At wit's end with my son's fussy eating

[peepopeepopeepo]

Hoping someone has some advice/reassurance. My 5.5 year old is really fussy and it is seriously getting me down. I am a good cook and love food, he gets home cooked meals every day and 9 times out of 10 he won't eat them.

Under previous advice I recieved I keep putting things I know he won't eat on his plate (the wisdom seems to be you have to keep offering things and eventually they will try them), I don't make any fuss about him either eating or not eating, I don't do the rewards thing as I was advised not to, I don't offer alternatives. Again previous advice I received was to make sure his plate always has one thing I know he will definitely eat on it.

I've been doing these things for what seems like forever now and it doesn't seem to be making the blindest bit of difference. He's never been a big eater - even as a tiny baby he wasn't that fussed about milk. He's on the small side for weight for his age (though still following his line on the chart) and he takes a multivitamin but I just worry about lack of nutrients and his general complete refusal to even try new foods, even stuff I am 99% sure he would like. I involve him in cooking all the time which he enjoys but even if he's helped to cook it he still won't eat it.

He will eat:

Bread of any description - brown/white etc (but nothing with seeds)
Rice, pasta, and potatoes of any description unless they have any herbs on them. Will not touch sweet potato or butternut squash. With pasta he will only really eat fusilli or penne, he gets very suspicious of small shapes like macaroni.
for pasta sauces he'll have cheese sauce and tomato sauce (I do home made and usually try to put veg in that) on pasta but it has to be smooth, any lumps at all and he won't eat it
Cheese - cheddar only, he won't entertain trying any other cheese like feta or halloumi or even a babybel or a cheesestring
Fruit - he will eat pear, apple, mango, melon, strawberries, blueberries and nectarines
Vegetables - the major sticking point. The only one he willingly and regularly eats is cucumber. He will grudgingly eat red pepper, carrot and broccoli but only very small amounts. Apart from that - nothing.
Meat - chicken, occasionally a home made meatball, ham, sausage (we don't have the latter two much as I don't like to give him processed meat).
He'll eat yoghurt but only the petit filous sort, not plain greek or anything like that.
Crisps/chocolate/cake/sweets and so on - needless to say these aren't every day things but he's even fussy about these unlike most children - will only eat pom bears or tortilla chips for crisps, and only plain milk chocolate - like he wouldn't eat a cake with chocolate chips in it, it would have to be plain sponge. He has never tried a sweet (he's been offered one).

I've been repeatedly told he'll grow out of it but he's been like this since I weaned him and if anything he has got worse, not better.

Any advice I haven't tried?!?!

He won't touch pulses. Those are a major food group in our culture so that's quite annoying. I get that's probably not unusual for British children though.

It really doesn't sound that bad. Just hide veg where you can and feed him what he'll eat

I wish my fussy eater would eat all that! I'm hoping when he goes to nursery and a new childminder he will start seeing his friends eat different things and he will just eat without thinking about it!

He'll get there eventually OP, especially when he sees his friends tucking into things with relish.

We had both of our youngest see paediatric dieticians due to their extreme fussiness and took in lists like you had and they said they're getting everything they need for their growing bodies and to just relax.

DS now eats most things, has tried frogs legs and scallops, he won't touch olives or cabbage and is a strapping 6ft tall teenager. When he was little he went though a phase of only eating Richmond sausages and satsumas which he'd only eat with fire sauce (ketchup and salad cream mixed together).

DD lives off M&S kids ready meals served with one of the two vegetables she'll eat, asparagus and broccoli. She'll only eat fromage frais not plain yogurt and doesn't like cake or sweets. She's never eaten a piece of meat, even chicken that isn't incorporated into something else but she eats it so I let it go.

I've learnt that the more it is an issue for me the more they rebel against it. Just give him what he likes until he's ready to try other foods, he'll be much more receptive if it's done on his terms.

He eats way more than my fussy child does!

My eldest is not fussy. We did introduce him to spicy foods quite early and he likes strong tastes. However my youngest - a completely different kettle of fish. She has quite a strong sense of taste and smell and I think this is the issue. She also has massive tonsils so lumpy foods feel uncomfortable swallowing.

We try and take the pressure off and now, aged 9, she will try things - but not at meal times. We have a A to Z food challenge and we all have to try foods together for fun.

I also give veg/fruit snacks in between meals so I don’t stress if she doesn’t eat veg at meal times.

Sometimes I do cook stuff she doesn’t like - but I also do the same for my non fussy child so she doesn’t feel picked on. She does get upset that she doesn’t have a wide palate.

Just because you like to eat a wide variety doesn’t mean he does and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. As he gets older he may get more adventurous in his taste, he might not. But either is fine as long as he has a broadly balanced diet

For what it's worth, DS refuses to eat potatoes in any form (especially chips!) but will happily work through a bowl of quinoa. Children are weird. I just let him get on with it and eat all the good stuff myself.

That is really not bad at all. Of course we all wish our kids were chomping away on avocados and spinach, but it doesn’t always happen. It sounds like he’s getting all his major food groups in.

Pulverise a few veggies in a tomato sauce.

Mush some onions in his gravy.

I never liked beans and pulses as a kid. My child is suspicious of them too.

