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

If she leaves kes plain pasta great give her a good portion of that. Put some smooth pasata topping at side of her plate so she can dip pasta in or not if she doesn't want to. If she will eat a tiny amount of pasata over time you could liquidise a meatball or two into it. It sounds like she doesn't like like the texture of meatballs. Offer lots of fruit for vitamins. Will she eat grated cheese?

I literally posted a similar thing the other day about my fussy almost four year old! Reading responses with interest as I am yet to do the “this is dinner- like it or lump it approach.”

What's your own relationship with food like, OP? Do you think this may be feeding in (pun not intended!) to your anxiety about what your daughter is eating?

Please dont force her into eating food she wont like.Its upsetting for both of you, and your youngest too to witness it.If she eats chicken sometimes, and rice , Spag bol shes not doing too badly TBH! Children have certain tastes ,and it's better for them to eat what they like (within reason of course). Can u reframe it so that you are eating foods you all like ,Maybe led by DD taste.Also dont forget children wont always finish their food, and dont always have huge appetites .My DD was similar ,and our gentle older GP said not to worry no child ever starved itself!

You need to distinguish between 'exposing the child to a range of different foods' from 'making them eat a range of different foods'. The former is good and the only thing you can control. The latter is bad and not within your control.

You’ve had some good advice here and I too think that if you stop the battle, it will improve in time. If she’s eating yoghurt and fruit for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and then things like pasta and chicken for dinner, I’d say that’s pretty ok. Keep smuggling in veg and other vitamin sources whenever you can but otherwise if she’s healthy and a good weight, just ride it out.

We had a fussy eater in our family and she went through a phase of eating dry cereal for breakfast (no milk!!), sandwiches and then for dinner it was chicken nuggets or pizza. We would eat healthily in front of her and say to each other stuff like ‘this broccoli is SO good’. I remember the first time she noticed and reached out to ask for some - could have jumped up and down on the spot. She’s now a very happy eater who’ll munch on most things.

Pursue positivity all the way and save yourselves the heartache of a food battle.

I’ve always made sure at mealtimes there is food DD2 will eat and uncontaminated by anything new e.g. plain pasta on the side. I always have frozen veg so very easy to give her veg she’ll eat and if she really won’t eat the protein. I just give her a couple of slices of chicken or cheese or something like that. If she’s not hungry and I know it’s a safe food, then the response is fine, you can have it later when you’re hungry and just take it away and reheat later.

We also don’t really have snacks in the house - if you’re hungry, there’s fruit or yogurt or make yourself something e.g. toast, cheese and crackers etc. so I’m not too fussed if they want something later.
I’ve usually baked but the DC prefer to keep that to take to school. (No problem with them eating biscuits and chocolate it just means they have to walk to the shop which is less than a 5 minute walk away.)

If she’s ND she may hate food being mixed. Both my kids are, we’ve learnt what they will and won’t eat, so just made that work. DS is AuDHD and only eats carrots, broccoli and PASSATA tomatoes, but that dine as we work them into his meals alongside small amounts of fresh orange juice and baked beans. We blend in other stuff like frozen chopped spinach cubes into pasta sauces … food is something we work together with both our ND children to ensure it’s never a meltdown or even an issue, if they eat enough plus snacks then that’s a good day, we rarely have bad days and if we do we don’t make a big thing of it - good luck

Yes.

I have an adult child with ARFID.

My other three children eat anything.

It isn't your parenting.

Also, your child may not be ND. Not all people with ARFID are. My son is, but your daughter may not be.

Stop making this into such a battle. Calm down and don't upset your little girl all the time.

My son lives on HUEL these days, and he'll eat chips and vegan burgers too.

It’s worth as well thinking of meal times in vocabulary terms.

