Please help me feed my kids better, even the fussy toddler cookbooks can't cater to my nightmare DS.

[Alfreddo83]

I have an extremely fussy 4 year old DS and a very non fussy 2 year old DS. The older one is an absolute nightmare with regards to how little he eats and I've always found it really stressful trying to feed him

I've dropped the ball recently with regards to what I feed them and I'm relying really heavily on processed and freezer food.

The fussy toddler apps and Instagram pages are filled with amazing recipes and DS1 will eat none of it (I should add that he eats a much bigger variety of food at nursery)

Can I please have suggestions of easy, plain but more nutritious dinners that would cater to the older one as well?

Cheese and vegetable omelette
Cheesy rice (basically rice, tomato passatta, lots of veg then stir in loads of cheese)
Tuna and sweetcorn, pasta with cream cheese and cheddar as the sauce

Can you tell my kids love cheese?

They also love chicken and sweetcorn risotto

What does he eat at nursery?

Yes - what does he eat at nursery? Why does he eat more there? Ask the nursery staff what they do! Beg for tips. Maybe he likes eating with kids his own age? Maybe he's full after nursery so doesn't need as much tea?

No advice but lots of solidarity. We're in the same boat with DD who is 3. If I read another "hide veg in pasta sauces" suggestion I'll cry- she won't eat bloody pasta sauce.

I think you've got to work from what they'll eat at present OP and build from there, rather than look at recipes that work for others.

For context, my eldest is very fussy and won't entertain most common, obvious toddler meals so I've had to think within her box. She will eat plain pasta, she will (weirdly) eat gnocchi and pesto. So we are working on pasta with pesto. She won't entertain anything in a red or brown sauce at the moment so my next steps are to build in a white/cheese sauce. She likes rice so I'm building up to risotto, that kind of thing. She loves stir fried veg and is starting to accept a wider range and with some sauce on too so that's another one I'm building away at slowly.

I know her 'safe' foods and luckily they are quite decent, so I'm building on branching out really slowly. So in a meal for example she will have half plain pasta and then next to it half with the target sauce on. Nursery couldn't get her to eat anything much different so it really is just her, at the moment. It's really hard!

Howdy friend 👋🏻☹️

What does he like to eat? Figure out from that what his preferences are in terms of texture, chewiness, “separateness” ( does he feel more comfortable with little piles of different things or does he like food mixed together like pasta and sauce), predictable-ness (e.g a chicken nugget pretty much always tastes how you expect it to, apples ranges from crisp and fresh to powdery and bland and you can’t tell from looking), is it finger food or cutlery food, etc etc.

once you know what his preferences are on those kind of terms, look for similar type food and introduce it slowly. Marathon, not sprint. Remember that young children often need to see/try something on many different occasions before they add it to their “oh yeah I like this” category.

remember that feeding children can unconsciously trigger stress/worry/irritability/emotions in us so our behaviour around mealtimes can accidentally encourage refusal or pickiness. Don’t feel bad about that of course - but have a think whether there are any differences between home meals and nursery meals. It’s natural and understandable that children want to exert some control so mealtimes are often a good place for them to do that - we find it hard not to rise to the challenge of persuading them to eat, it’s hard to be like “ok fine you don’t want it”.

one tip for that is to regularly serve two small courses. Instead of main meal and pudding, give a small meal and then an acceptably (to you) healthy “afters”. It basically gives you two opportunities to ensure they get their nutrition and without it becoming tied to being one as a reward for another. Little children can get satiated quickly by one meal (can’t remember the technical term but you feel full due to boredom by magically have room for a different type of food). But it’s important to make sure those two courses are planned in advance (never “cook to order!”) and that it’s just a normal, matter of fact way of eating.

also, try not to worry too much! There’s lots of aspirational stuff about young children eating amazingly perfect diets but it’s a lot of flannel and marketing and the usual crap that parents have to try and defend their sense of self worth from.

Also if you want to introduce more sauces, try putting a spoonful of sauce in a little shallow pot to use as a dip on the first few introductions. Often more acceptable!

My DC won't est pasta sauce either and has lots of issues around food (ARFID) so doing stuff like hiding veg would just make it worse by making them mistrust food even more.

As @8DPWoah said, build on what he does eat. Make sure every meal has 1-2 'safe' foods so that there is never nothing for him to eat. Don't try and persuade him to try what's on his plate, don't bribe or any of that and definitely don't punish. Just serve the meal, including the safe foods, then take it away at the end without comment.

If you're worried about his calorie intake then give him a plain dessert like yoghurt or fruit alongside his main meal, served at the same time as the meal, with no conditions attached. The reasoning is that a few bites of dinner and a few bites of dessert are more calories than a few bites of dinner on its own.

Have a look at SR Nutrition's instagram page and also her website. There are lots of helpful advice on overcoming fussy eating. She also holds webinars and workshops which could help you too.

Kids Eat in Colour on Insta is good. Essentially: eat together, let them serve themselves, start with small portions, make no comment on their eating; always serve a safe food.

Agree you need to tell us what are his 'safe' foods and go from there.

I have 1 very plain eater so have a 'formula' of some kind of meat / fish with a sauce / topping that can added last so I can keep a portion plain.

Then at least 2/3 veggies including 1 of her safe ones. So maybe garlic and Parmesan courgettes and mushrooms for us but plain broccoli too.

