"Just feed them what you eat"

[Cindy1802]

I am at my wits end with kids and how crap they are at eating. I have a 5 and 2 year old, who both are fed good diets. They get a home made meal from scratch every night of the week. They have always been served what we eat, moderated with no chilli/low salt etc, but recently it's been grating on me how often they complain about what's in front of them. I am adamant I am not going to be making multiple meals every night. I did my reading during the weaning stages and read many sources saying to feed them what we eat. But everything is apparently disgusting! For context, they have rejected this week:
Tomato and chicken orzo
Pea asparagus lemon risotto
Butter chicken curry
Satay stir fry veg and rice
Kid friendly chow mein
Roast veg tray bake with sausage and halloumi

They will sometimes pick through and eat the sausage, plain pasta or a particular veg, but many times it's just moaning and complaining! Please tell me I'm not alone!!
Thanks for the rant, I feel a tad better already 😆

Another good point.

I do tend to have things more separate, even if they're still mixed.

E.g. big chunks of chicken and carrot in the pasta so he can pick them out to eat if he wants to dodge the cauliflower etc.

Tonight my husband put the beans all over his toast (gourmet dining here tonight, guys), and he couldn't even see the toast. He ate them together, but liked to spoon beans onto the toast himself.

I eat loads of different cuisines as an adult, but as a toddler my family were very basic British.

It won't hurt them at all to stick to a more straightforward cuisine while they're little.

I didn't expect the debate I have started 🤣 I was expecting people to come and rant with me about how rubbish kids are at eating!

For anyone who is enjoying reading said debate, I do cook from scratch, haven't bought a jarred sauce since I was a student. And I can make a banging stir fry without being greasy 😆

The little twerps just like to keep me on my toes. The 2 year old hates scrambled egg, but loves quiche. The 5 year old is the opposite. Make it make sense!!! And the 5 year old wouldn't normally describe something as disgusting, and we did address it, for those focusing on that bit.

Thanks for the sensible comments. I think there might be something in eating things all mixed together. I also sat down with the 5YO after dinner and asked what he would like to eat and we made a big list. Got lots of good meals on there (which many of you haters would say kids wouldn't eat, muahaha) so will try involve him more in the process too.

So we subscribe to the ‘one dinner, like it or lump it’ school of thought - to an extent.

We say they aren’t allowed to reject without trying, that’s the first rule. As they get older it does get easier to tell when they definitely don’t like it vs when they are just being fussy beggars.

I agree wholeheartedly though with PP that mine prefer stuff not mixed together so for pasta I dish up their plain pasta with the sauce on the side, then mix ours in. I also keep trying stuff like if they don’t like butter chicken, next time I’d try tikka masala or if they don’t like satay I try teriyaki next. I wouldn’t write off an entire dinner as a lost cause if that makes sense.

We did go through a phase of eating plainer stuff or stuff that worked better with their tendencies at the time and adding more flavour to
ours once theirs was dished up but it still meant only one dinner being cooked

I started with the just feed them what you eat advice. It works for some children. It doesn’t work for other children.

if your children eat some of that, even with complaint, you are actually in pretty good shape.

the best thing about my very young child being diagnosed with an eating disorder was letting go of the guilt. It’s ok to make two meals. It’s ok to make sure that there is always something on the table you know your children enjoy.

Turning mealtime into a battle doesn’t help anyone.

We fed them what we ate, and if they didn’t like it they didn’t eat 🤷🏼‍♀️. Kids all around the world eat all sorts of things, it’s not like there’s a scientific reason why children must eat this or that (apart from obvious things like salt and E numbers etc). It’s all cultural or attitudinal. As it is for adults - so many adults struggle with food for all sorts of reasons. They just have freedom to manage their own diet.

Just be consistent, OP. It’ll get through if they don’t have underlying issues.

Stick with it. Your menu sounds good. Our kids have always joined in with relatively adult meals, and now we enjoy eating out together. It’s part of education in my view

I get you, mine are 6 and 4 and we eat similar sorts of meals and always have done. I don’t feed them any ‘kid food’ rubbish and cook it all from scratch and they poke around it and complain. Although don’t forget they aren’t designed to over eat the way they would if they had fishfingers and chips!! I’m just keeping on going with my two…one day they will be great full for the food. But I hear you re instagram and the advice - mine turn their nose up at most of it. But I’m not backing down and feeding them unhealthy meals!

My DD would enjoy your menu OP. She's 8 and I've always made the same meal for her as the adults.

However I do think as a toddler I was probably giving her easy wins like fish pie and pasta bolognaise more often than the more adventurous choices on your list.

I've been really lucky that DD has never refused to eat a meal although she has done some skillful picking out of spinach/mushrooms in the past. Because her list of dislikes has always been really small I've respected that and not given her those things often. She's now learned to like pretty much everything though.

We save more adventurous food for the weekends and then serve it family style for our 3 and 6 year olds.

This weekend I did tacos with two fillings, beef and (homemade before I get criticised) spicy refried bean filling. I knew they probably wouldn’t eat the bean filling but they both tried a little that they served up themselves. The three year old even tried some pink pickled onions which were a hit.

If I had put it on their plates there would have probably been some tears.

Yes, me too!
It does seem a bit “too much” for kids tea every night. It’s brilliant that you get so many types of food down them ( wayyy better than I ever did!). but maybe they’d go for more ordinary (? ) kids food, maybe more bland would get them eating more?

