"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 😆

The issue may be the combination of different components, not the meals

i cook similar food OP and I don’t think it’s too much or too flavoursome or anything

for a veg orzo (for example) i pick the veg out of the mix and leave it on the side, separately. Same with large pieces of protein. I will serve separate and into bite sizes pieces.

my kids don’t have sensory needs but just like to eat things separately or it can be a bit overwhelming

also always have a safe food. Dc1 loves sweetcorn so there is always a bowl of sweetcorn on the table.

i’m also not fussy about them having a bit of ketchup. I grew up eating pink mash and turned out fine.

i also don’t cook two meals. They eat what we eat but with a) a safe food and b) some changes in how it’s served

I would have eaten your meals when I was a child but my DCs would not have done. One of them is neurodivergent although I didn’t know when they were little - they are early 20s now and still can’t have certain foods touching each other but will eat virtually everything.

The other DC is not neurodivergent and got better at age 8 when I told them they would have to learn to eat jacket potatoes and baked beans if they didnt want to starve on their residential school trip. They could see my point and from that day onwards started trying new foods.

I am semi wondering if I should just stop offering my two year old any food at all, in the hope that hunger will win out eventually.

Today she’s had one mouthful of egg, a bite of toast and two bites of a cheese sandwich. I am expecting her to refuse dinner too. I don’t know what to do.

Yes I’m a bit surprised by all the people who think pea risotto is exotic 😂 Creamy rice with peas is the literal embodiment of small child food.

OP is cooking totally normal, healthy fresh food for the family (note that the family also includes adults who may not want to eat fish fingers and bangers and mash for every meal, we all eat together and I’m a) not eating like a 5yo for every meal and b) not cooking multiple dinners every day).

I cook stuff like this for us all the time. Sometimes it’s a hit, sometimes it barely gets eaten. That’s just life with kids really. Sometimes it gets devoured one week and ignored the next.

Just keep on keeping on, OP. My only suggestion would be to serve ‘family
style’ in the constituent parts as much as possible as that always makes my two more willing to try, if they can help themselves and arrange on their own plates.

My kids have always eaten with the adults. You don't need to dumb down your menu - it looks fine!

Some of these responses are really making me laugh 🤣🤣🤣 I'm amazed tomato pasta, chicken curry and a mix of veg banged in the oven is fancy, but you've all lightened my day with your rude (ridiculous) comments so thanks team, I feel much better now 🫡

I am astounded at the "showing off" and "most kids wouldn't eat that" comments when you basically listed pasta with chicken and tomato sauce, mild curry and creamy rice as your meal examples.

It would be funny if it weren't so depressing! No wonder there's an obesity crisis and a whole generation of kids being set up to fail by their parents and raised on UPF shite.

Just keep on doing what you're doing. There is light at the end of the tunnel!

Mine went through a similar stage. Everything I put in front of her was suddenly horrible - even if it was the exact same thing she’d demolished with gusto a few weeks earlier. I had some success by serving deconstructed meals in the middle of the table. Eg bowl of pasta, bowl of sauce, bowl of salad and plate of garlic bread in the middle of the table. DH and I would help ourselves and DD would ask for what she wanted. Sometimes she’d try a bit of everything. Sometimes she’d just have carrot sticks and bread. Not ideal but at least she ate something and there was no more drama.

I suspect some of these posters would have been the ones passing cheeseburgers through the fence on Jamie’s School Dinners.
All those foods are perfectly normal family meals.
I’ve always fed mine what we’ve been eating, even spicy foods. DC3 has always loved spicy, very flavoured food. He hates mashed potatoes and shepherds pie.
However in the finicky toddler years I would generally serve things separately so with a stir fry I’d do the vegetables separate to the meat and the noodles or rice on the side. I also used to cut the veggies quite chunky so they could easily just eat the carrots or peppers or whatever else was their favourite that week. I served a simple salad, or peas and bread of some form with most meals too.
We had two rules, everyone sits at the table and nobody has to eat anything they don’t like. We all served ourselves I think it’s good for children to feel they have some choice about what’s on their plate and just got on with talking about anything other than the food. No cajoling, pestering, ‘just one more bite’ etc, I think the fussing that lots of adults make around their children’s food reinforces fussiness rather than overcomes it. Imagine how annoying it is to have someone constantly asking you to try this, have a bit more etc.
My children are teenagers and young adults now now and eat loads of foods I hate.

