Picky eater...does it get better?

[Lovelyweatherinlondon]

I'm so frustrated with DD (4.5), I'm going crazy. We are abroad for holidays and she barely eats anything, doesn't like any food here apart from home made chips, one type of fish and home grown chicken (just the drumsticks) from my mum's garden. No veggies apart from cucumbers and barely any fruits. Doesn't like any milk, cheese or yougurts here.

She is a picky eater back home but we have more options which are not available here. This really came as a shock as I didn't think she'd be quite as bad and makes me reconsider holidays abroad.

She was underweight last time I checked her at the hospital back home and looks skinny.

Does this get any better?!!! She is wonderful in every other way, but this drives me mad!

Oh then an easy lunch for school would be cheese scones, raw veggies, a piece of fruit and then maybe something else to see if she will eat when surrounded by other kids :)

One of my children was a very fussy eater. Getting enough calories into her at home was easy as she'd eat bread, potatoes (except mashed), pasta, rice, a reasonable range of vegetables, chicken nuggets, breakfast cereal, crisps and chocolate. She stopped drinking milk when she was two and a half. School dinners were disastrous for her and her packed lunches were embarrassing - a "butter sandwich", a packet of crisps and a little bar of chocolate. We only ate out in places where she could have a plate of chips or a bowl of plain boiled white rice. She declared that she hated food and wished she didn't have to eat, and took no interest in learning to cook until her late teens. Her siblings were all good eaters.

As an adult, she's vegan but within that constraint she eats a varied and adequate diet, cooks confidently, and is quite adventurous when eating out.

20 years later, still a picky eater.

Yes. We had a 'food must not touch, food must be dry not wet, no sauces etc' kid. He has turned into an adult who eats everything except aubergine mushroom courgette and coriander.

Give loads of variety in tiny servings.
Encourage trying everything, and seconds of things they like best.
Put a tiny serving of dinner on the plate with a tiny serving of the new food. When it's eaten give seconds of anything they like.
Start from what they like, then tweak it. Mine liked pizza, so we made 'pizza sauce' and served it on the side to dip his other food in. Then we added meat to the pizza sauce (bolognese) and so on.

I had another who wanted to make food a battle ground. Every dinner was met with a 'yuck, that looks disgusting'. After all the usual tactics failed, I started saying 'ok, make yourself a sandwich then'. She did for the first few meals then got bored and just ate what she was given!

Glad to hear the majority of them do grow out of it. She does go through phases of eating better but then she goes off things and we are back to where we started.

Today she's eaten 2 oaty bars, one biscuit, one tiny cucumber and a quarter of banana, all day. Didn't even want to eat pizza, her favourite thing, as she had it quite a few times on this holiday so understandably she's gone off it. I'm just so stressed.

One of mine tried "being picky" and we completely ignored it. Food went in front of them, plate was taken away regardless of what was eaten or not eaten, no comments made, no fuss, no attention. This is great for the kid - they can eat what they want, and leave what they don't want, without any chatter or stress about it - and great for the parents, who don't have any kind of battle.

They grew out of it within months.

Mine has, yes.

This week, suddenly, ds has eaten fresh french beans, lettuce, sweetcorn, all consistently rejected in the past. He's just 14 !

DD 15 is still picky so growing out of it is not definite..

Hey ho.

I was very very picky and lived on cooked carrots, chicken, mashed potato, peanuts (salted), frontage frais (vanilla and strawberry), bread and butter, cornflakes and not much else until about 10 when I had a moment of epiphany in a restaurant (my poor DParents had given up and took me places where they could eat well and I could eat bread and butter if necessary) and started to eat everything. Now I still won’t eat baked beans, tomato ketchup or scrambled eggs but will eat pretty much anything else.

Hi I know long shot but I was hoping if you could give an update ? ☺️

Hi
any improvements please ? ☺️