I’d unfollow all of the Instagram accounts showing you recipes for fussy eaters. There isn’t such a thing and spending ages cutting out tiny little bits of food makes things worse.

I’d have a look at this - solidstarts.com/downloads/reverse-picky-eating-bundle/ written by leading specialist, paediatricians and dieticians with peer reviewed data referenced. It is expensive but if it is out of your price range you can email them and they’ll provide free access with no questions asked.

My fussy child will eat a soup his grandma makes. It's basically chicken thighs, potato, carrot, onion and pasta. He doesn't actually eat the chicken but it adds a bit of goodness to the soup.

Dc4 was incredibly fussy but getting better, he is 7.5 now. Thankfully the 3 younger Dc will try and eat nearly everything.

I never did the hide veg in sauces as he would refuse but I fed him what he did eat and added stuff, put foods with it and went from there. He despised tomato based food and sauces so bolognaise was a no however I would separate it from his pasta in a small bowl starting with a teaspoonful. He now eats a few spoonfuls (I will add this has taken 4 years 😁). Soup was liked, creamy parsnip so made a lot of that. I refused to cook different meals but adapted them to accommodate as he was a horror if hungry and he wouldn’t eat. Sausages with a veg he would eat, carrot and another he wasn’t keen on. Plain rice with a veg stir fry. Oddly he loves cooking & baking but often won’t eat what he helps make. He gets a good multi vitamin too. It’s hard work and very frustrating whilst worrying about their health.

My then fussy 4 year old had plain omelettes at school, which she told me off about as I had never given them to her and she hadn't realised they were nice!

She had always eaten eggy bread, which might be worth a try.

She also liked plain pasta with tinned tuna and frozen peas. No sauce at all. And certainly no cheese!

My son is autistic and a lot of the time it's not necessarily the food, its how its served that's the problem. I always serve things separately on his plate and sauces on the side.

Even with things like pasta, there can be a huge difference in how it's made. My kids prefer theirs firmer like DH cooks it rather than how soft I like it etc.

Find out what he likes at nursery and how they serve food.

my fussy eater got much better when he got to serve himself. It meant sometimes he had a tonne of one thing and little of another, but it was food.

There were also a couple of things that he ate on the basis they were “nursery bananas” and “nursery pizza”.

I found that fussy eater children become a lot less fussy when they're hungry. They're only fussy because they've learned it gets them results - so why wouldn't they have a tantrum??

Eat what's in front of you or don't eat, that's the choice in my house. I think in this day and age it'll probably be call abuse or neglect 😂

But for a child to miss a meal and go to bed hungry is not going to kill them and they'll cry themselves to sleep anyway if they want to have a tantrum.

And it'll make them think twice about thinking they're in control.
They can set their own menus when they're buying it, making it and clearing up afterwards ie when they move out.

Well it worked for me back in the day 😊

Check out the feeding littles insta page - it's some recipes but mainly tips to get them actually eating which worked for us.

Luckily my DD always liked a limited amount of veg, it was just carbs (other than plain pasta)/meat/sauces we struggled with and their techniques really helped!

Fuck me. The dark ages want their advice back

Sorry, bedtime descended into chaos, we have newborn twins hence why I am on here asking for easy meal ideas.

So to answer a few questions. He tends to make a snap judgement on whether he will eat something, I try my hardest not to react or try to convince him to eat but occasionally I break and find myself saying "please just try a bit etc"

He will eat tuna pasta with some mayo through it, macaroni cheese (but only a specific kids microwave meal one, if presented with homemade macaroni he refuses it and asks for "the real one" his favourite meal at the moment is Heinz tomato soup with buttered bread (he will not eat homemade soup of any description)

With regards to nursery he will eat sausage casserole (but refuses the veg/mashed potato's) fish cakes (I now buy the same brand of fish cakes that nursery give him after asking to see the box) he will eat baked potato cheese and beans there but won't eat it if I serve it at home, you get the general idea.

Ironically I was a very smug first time mum as he literally ate any food I served him until he was 18 months old and then this started, I genuinely don't think he has eaten a vegetable for two years. He eats lots of fruit, yogurt, porridge etc

Jesus, so I've to send him to bed hungry and let him cry himself to sleep? Amazing advice 👏👏

What does he eat? I agree with the pp who said try to figure out what sort of fussy he is - is it about texture, mixture, a particular sort of taste he doesn’t like, familiarity, way of serving?

I was a fussy child, as was Dsis, but we were ok with most plain foods, no sauce and not mixed. I eat everything now (Dsis not so much).

Poster saying they won’t go hungry is talking old school bollocks by the way. I remember being a fussy eater - it wasn’t wilfulness, the stuff I didn’t like genuinely tasted disgusting. As I got older my taste changed and things like onions became more and more acceptable. Dsis meanwhile would literally get to the point of fainting rather than eat something she didn’t like.

Also IME dc are always fussier when tired so try new foods at lunchtime (when not in nursery) rather than tea.

My fussy eater child never had a tantrum over meals, just never ate anything which would continue for days. Same at school with school dinners. He would however be a miserable, grumpy boy as he was very hungry.

He had CMPA diagnosed at 12 months after months of weaning, vomiting misery. Reflux from birth so I felt his fussy tendencies developed from vomiting daily and association with foods not just because he was trying to take control.

Glad the advice these days has moved on @alwaysmovingforwards