At 2 my DD chucked food she didn’t like and screamed.
At 4 she said “don’t like it” and refused to eat it.
At 8/9/10 she was able to explain that with well sweetcorn she didn’t like the texture of it popping in your mouth. she could explain that she didn’t mind (although didn’t love) mushrooms if they had a thick sauce coating them, but the texture made her queasy if they were on their own or in a thin sauce. That she enjoyed roasted carrot but the squishiness of boiled carrots make her stomach turn. She could also explain that pasta isn’t just pasta because macaroni is a smooth texture but the ridges on penne made her shudder.

Your DD doesn’t eat a horrendous range of things so that’s good. Try and see the positives in that. I have a friend whose DS would only eat plain pasta, dry toast or a very specific yogurt. For over a year. He eats much better now that he can explain what he does and doesn’t like, and why.

This post broke my heart, I want to cry for your daughter. When my mum would come home from work I would often be sitting in front of a cold dinner. My nan insisting I eat . My mum would throw it in the bin. Same at nursery school. I would often be sitting at the lunch table with a cold meal in front of me.

I have 3 children my eldest is just like me. In addition,I have 8 grandchildren, 3 of the girls (cousins ) are the same. My eldest granddaughter, when we went out would be so overwhelmed if we went for a restaurant meal she would be in tears before the meal was served. So we would always take a packed meal for her. This is a very real situation and I don’t think you are handling it well.

i cannot bear to think of the trauma your daughter goes through at l meal times.

This is the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for ARFID- in case you want to check if she fits

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519712/table/ch3.t18/

Honestly this sounds fine. Just stop trying to ruin her safe food by hiding other stuff in it. You’re creating trust issues doing this and she will then go further into the cycle of limiting even her safe foods.

have sharing plates for anything not safe in the middle for her to help herself.

my daughter was picky age 2-7 but slowly started to introduce new foods at 8 and now at 10 will generally try anything even if she doesn’t eat it again

Both mine were like this. I just fed them what they were happy to eat and avoided a battle.
But one thing I absolutely insisted on was school dinners, as there was generally always something they would eat, and it opened their eyes to new foods - and saw their peers eating said food!

Now they are 9 and 11, and only very recently has the older one started to become a bit more adventurous. But he is getting there! It's a long haul but stick with it.

Read ‘my child won’t eat’ by Carlos Gonzales. It really helped me psychologically.

We have a selective eater. Do not turn it into a battle. Give her safe foods that she will eat. Do not overwhelm her with foods that freak her out. Do not believe the people that tell you they will grow out of it....10yrs and counting....

ETA we get ours to take an organic multivitamin, we have to be careful what flavour or she'll not eat it. It's a chewy bear from Garden of Life, highly recommend, to make sure she's getting the nutrients she needs.

That sounds like torture to me. I stopped eating meat when I was a very young child. If I’d have been given pasta p, a safe food p, with that mixed in I would have been sick, I still would as an adult.

and then telling them there’s nothing else until later.

all sounds like stuff my parents did in the 70s. Now I’m in my 50s I only really feel comfortably eating food if I’ve prepared it.

It’s all linked to my childhood and mealtimes.

@Clinpsyc 's post is spot on.

Re: control. One thing that helped me massively when fussy ds was this age was to get a blackboard in the kitchen and write up a meal plan. We would sit as a family and all choose something each week, so the kids felt they had some control (actually, I was probably planning on doing those meals anyway). So DS could see pasta was on there twice and chicken goujons were on there...so he would relax knowing he'd had a say/knew what was coming.

He would still sulk on other days (and I'd always have leftover pasta/toast/fruit etc for him) but we would say "it's daddy's/mummy's choice today - it's your turn tomorrow look?".

He's 12 now and his eating is so so SO much better. Age 4 is tough. It's peak "fussy eating" I'd say (I never used to call him that in front of him btw; self-fulfilling prophecy and all that). I would just say he's particular !

Hang on in there. Stay calm and relaxed around mealtimes cos they pick up on all the worry, too.

This was me as a child. Mealtimes became a battlefield and I developed an eating disorder as a young adult. I still don’t eat some of the foods my mother tried every means possible to make me eat.