of having them separated if that makes sense. Good luck!

I made my eldest seperate meals for years. Well pretty much his whole life. He ate really well until about 18 months when he had a really bad stomach bug, then refused saucey foods, then he turned into a beige food only guy, at one point it was breadsticks and milk! Very gradually it got better in secondary school but to this day, aged 18 he will not eat rice or mince meat, but has developed a taste for a chicken madras. Looking back i think a lot of it was sensory / texture, as he's possibly on the autism spectrum. At times there were tears from him and me but I decided it was better he ate something then nothing and I couldn't face every meal being a battle ground. Over time there will be some meals everyone can eat together.

She likes porridge and/or yogurt for breakfast, i.e. sloppy food.
How about soup for dinner, with all the things she won't eat liquidised ?

Your daughter sounds very similar to how mine was at your age, I really feel your pain and went through many similar debates about the best way to approach it and pretty sure I posted on here a few times desperate for advice! We ended up doing a food therapy course when she was 5, which had a lot of advice like food chaining, having a tasting plate, serving meals family style etc all of which we tried to implement with limited success. On the course she seemed to be willing to do everything the therapists asked of her but we could never replicate that success at home.

On ND - I remember most of the other children on the course were a few years older and a lot of them were being diagnosed as autistic. I thought it was interesting, fast forward a year or so later and we started putting the pieces together that my daughter is autistic (age around 6, she's now 7) and looking back of course her eating was the first big clue that we missed! So not saying that's the case for your daughter but it can be a big part of an ND profile if there are sensory challenges. Looking back, I'm really glad we ended up falling on the side of not making food a battleground and forcing her to eat things she didn't like. Sadly she's still very limited in what she eats, and underweight and we're struggling to get it taken seriously by her paediatrician because she isn't actually losing weight. But I have hope that things will gradually improve as she gets older. Best of luck,

If the option is eat or go hungry, then yes, you are forcing her.

Adults don't have to eat food they don't like - so why should children?

My DS had 6 safe foods until he was about 7 years old. There was no real advice or understanding back then but we just went with our instincts and allowed him his safe foods while gently introducing new ones on a separate plate. No pressure to eat the new food, lots of praise if he did. He’s now a strapping 22 year old who eats anything and everything and loves nothing better than experiencing new foods and flavours. A spicy curry being a favourite. We do occasionally tease him about the days when he would run out of the room if we put a piece of chicken on a side plate near his safe foods.

Not sure if this is helpful!
My DD has been very fussy since the moment I weaned her. I found it so stressful and would sometimes be close to tears myself (i used to have an ED so i dont know if thats related) When she was 2 she seemed to exist on porridge, breadsticks and petite filous.

when she was primary age had quite a small rotation of meals and we tried one new meal a week. She had to try a new thing, but could have eg toast if she really didnt like it. And She honestly had the same packed lunch every day for about 10 years!

When she was about 11 or 12 we got to the stage that if we were cooking something eg chilli that we knew she wouldn't like she could cook herself something else. If we have an Indian take away (a few times a year) she has to make something else.

Shes 19 and at uni now, and in the last few years has started eating avocado, salads, sweet potatoes, omlettes etc and cooks a decent variety for herself.
(DS has always eaten just about everything - apart from salad- from the get go)