Fussy eating despair

[Miltonkeynesmummy]

Can anyone tell me any hopeful tales of how their children were really fussy then transformed into good eaters.

Both of one eat about 2-4 different meals based around either pasta or chips. They don't have school dinners offered at their school so they just have packed lunches every day so aren't really exposed to other children eating different foods. I've tried offering different meals for 3 months but the food waste was huge and I'm trying to cut out food costs.

Please tell me with time they'll suddenly eat vegetables, meat, potatoes, rice etc

Not my DC but me... I was an exceptionally fussy eater as a child, I would only eat the following: tinned spaghetti (hoops not strands and definitely not actual pasta), medium sliced white bread, lightly buttered. I would drink plain milk, not flavoured. That was literally it, no protein at all and no fruit or veg other than the small amount of tomato in the hoops. I wouldn't even eat biscuits or chocolate!

I was like this for maybe 2 years from 5ish to 7ish and got to be quite underweight and unhealthy looking. My poor mum was beside herself and tried every tactic in the book, bribery, reward charts, removing pressure, encouraging me to try, involving me in the cooking, everything. nothing really worked but over time I did very gradually increase the foods I'd eat starting with very bland stuff like chips and plain pasta etc. By the time I got to secondary school there were a few 'normal' meals I would eat (by normal I mean pasta with tomato sauce and cheese for example) and by the time I went to university I ate pretty much like a normal person albeit a bit unhealthy with little fruit and veg. Now I eat everything, a healthy balanced diet and lots of fruit and veg.

Sorry I can't give you solutions to change things quickly but to reassure that while I have known many very fussy children I know very few truly fussy adults, to the extent it negatively affects their lives. I think food issues are something most NT children do grow out of eventually (v frustrating at the time though!)

How old are they? My daughters have all been very picky and particular about things they would eat at different stages, and it was always very bland food and hardly any vegetables. After about the age of 11 they started becoming more adventurous and now at 13 and 14 I have one veggie, one vegan, they will try all sorts of different things and often cook for themselves.

Yes, my DS.

Ate: porridge, beans on toast, peanut butter sandwiches, apples and fromage frais frim the age of 1 year until he was 10. He was massively underweight, it was awful.

He has aspergers syndrome and I tried everything. Nothing worked. People said when he hit the age of 9 he would change. He waited until he was 10, but he did. Now eats everything and is 20.

My youngest DS, is 6 and ate everything until he was 2, and then went to beige and breaded food only. He is slowly coming out of it now. I have to be on him though constantly, and vegetables are still a nightmare.

I think part of it is expectation. I had visions of cooking wholesome meals every night not just bloody pasta over and over again. Tea was met with horror tonight so one has gone to bed after having just a yoghurt. They are 3 and 5.

DH was a picky child and now is a picky adult. His mum took him to the doctors out of desperation who said ‘he’ll eat if he’s hungry enough! Don’t pander to him!’ He went 4 days without eating, he can still go for ages without eating and will if there is nothing he likes. As long as there is chicken, steak, burgers, curry he’s happy enough.

DS (10yo) improved, due to Rewards for eating veg. And occasionally being ridiculed by a sibling. Very slow improvement over years. Started eating pasta which was about age 6. Still no fresh fruit, and only limited selection of veg. Still no rice or wet foods, pfft, but he often tries different things nowadays. Always had same very few things for breakfast & packed lunch. We're currently he said he might try cornflakes. He'll never be a foodie, but at least we can get 4/day into him.

Ds ate egg, beans and toast for every meal for 3 weeks when he was a toddler.

I gave up.

Then he turned around and asked me for some pasta.

He eats everything pretty much now.

I'm in the same boat. When my DD (18 months now) was being weaned I made all my own homemade, healthy purees. Beef, chicken, fish, pasta, veg, fruit, everything!

Now? Spaghetti (from a tin), sausages, the occasional fish finger/chicken dipper and low and behold a new one...bbq beef fucking supernoodles 😫

Tried so many different things, but she won't even TRY them, she sniffs food and if it isn't familiar she clamps her mouth shut!

DS1 was a shocking fussy eater (I've a few old threads on here tearing my hair out about it). Think he went for a couple of years just on fish fingers, white bread, cheese and yoghurt. Now at the age of almost 12 he will eat tons of stuff that I never would have dreamed - curry, bean stew, spag bol, etc. I realised at some point that if I got stressed about it then the only result was that I was stressed ; it made no impact whatsoever on what he ate! So I just gave him what he liked and gradually over time he started to become more adventurous.

I did.
My SD came to live with me aged 7 and had a very limited diet and got distressed/gagged on anything else.
She will now try anything and is really proud of her adventurousness and enthusiastic about food.
It took me about a year to do this at an incredibly slow pace.

First I made sure she was under ZERO pressure to eat anything or made to feel bad about what she liked.
Then I served her food she liked with two or three tiny pieces of different food, (making sure they were not touching any of the stuff she liked.
When she told me she didn't want/like it I would casually tell her that it was ok, she could leave it or play with it as she wanted.
And repeated this for a long time!

I started to add into the conversation about how nice it is to taste (not eat) new things, sometimes they can become a new favourite.
And I NEVER watched her while she ate or commented on her what she tried or didn't.

after she had tasted a newly introduced a food about ten times it became part of the main meal.
There was a bit of resistance at this stage but she found some real surprises (lots of new food loves) and reminding her that recently she had thought she didn't like them helped.

As we had more and more things she would eat I became a bit harsher (you must taste everything or no pudding)

She is now nine and loves more things than I do!

We have come a long way from pasta and grated cheese!