Children who are deemed 'fussy eaters' seem to have no problem hoofing down sugary and fatty foods!

[pingu2209]

I have at least 4 friends whose children are deemed 'fussy eaters'. Whenever they come to play and have a meal with us, the parents/mothers always apologise in advance, during and after at how their children 'eat nothing' and are 'really fussy'.

My house rules are if you don't like something, fine then leave it. However, you don't get a pudding if you don't eat your main meal.

ALL of the so called fussy eaters are given chocolate biscuits or cake or crisps as soon as they get home, then refuse to eat their dinners but their parents allow them a sugary/fatty pudding anyway.

Is the reality that there are no fussy eaters, just parents that let their children develop a taste for junk food and allow them to get away with eating nothing but junk food?

NotaDisneyMum, glad you're not one to judge others - many other posters on this thread could learn from you!

You're right, most children won't starve themselves... but some do. It's true that you ought to be told about children with medical conditions, but you might not be told (for any number of different reasons), or the child might still be undiagnosed.

Marykat is right, it's more complicated than parents just 'indulging'.

Marykat, how old is your daughter? What kind of support have you had?

Many people also do not listen when being told about a child with medical conditions (oh, yes, so-and-so was just the same. I took care of him/her for a week and s/he was cured!). It gets so wearing trying to explain (and not being believed), it is easier to not bother. I have developed a good line in "yes, it is hoola hoops you see him eating, do you have a problem with that?" or, "yes, he is 3 years old and no I don't want to hear your comments on how small he is, how "petite", what is wrong with him? and countless other remarks.

Feeding your child is such a basic, primal thing that to feel you fail at that is devastating. The irony is, we expend so much effort making mealtimes relaxed/giving ds2 what he wants (only to find it is still projectile vomitted on the carpet within the hour), it almost reaches a point where we would get more support if we would neglect him and allow him to starve himself .

This thread is pissing me off

I suppose it what you think is a fussy eater OP. My child will not eat curries, pizza, potato (apart from chips ) or fish among a few other things. So someone may serve him pizza and wedges or a baked potato and he wouldn't eat it. So they may say he is a fussy eater.

But if they served up chicken breast , salad/vegetables (apart from peas :) ) and/or pasta of any kind he would scoff it down and would choose fruit over puddings apart from ice cream.

So is my child fussy or just has likes and dislike slightly of the beaten track of the "usual" 7 year old?

There is clearly some parental behaviour that has contributed to DD's fussiness (and here I define fussiness as eating a fairly narrow range of foods, which are not entirely healthy, and being unwilling to try new ones) in the case of our family:

• DS1 having severe allergies, DD having to have the same restricted diet for the first few years of life, and being aware of me flapping and saying "Oh let me check ingredients, I don't know whether they can have that."

• Due to above, DD not being offered nuts (fair enough), milk, eggs, tomatoes or any permutation of those foodstuffs (including chocolate) until about 3 years old, when she recoiled in horror from them as they were like nothing she had ever tasted.

• My pandering to any [rare] fussiness of DS1's - due to his dairy-free diet, his intake was very low on fat and he was very skinny. If he did refuse to eat something I'd give him something else because I was worried he was underweight. This gave DD an idea of what she could get away with. HOWEVER DS1 is a good eater.

• More sympathy from me than she might get from another parent, as I was the same as she as a child. There was an unwillingness on my part to try certain tactics as a) I didn't think they worked and b)they seemed cruel, although they might well have worked with DD and in retrospect I don't think my Mum was cruel, I just felt unable to do that to my own child.

• DH is a vegetarian so - from a child's perspective - he is allowed to refuse certain foods "just because he doesn't want them," so why can't she. And no, I don't want to get into a debate about vegetarianism and cruelty to animals with the DCs until I have to, because if they decide not to eat meat I'm stuffed!

• A dairy-free diet and a vegetarian diet are not compatible, so I have always cooked separate meals for DH and DS1. This means that you are less likely in our house to get one, home-made, from-scratch, meal made for the whole family, and I cannot use the: "this is not a restaurant, I am only cooking one meal," line which believe me I LONG to employ.