Honestly for most kids this is a (very annoying and often prolonged phase) but they do come out the other side. I was a picky kid, I’m not a picky adult. I’d just keep serving it and letting them pick the bits they want to and try not to get frustrated at what doesn’t get eaten. I don’t want to eat pasta and cheese every night so I won’t cook it every night even though I think my two would probably quite happily eat it every night! They sometimes complain, but they eat the bits they want and leave the rest and no one ends up hungry so I’ve made peace with it. Your meals sound nice and appropriate and like the kind of stuff I often cook in among the ubiquitous ‘spag Bol’ type stuff.

My rule is just, eat it or don't eat it - but don't complain.
If they don't want what is on offer they can have some greek yoghurt and a banana or some weetabix.

I think that all sounds delicious but DD wouldn't eat any of it (and she's 13!) Correction: she might try it if Wagamama served it up. But not me.

I love your ambition though and I'm not being sarcastic.

I actually dont care if my kids don't eat their dinner one night. We serve one meal all together at the table but usually I just dump everything on the table to serve yourself (eg rice cooker, curry, naan, poppadoms, dips) so they take what they like of it. Stir fry dishes are non starter to be honest, too much textures all mixed in and impossible to separate and my DH is a chickenphobe...I can't deal with the drama.

My DC are older but we do encourage likes and dislikes with the caveat that we can't be rude. So if they try it and not a fan that's ok they can leave it and take the different accompaniments. If they are still hungry after tea its toast or cereal for supper (rare) and any 'this is disgusting' comments or continually picking through stuff refusing to eat will be asked to change their behaviour once and then if it continues they will be asked to leave the table and take themselves to bed. Thankfully that's only ever happened once or twice and generally they are involved in planning, shopping, cooking and dishes and understand the work involved. Mine would definitely be on the picky side (as is their dad!) and I actually don't mind that as long as they are being respectful.

My 13 year old would eat all of that but I think that is just down to being exposed to lots of different things consistently.

We do have macaroni cheese, pizza, fish fingers sometimes too (especially if they have a friend over) but I think they get plenty of stuff like that at school and I don't want to eat school dinners at home.

All looks good op. My dc were fed that sort of thing with varying success, dd2 ate everything and by 3 it was exactly what we ate, dd1 was a pain in the backside with food, ridiculously picky, tiny appetite and she was a teen before it really improved.

My son at 27 isa very adventurous eater but at 6 lived on a diet of chicken katsu curry ( for some reason he loved this when he tried at Wagamama) so I made it myself

Chicken pesto pasta

packet couscous with fish fingers

sausages with Yorkshire pudding carrots and peas

M&S southern fried chicken nuggets and those chips that Iceland did that are made with veg

we ourselves eat more how you do - he did state boarding school at 12 for 2 years and after that wolfed down ‘all ‘ my varied lovely home made dinners no problem !!

Ours always ate what we did unless we were having a really hot curry. We eat a very varied diet - I really like cooking new things.

If they genuinely didn’t like something then they didn’t have to eat it but they absolutely had to try it, we all have foods we dislike. If they didn’t try it though then they didn’t get anything else. They’re adults now but will try everything and eat most things.

Ours like risotto but just with peas and no lemon, they like butter chicken but mainly like the rice and naan bread and maybe brocolli. They like chewy pasta bake, fish or sausages with mash and veg and Yorkshire puddings with a roast. We all eat the same but they seem to like more comfort type foods so I’ve edited what we eat a bit. And sometimes I might make our risotto a bit more exciting for example with some pancetta or roasted tomatoes, but I only put them on mine and my husband plate because I know my kids won’t want it. We also have our own dinners on the two days a week they are both at nursery, so we can have more adventurous meals that they might not like. Maybe a few times a week you could do them a special quick dinner just for them like pizza/fish fingers and you and your partner have something you want once they’re in bed.

Hi OP. My two were both weaned really intentionally and I even kept track of all the flavours including herbs etc. 🤦‍♀️ Hundreds of flavours which I cooked in different ways. My baby will eat anything and my toddler was the same so I was pretty smug - and of course it was all down to my weaning system. 😁 Then my oldest turned into a fussy toddler, so I feel your pain. However, I do think they seem to enjoy the meals I’m least excited about so agree with the many posters suggesting things like lasagne. I try to serve them less familiar flavours and textures alongside a couple of familiar things. That usually results in some success.

You need sr_nutrition on instagram she is the absolute best child nutritionist and weaning coach

Your menu sounds lovely. Mine like curry, lentil daal. I read something once that with young kids you have to keep offering the same dish regularly as their taste buds change. Mine would eat asapargus risotto but they do wolf down courgette risotto, it’s an Australian recipe if you want me to put the link!

This is an odd thread 😳

Feels like there's a lot of people that want to say "Stop feeding them foreign muck (other than possibly Anglo-Italian)" but can't quite bring themselves to.

FWIW your menu sounds lovely and varied, OP, and is similar to the kind of weekly rotation we have. It's true that some kids find it less overwhelming to be able to see the separate parts of a meal so you might have more luck with that style of cooking but really, who knows.

Perseverance pays off BUT also you get what you get, to a certain extent. I have an extremely adventurous older child and a slightly pickier younger one, both were fed the same stuff in the same environments with the same.modelling from parents, as it were.

Ps typo - I meant to say mine would not eat asparagus risotto but do like courgette risotto.

OP your dishes sound fab! Don’t listen to the haters who appear to think home cooking is some mince with a jar of dolmio ragu added 😂
My kids would have eaten your meals. As adults there are not many foods they won’t eat. Kids are notoriously contrary though and one day will declare they always hated bananas despite devouring one the day before.

Reeling that anyone thinks those dishes must be made with jars. How rude.