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?

Portofino - yes, and i think that's one of the reasons that many people think that allergies are on the increase. These days, children like my DS survive and are given epipens. In the past, they would have simply have died as babies

My DS won't eat if I put something in front of him he doesn't like. He is low weight for his height and under height for his age. I could of course continue to give him gruel every single day until he is weak with hunger but given we aren't actually living in a Victorian orphanage, that seems a little unkind. Plus I suspect it is more likely to exacerbate his food issues rather than help them.

If children are fussy eaters when they are under the age of two, do you honestly imagine it's something that the parents have done? Really?

OP I fundementally disagree with your strategy of pudding being a reward for eating your savoury course.

If a child told you in advance that they didn't like the pudding on offer, would you withold the first course on the grounds of 'if you don't want your pud you're not having a main course'?

Probably not.

OP - you are sort of NBU.

There are children who have genuine problems with food due to ASD, and some with anxiety disorders focused on eating.

But I suspect there are vastly more who have become hideously fussy for no very good reason other than they've been allowed to be.

There is a child in my family who doesn't like to eat meals, of any description. So because his mum wants him to eat 'anything', he has a diet of powdered growing up milk, ketchup on bread, crisps and chocolate (including chocolate spread from a jar eaten with a spoon...). He is 3.5.

I wouldn't normally care, but we all went away on holiday together and he was constantly fed these 'snacks', then wasn't expected to sit still at the dinner table whilst his mother and sibling, my dc and I were trying to enjoy our meal. The mother says there is nothing she can do. Um, how about stop giving him the crap and allowing him to go hungry? Perhaps then he will eat a meal like the other dc.

Greenbananas - are there not other high calorie options that are healthier that he would eat? Eg. Fruit smoothies with banana, nuts, yoghurt? Not sure what he has issues with - texture/flavour etc. but I personally couldn't give biscuits/chocolate/crisps to 'up' calorie intake. It's all the 'bad' fats and processed sugar (as opposed to fruit sugars which are processed differently by the body before someone jumps on me) that would bother me.

There are definitely fussy eaters. They have always existed.

My own DB was a fussy bugger. Hated anything new, loathed vegetables, would prod and poke his food to our DP's rage and frustration. He is still fussy today, but will eat huge quantities of what he does like (meat, meat and, er, meat).

I was raised in the same household, was a very fussy toddler, then decided I liked food as it seemed to be a way to differentiate myself from DB. As a result, I would eat Anything. And that goes for now too .

Back then (1960/70s) there was absolutely no option to the meal you were served. Not even bread and butter. You ate it or left it but there was nothing else. Yet DB remained very fussy (and presumeably hungry!).

"My DS won't eat if I put something in front of him he doesn't like. He is low weight for his height and under height for his age."

Same with my ds. He is small and skinny. Nothing wrong with a child being small and skinny. Some children are meant to look like that. As long as they have free access to a sufficient quantity of healthy, nutritious food, you aren't starving them or mistreating them.

I worry more about setting up a child for lifelong crap eating, which will end with them getting bowel cancer or a heart attack in their 40's.

Leaving allergies and intolerance aside - if I can! - I think that toddlers are designed to be 'fussy eaters' (in the same way that teenagers are designed to be rebellious and to question us). In a 'primitive' society (which is not so very long ago in evolutionary terms), avoiding previously untried foods would have helped to keep them safe by preventing them from eating things like dodgy red berries etc.

My child isn't a fussy eater, she just goes through phases over months and months where she won't eat anything.

She WILL eat a chocolate ice cream but give up and say she's full after a few scoops.

I took her to McDOnalds once and she wouldn't eat any of it.

She WILL always eat cold, plain pasta though. Just pasta, on it's own, from the firdge.

In some cases, some families staple meals might be totally alien to some children. We live abroad. Dd had tea had a friend's house in UK where she was given shepherd's pie. I never cook this. Dd had never eaten shepherd's pie before. She gave it a go, but didn't eat much of it. I ate hers -

I don't give him any crap if he doesn't eat his dinner spud. He doesn't get anything else and if he's hungry, he's hungry. But there seems little point in putting food in front of him that I know he won't eat. Is that what you do?