Kids are suspicious of herbs and spices until they are older, I find. My one loves spicy food now, but hated the sight of any green garnish at five.

My one hates boiled potatoes. She eats chips though!

I’ve posted before at length ( resistant eaters thread) about my now 29 year old youngest son.
Nothing I or anyone else says will make it any easier for you, it’s just a matter of eliminating any health issues and just trying to stay sane
From 8 months old my son turned his head away from a spoon and refused most foods until he went to university
It was not until he was 22 that he ate a “ proper meal” on a plate with foods allowed to touch each other.
He ate
White bread and butter, berries, cucumber, rich tea biscuits, full fat milk, dry rice crispies, raw carrot stick, cheddar cheese in small cubes, one sort of ice lolly and one sort of sweet
The only health issues he had were constipation and no teeth til 16 months
I saw every specialist going and nearly went out of my mind at times. I’m ashamed to say I lost it some days and tried to force feed him
Nothing changed, he just grew up and socialised at uni which involved eating out
There are still things he doesn’t eat
He now claims “ I wasn’t that bad mum”!!!!
I feel for you but can’t offer any solutions

One of mine said, aggrieved: "Mum could you please stop putting spinach on the top of things." It was a wee sprinkle of parsley in the summer.

@peepopeepopeepo

Like he wouldn't try nutella on toast the other day when my sister offered him some. What kid doesn't like nutella?!?! This is a child who loves chocolate as well.

DS2 likes chocolate spread but not Nutella, bc you can taste the nuts.

My dgs was the same.
I used to call him the Carbohydrate kid.
He's 9 now and in the last 2 years has started eating a wider variety of foods.

I would just keep trying different foods along with the foods he likes.

Sounds like my dd wat that age. As she got older she got more adventurous. I used to give her a multi vitamin daily too (still do)

I have one of these!
DD eats a good range of items but likes simple foods cooked and presented plainly.
She likes flavour, but texture is an issue. She dislikes mixed up foods, wet or lumpy foods.
This distresses my DH who loves cooking and she won't eat the majority of what he makes.
She's healthy and a good size and weight. But will possibly never enjoy food in the same way as we do.
Fwiw I think kids like this are perfectly happy eating a limited range of familiar and safe foods. It will probably change as he gets older. DD will sometimes try new things but we don't push it.

He eats a fairly wide range and a good balance of different food types.
It’s not amazing but its ok and reasonably healthy.
Keep doing what you’re doing. He WILL improve slowly over time. Peer pressure may start to play its part also.
He may never have a love of food like you but that’s ok.

Hi Op, as it’s been said upthread you can buy very good quality sausages and burgers too at farm shops, local butchers and the like.
It might be worth seeing what’s nice in your area.

@Beamur , absolutely, my son has never and still does not enjoy food in the same way as the rest of his family does. If I’ve got family round and say, make lasagne and salad, he would make himself a salad sandwich as he wouldn’t eat lasagne if it had onions and/or mushrooms in it.

That's not a fussy eater you have there. He's just got a very sensitive palate and flavours and textures are experiences more distinctly.
If other mothers are crowing about their little Tarquin simply loving squid/olives/gorgonzola etc you say with a laugh 'oh I know - some kids have very obtuse palates, they'd chow through ANYTHING without noticing'.
I have the son like yours. He never changed, he's 18 now and still the same. Eats one veg, sweetcorn. Wild horses won't make him eat something he doesn't like the taste of.
You are taking his food choices as meaning something bad about him or something bad about you.
The experiences of your son's tastebuds are NOT related to your abilities as a mother.

@sadie9, well said. One specialist told me it was probably my fault, I’d must have rammed a bottle tear in too far and made him gag!

My DS is 5 and fussy. Your son eats more variety than him but I'm not worried. My DS eats:
All fruit
Cucumber- will try other veg
Sausages
Chicken curry
Rice
Ham
Plain pasta

My friend said he is almost paleo!

Ffs my kid won’t even eat bread or chips. I can count on one hand what she will eat. I’d be very happy if she was like your son.

sadie9
You really do have to develop a thick skin to the parents who think they're better at parenting because their kid eats olives
Both my DD and her older sister have different palates to the rest of the family. It would be easier if we all liked the same food but this is how it is. It's not really that big a deal.

I get a lot of stick from family about it because in my culture children just aren't fussy. It doesn't happen.

This isn't massively fussy, but I'd just persist. My DS was never fussy, but when he started school he started 'trying' to be fussy, both at lunch time at school and then at home. I just persisted, I didn't give him anything different, he got what we were having as he always had.
Each night he would tell me he didn't like it, and just pick at it.
He's come home from school saying he had chosen a sandwich at lunch as he doesn't like curry or whatever was the option that day. We'd then discuss how he does like it, and also have a chat about the things he genuinely doesn't like (for example peppers, he's doesn't like them raw but I explained that he doesn't mind them in cooked meals, and out his mind at rest that the school cook would never just serve raw peppers for lunch 😅)
Over time it just got better, the moaning stopped, and now he is back to eating most things. I know the things he doesn't like, and have reassured him I won't make him eat what he genuinely doesn't like. He's 7 now