Just sit down and eat your meals with her and don't comment on what she does or doesn't eat. Greek yoghurt and fruit for pudding.

I am absolutely astounded at the responses here. Your meals sound great and not weird at all. My kids to prefer when tastes are “separated” so the meat and the veggies separate from the carbs.

In my 60s and we defintely ate the same things as our parents. There was never any choice. Always a homecooked meal. My mum was ahead of her time with spag bol and garlic 🙂

I think you need to park the more interesting flavours and textures till they're older. We always had just one meal for all, but simpler meals that we'd all eat like roast chicken with roast potatoes and veg, steamed salmon with mash and veg, pasta bake, spag bol etc - all home made.

I used to add extra flavour to mine with extras once dished up - mustard, pickles, parmesan cheese, harissa etc.

You can still cook from scratch, and have very tasty food, but my kids prefered a blander diet from 3 or so.

I don’t fancy most of that and I’m not remotely surprised your kids are turning their noses up at it.

you need to make the food more plain and simple.

It's shocking what a low bar so many have for their children's nutrition. The meals OP is serving are tasty, nutritious and well balanced and perfect for children. They do not need to be replaced by a resticted diet of bland tasteless UPFs!

Pasta, risotto, sausages, chicken curry, noodles?

It's not really haute cuisine is it 😂

Really? Assuming you're not actually three children in a trench coat that's a rather surprising response. Also tomato and chicken pasta or a very mild chicken curry isn't exactly outré.

That's a pretty boring selection and not the healthiest food. OP wants her children to eat a more varied and healthy diet

We have definitely expanded a restricted palate by thematic, unhealthy, carbs bribery. Prawn crackers alongside stir fries, tortillas with chillis, poppadoms next to curries and garlic bread in all-in-one pasta dishes that would otherwise get wrinkled noses. And yes, darling, you can have a few more prawn crackers but you need to try what’s on your plate first.

My first child ate everything (still does) but my second would have survived on beans, cucumber, sweetcorn and fish fingers (never even fed my eldest fish fingers!). At 9 there are still things he doesnt like, but he’ll give most things a try.

You may like plain and simple food but many people don't and good for the OP that she wants her children to be more adventurous than fish fingers, nuggets etc

I agree wholeheartedly with ‘feed them what you eat’ so that you all sit down for a meal together and they learn that food is a social experience and one to be shared and enjoyed. However, at that age you just need to modify what you eat a bit to meet them half way, then gradually introduce more ambitious flavours as they get older. We always ate together but when they were very little we were on a diet of spag bol, cottage pie, chicken pasta pesto, sausage and mash, homemade pizza etc…rinse and repeat!

Honestly I’m sure some people are in training for care home diets- there may be some amazing ones but a lot are bland, little spice and ‘soft foods’ - not everyone likes a mince based diet either - my son who is now 27 never liked anything involving mince , that included chilli , cottage pie and spag bog - from the age of about 6 if asked to pick his diet would have been chicken katsu curry or seafood tagliatelle

I miss the laughing reaction. Mini me and Austin powers vibes 😂

to be honest I am astonished at both how rude some posters are and also how narrow people's diet is.

I would much prefer the risotto to fish fingers and ketchup.
None of the meals she suggested are exactly radical.

For a child it’s a bit extreme in flavouring

mini blondes 8 will happily eat a chicken Risotto an loves the Aldi essentials rice with something alongside it

but adding lemon to it. No way