if I just show my DCs how to open a tin of macaroni and leave them to it?

[ThatBintAgain]

Honestly, I'm at the end of my bloody wick with them and meal times. They are 4 & 6, and every time I put anything down on the table it is greeted with "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrr - what's in it, it's disgusting, I'm not eating that!"

DS1 is going off a foodstuff a day. Evening meals are now pretty much limited to baked beans, jacket potato, macaroni cheese, broccoli. I don't know how they don't have scurvy.

So, I'm thinking, I either just get on and cook stews, veggies and normal adult food that we eat, and risk them not eating anything (and they actually won't, especially DS2 who is mega arsey) or just continue to give them plain pasta/potatoes in rotation and hope they don't die of malnutrition? It seems to be malnutrition, or starvation, really...

I'm just so bloody bored of thinking about food, to be honest.

Take or leave it would be my answer mainly

charlotte with the "normal" food?

Broccoli? You lucky sod!

Yep, just serve normal food, if they eat it they do, if they don't tough.

It has

I lived on a mash potato as a child. All I could stomach.

Anyway, agreed, take it or leave it. If they are actually hungry later - and not magically at bedtime - offer something relatively boring like plain toast.

I would take the "take it or leave it" approach too, although within reason (wouldn't include something on of us really hates, and try to ensure we all have something we individually like regularly). So, for example, stew, but with jacket potatoes if they like those.

alice - one will eat broccoli, one won't. DS2 particularly just wants to live on white carbs. He won't eat sweetcorn, (unless on the cob) or peas, or sometimes even beans. Which is annoying because that's DS1's repertoire covered. I'm struggling to think of any veg he will eat....Carrots maybe, if raw. Bloody tedious.

If they don't have intolerance issues then I'm with charlotte on this one. They're clearly not hungry enough and you're kind of allowing them to take control. Take it back - you're the parent.

But tinned macaroni is inedible. It's almost as bad as that cheesy pasta in boxes.

YABU to even have it in the house, never mind feeding it to the kids!

But YANBU to be hacked off with fussy kids. Some people disagree with this, but it worked with my two. I would plan a pudding, and tell then in advance that they had to eat a reasonable amount of dinner or they wouldn't get pudding. They didn't have to eat it all - I would accept roughly half or more.

Sometimes it would be homemade, sometimes it would be an alpro soya pudding or ice cream etc. it worked though.

I was just thinking of starting a similar thread!
My older 2 (teenagers) and youngest (18m) will eat most things but my 8 year old and 2 year old are really really bad. 2 year old has never been keen on food from weaning age and has never changed. I sometimes wonder how she and 8 year old are even growing and healthy.

Made a lovely tea tonight of pasta and veg with meatballs. Three youngest (dd4 not well) just wouldn't have it at all.

I frequently feel like just giving them crap every night although they probs would whinge at that too

I always found that if I kept DS hungry he would eat whatever was served.

He eats everything now

I think it's not helped by the fact that they have sandwiches for lunch at school, then they get toast at after school club, so by the time the come home they're not ravenous and don't always eat a proper meal.

I'd put them on dinners if I thought they'd actually eat them and get away from the bread based crap but I think that it would probably be £20 per week down the drain...

I distinctly remember my four year old brother being served up the peas for breakfast that he didn't eat the night before.

^ I got flamed for mentioning that as a parenting technique on another thread.....it was a different time then.

• defending it, I mean

Can you try school dinners for a week and see if that helps? You may find with their peers around they are less fussy.

Otherwise I would do as suggested up thread one meal but with an item they will eat included. If they don't eat tough.

It's quite frustrating as I know that DS2 ate cooked lunches at nursery but he's a really slow eater and they don't get long to eat at school, they often bring things home because they were "running out of playtime."

Well, I've served up Hugh FW's North African butternut and chickpea stew that I had in the freezer. DS1, to be fair, has had a good go and eaten nearly all of it although he did have to be encouraged. I don't like nagging him, but he will try things and eat if you do. DS2 is just arsing about and singing so he's going to be hungry in the morning...

Don't worry, I haven't eaten a vegetable since I was about 7, I'm still alive, healthy, a normal weight. I mainly live on carbs...'the white diet' as my mother calls it...pasta, potato, cereal, chicken, yogurt etc. they won't die.

I think I will try school dinners for a bit, maybe a couple a week on days where they go to after school club.

(I'm just a bit as quite often the vegetarian option is a plain quorn fillet which wouldn't remotely impress me to be honest, and they certainly won't eat it...)