I'm sure you're right greenbananas. Apparently they tend to reject a PROPORTION of the food you give them - from a wide or a narrow range of choices. And apparently if you keep offering the food without pressure and encourage them to have tiny tastes, they may well eventually accept it, even after rejecting it 15 or more times.

bubbleymummy, thanks for trying to help, but he is allergic (anaphylactic) to all the foods you listed above (bananas as well as nuts and dairy). There are only a few fruits he can eat, and I make sure he eats plenty of those.

As I said earlier on the thread, his dietitian is very happy with his overall levels of nutrition, and i think we do pretty well, considering. But it does annoy me when people judge me without knowing what the issues are (e.g. mums in cafes who think I should be feeding him yoghurts and not just chips, even chips are the only thing he can eat on the whole menu )

Hmmm I am sitting comfortably on the fence on this issue as I was a very fussy eater as a child, I would only eat very plain food, marmite, apples, bannas and junk food. I only got to grips with trying new foods when I started to cook for myself and still have some food related anxieties.

I really did not want to pass these issues onto my dd so made an effort from day one to give her as many different flavours and textures as possible. Now I don't know if it is because of anything I have done but dd will eat pretty much anything with the exception of mushrooms and peppers!!!

So I don't think you can generalise, some parents don't help by pandering to their kids every demand however having said that I know as a child that no amount of starving me would have convinced me to eat my veg!!!

Agree with OP and Lesley- DD has a friend / came for tea- mum apologised beforehand - won't eat anything home cooked EVER... Something out of the freezer will be fine she says.. Freezer empty so I make a smooth veg sauce ( no bits to freak anyone out) and pasta...not a word spoken other than 'dinner's ready'.. DD Friend scoffs the lot. Friend's mum in shock . Ok so only one example but does prove Lesley's point that some DC are manipulating their parents .

quimbledonsemi I expect you happen to be a friend of mine as you have just pretty much explained dd to a "t"!

All I can say is there are a great many smuggy mcsmuggersons on here who really genuinely have no idea what it is like to have a child that doesn't eat. Suffers from constipation, gagging reflex the whole works. I am obviously a dreadful mother as ds doesn't seem to have a problem but I really must have just decided I wanted dd to be a fuss pot!

Gosh - I do so love the 'house rules' brigade - what a welcoming host you must be

I'm fussy and one of my 3 dc's is also fussy. He is so fussy that he even dislikes chocolate pudding/cream/most sweets but does love cucumber.

I really don't get why other people's children being fussy annoys you so much - I mean I get frustrated when lovely food isn't eaten by my son but as long as he's offered a variety of things and tries stuff then thats fine.

And making a child eat all their dinner before having pudding is just storing up problems in my opinion. Children should be allowed to finish a meal when they're full and its incredibly important to learn when this is. And pudding shouldn't really be a reward should it?

Yes, YABU.
Having a child who doesn't like most sweets/chocolate/crisps/chips and pizza, I completely know what it's like to have a child who is not simply a 'fussy eater' but one with Selective Eating Disorder.

I'm am currently taking part feeding research with Loughborough Uni (which I found from a thread on here from the research student) and we're hanging on a thread that they can help us with ds (6).

Yes - there may be children who have fussy phases but there are children who aren't fussy; they just don't eat.

Oh mrscampbellblack my ds also loves cucumber (with the skin off!)

joric - that's great! - give her mum the recipe

(Doesn't necessarily mean that she is manipulating her mother, just that peer pressure is amazing when encouraging children to eat new foods. I always give my son 'new' foods when he has friends with him.)

Vintage - my son would also rather go without than eat something he doesn't like - but I remember being the same as a child and being forced to sit and eat a congealing roast dinner - I would never do that to my children.

What is it with cucumber though

I was an extremely fussy eater as a child and objected to puddings as much as savoury food. Hated trifle (still do), custard, cream, sponge puddings, blancmange.

ah well, my mil was brought up to think being fussy about food was pretty much a sin (war child) and all food on plate had to be eaten etc
she's now morbidly obese
can't say that's a brilliant result either tbh