All these things have contributed to DD being a fussy eater, and BTW DS2 looks as if he is going the same way.

I can see how it has happened, and hold my hands up to it, but given that it has happened, I am not going to make her suffer for my parenting mistakes.

She is 9.5 now and at last able to understand that: "Yes I know you don't LIKE low sugar Ribena, but it's not that it makes you feel sick, it's just not the one you like best. You are old enough to know that you need to have a drink on a hot day and I expect you to have some to be polite. " And this is starting to work with food as well. At bloody last. Hurrah!

Ballonslayer well done your very honest and I wish more parents were like you

I think this is what the majority of people who encounter fussy eaters were already thinking was going on

I know you will be the only one who admits they had a had in their Childs eating but a good parent is not perfect but has insight

Its sad really its rather like parents who have fat children and will say their big boned or I couldn't stop t hem eating or they won't eat anything else and can't see how THEY HAD A HAND IN THEIR OWN CHILDS HEALTH issue

Well done your my type of mother will you be my mum.

I do think there is a difference though between a fussy toddler and a fussy school age eater.

I have got stricter recently with regards to food, but it ends up with dd eating nothing (last night a good example!) she knows at nearly 4 that if she doesn't eat her tea at nursery then there is only milk when she gets home before bed. She would prefer to go hungry. So be it. Cruel I know! But it does get very stressful at times, and I think at this age eating at other peoples houses is a mine field and unfair to label a mother as pandering. DD might eat a hearty meal at home but at a friends house in different surroundings it would be unfair to label it as fussy eating when quite often they just want to play with their friends. It would be a different story if dd was stuffed full of chocolate biscuits before tea (which she isn't), and if the "well you can't have your pudding then" worked but sadly it doesn't. She would prefer to go without.

marykat - the NHS Scotland actually have a factsheet which states how to make feeding your child less stressful. It is primarily written for children on the AS however, lots of the things they say are true for all eating disorders.

The one which made me smile because I'm always getting hassle from my parents is that actually letting your chil eat in front of the tv will often distract them enough to get some food into them.

I have to say, with a DH away on op tour and a toddler who simply wouldn't eat, putting the highchair in the lo9unge in front of the tv was the only thing that worked.

Even now, he eats a greater quantity if distracted.

Vintage - couldn't agree more, distraction can often be key and if you are on your own for a large quantity of time and in your case probably feeling quite stressed with it at times then why make life more difficult? When dd is really tired I let her have her tea or lunch whilst watching telly.

Haven't read whole thread, so apologies if this has been said already.
OP - how, then, do you explain families where one child is a fussy eater and the other isn't? Have the parents been stuffing junk food into one child while making the other have nothing but healthy things?
My dd is pretty fussy, but it's not as simple as saying that she likes junk food and rejects other food. Like most children, she likes some healthy things and dislikes others. Equally, she likes some puddings etc and dislikes others. They grow out of it. Their palates develop. Their tastes change. In summary: YABU.

YABU My DS1 is a fussy eater - but won't touch crisps or chocolate either. Prefers vegetables to anything else. Will only eat homemade food (won't even eat shop bought bread - only homemade). So no, you are talking pap. He has taken on board that homemade food is best - and has escalated that. Anything grown in the garden he will eat. I think he must be Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall's love child.

greenbananas I am the same and just happy when my children eat!

OP you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about with regard to fussy eaters.

Today dd2 (20mo) and I attended a feeding group to try and encourage her to eat. Getting her to tolerate just having the food in front of her was the starting point. We progressed to touching the food and kissing it (to try and get it near her mouth) which was a big step for her. We've got a long struggle ahead of us. And I can assure you I'm putting a lot of effort into getting her to eat normally. It just simply isn't as straight forward as giving her dinner and letting her get on with it.

When I took her to sleep school at 16 mo, she literally ate nothing for 5 days. Just held out for the 3 breast feeds she was getting each day at that point. I was assured when we arrived there that she'd start eating after a few days when her hunger kicked in. We cut down to two feeds a day, she still wouldn't eat. The poor thing was absolutely miserable.

DD2 only weighs 9kg. It's really hard to deny your lo the few foods that you know they'll eat when you are desperate for them to put on weight.

Having a fussy eater is an absolute pain, and catering to her fussiness definitely isn't the easy option. It means that I have to make food especially for her rather than her eating the home cooked meal that everyone else is having. Eating out is a nightmare and very limiting.

And then there is the constant judgement from everyone around you...

DD1 on the other hand isn't fussy at all and has a varied diet, despite having food allergies.

WRt to toddlers, isn;t there an evolutionary theory that suggest their taste receptors are more sensitive to bitter (in most green veg for example) so they are less likely to pick up and eat plants that could harm them?

I am still rumbling over the no pud if you don't wat your main thing. Last night for pud, the boys ahd a comp as to who could make the best smoothie; you wouldn;t beleive how much planning, looking at fruit and getting excited has been invovled! Surely something like that is more likely to produce a good eater when other more essential issues are absent than a straight ban? If it can get an 11 year old boy excited about fruit then it's so positive I think.

Heck even the Innocent magnets worked for a time.

It's not about blame but finding new ways to get nutritious food in them. Much as I hid olive oil in ds1's food when he was severely underweight as a baby, we now make it fun and love to cook, shop...... far more positive.

Haven't read the whole thread so apologies if this point has already made. I'd just like to say that my DS had a severe phonological disorder as a toddler. The muscles in his mouth were very underdeveloped. It affected his speech badly but also affected his eating as he was unable to chew properly. As a baby, he ate anything as long as it was pureed but when he moved to solids, he became very fussy. He's had speech therapy and now speaks normally but it has left him with a dislike of chewy foods. He also has some very mild autistic tendencies, one of which is a preference for bland foods.

So, yes, he is a very picky eater but he won't touch pizza, McDonalds, KFC or any other 'junk' food. He won't touch any sweets except chocolate. There are only two or three types of biscuit that he will eat, only one type of ice-cream. He won't touch cake. He will frequently watch DS2 eat an ice-cream cone or an ice lolly and refuse one himself because they don't do the one flavour he likes.

So yes, YABU to generalise. Some kids have valid reasons for being fussy.

Have'nt read the whole thread but have read the other 629 threads exactly the same in the past so...

My DS is fussy he has only recently started trying tiny amounts of new things, as in literally a teaspoon of 1 thing per day, in the paast I have been told to starve him as he will not learn until I do.

This was fine until 3 days later he was crying in pain and was told by doctors that he would be placed on a drip if I did'nt feed him something regardless of what it was so I gave up trying.

He is now 5 and just as fussy as ever, like I say we are making slow, slow progress but if it stopp him being hospitalzed then I will allow him to eat as he wishes.

I think it depends what your interpretation of a fussy eater is, I'd say a fussy eater is a child who eats but goes from one week eating something to the next saying I don't like it when you know full well the did last week etc I child who vomits, gags or shows fear of food is a child with a serious eating disorder or anxiety disorder concerning food, in these cases if a specialist says give them what they will eat obviously this is what you should do, I know if my child had serious food phobias I wouldn't be happy with people calling him a fussy eater !

Bieng a picky eater anyway isn;t the end of the world as long as they will eat foods from all main groups preperaed healthily (so banana fritters not couting as fruit). It might not be exciting but really, there are SO many worse things that could happen! People all over the world eat a restricted diet without worrying about anything bar health effects, so as long as it's giving them enough nutrients...

there is a huge diference imo between a fussy eater and a pampered child however saying that sometimes parents panic about children not eating I had a fussy eater , that they will give them whatever just so they eat something then it becomes a cycle , A fussy eater tends to pick at food and play with it and then not eat anything a pampered eater looks at the sandwhich and thinks cake

Ok now I want to know what was deleted and why angelink decided to bump a zombie thread with it