to not make her a seperate meal?

[fairy1303]

DSD lives here full time.

She is currently having a massive meltdown because I have told her we are having... shock horror... CASSEROLE for dinner.

We have this about once a month, it's cheap, easy, healthy.
I know she doesn't like it.

I have said that is what we are having, no I won't make a seperate meal.
She is telling me not to serve her any. She doesn't want it. She is crying because she 'isn't allowed any dinner'. She has phoned MIL to tell her. She is about to phone my mum to tell her too. She has phoned daddy at work to tell him.

Now, I'm pretty strict. I'm also aware of the wsm stuff.

AIBU to say: that is what we are having. There will be nothing else?

Or am I being too hard on her?

She's 8

Toffee - do your kids do that when they go to their friends' houses to eat or is it only at home that they expect to be treated like little emperors?

. They are not treated like emperors. What a very rude thing to say. Making three different lunches (sandwiches on a weekend) is hardly difficult and if I was doing a buffet type picnic it is only the same as that.

Out of interest, why does it have cheese in? Purely out of interest, not saying it shouldn't, but I've never had casserole with cheese in. Is this is the slimming world recipe?

Have you ever tried making it for her without tomatoes and using just beans rather than baked beans? I tend to use stock cubes (can be veggie) to make a sauce rather than tomatoes. Just asking rather than saying it must be done the way I do it! It's quite salty that way but hopefully not too unhealthy.(MIL makes hers using tomatoes and I always eat it of course!).

Jack Monroe seems to use baked beans with the sauce washed off in her recipes - presumably this is cheaper than just a tin of haricot or similar beans...

PS- have to say, whole thing did make me fancy a veggie casserole!

...or is it only at home that they expect to be treated like little emperors?

I treat my children as individuals and with respect. That means making adjustments to meet their tastes when required. I do not treat them as lesser beings who have to toe the line or not eat - they are people, not animals.

Both - she doesn't like it, but she normally eats it.

Could this actually be a much wider issue? She has previously told you that she does not like this, but you keep serving it anyway. Sounds to me that she is trying to tell you, in an 8 year olds way, that she doesn't feel she is being heard.

DS is fussy, which annoys me, but he really struggles with mixed and sloppy food. A casserole would be his absolute nightmare. He would go hungry for a loong time, before eating it. However, he loves lots of fresh veg and fruit, like raw celery, cauliflower, cress.. I usually encourage him to try a tiny bit of the new food, but don't insist if he seems really resistant. I certainly don't tell him to eat or go hungry. There are always other things he can eat that do not need extra cooking, either parts of the meal he likes (e.g. rice, cheese..) or just some bread or fruit.

DS doesn't like "beige" for fast food apart from chips, which he gets maybe once a week. He doesn't eat meat either. Hardly going to end up obese, isn't he? DH was the same when small and now likes most things. I think forcing will have an opposite effect to what the OP is trying to teach.

EXACTLY SoupDragon.

Putting in fish fingers and nuggets to cater for 2 different choices is hardly worshipping them. The oven is good but doesn't realise there are two different things in it. It doesn't care.

I'm another that cooks one meal for the family with no alternatives. I regularly make things that the kids might find challenging but they are encouraged to taste food and know that tastes change with age so it's a good idea to try things again and again to see if you like them. They aren't forced to finish food but we assume if they don't eat something they aren't hungry so they don't get offered an alternative.

What the kids (and apparently lots of people on this thread) don't know is that you will grow to like anything if you taste it often enough (and the older you are the more tasting sessions it takes). Taste is cultural and barring allergies/intolerances or SN anyone can learn to like any food with time.

I think it depends completely on how often she is refusing to eat what you cook: if only once a month, or just one or two dishes, then I would respect her dislikes and avoid those things. Everyone is entitled to a few dislikes.

But if it's once or twice a week, that's completely different and she just needs to accept that your home is not a restaurant with an a-la-carte menu and you the willing chef. Cooking family meals on a day-to-day basis is about more than just what everyone happens to fancy that night - it's often a balance between the time available, what is nutritious, what ingredients are available/in season and how energetic/inspired the resident cook is feeling that night!

Children generally have no idea of the work involved in putting a meal on the table - from planning, shopping, preparing , timing - and their expectations can be unreasonable. They cannot always have what they want in any area of life and food is no different.

Do you need to learn to like everything, though? If some things are just too challenging, would you make the child gag 20 times in the hope the gagging will get less and the crying afterwards will stop? I reckon everyone can have a few things they can reasonably hate. As long as the range they eat is nutritionally fine and doesn't cause too many problems while eating out and with friends, there is no need to educate by force.

Dn during a particularly energetic tantrum told me he hated ice cream, it was disgusting and he'd never eat it again. Lucky for him I didnt take his word for it and refuse to offer it again! I'm genuinely surprised at how many people think the op was unreasonable, but only because I know how often children change their minds when it comes to food.
I'm living with a 33yr old veg and fish refuser because his mum wouldn't make him anything he didn't like. Our dn knows he has to at least try every meal before he tells me he won't have it (I'd happily knock up something quick, but funnily enough have never had to!), it's just good manners!

You do know that even in families where the cooked dinner is offered on a "eat or go hungry" basis, there are still differences in fussiness between siblings? Sometimes it's also about genes..

Exactly toysrluv (on both your last 2 posts!)

"No thank you" and going for the bread (that the thoughtful hosts have provided) is plenty polite enough, especially if accompanied by polite chitchat and sitting nicely at the table (which is a lot easier to do if you don't get sweaty looking at a food item you have been previously made to eat despite gagging).

My children are all over 5 so I have had years of cooking to get to know their genuine dislikes and since they have a huge variety of different foods I don't think it is a big deal that they all have less than a handful of things they don't want to eat.

I will never like celery or olives if I live to be a 100.

I'd offer her something that didn't involve any cooking or heating up whatsoever. Like cereal or a sandwich. Once you get into this separate meals lark you'll be running a cafe.

The only place I was made to eat the handful of things I hated were at nursery and school. I still don't eat those things. I hate them even more, as well as the sadistic teachers. That really backfired for them, didn't it, but at least they got to ignore my pantomime and be 'ard as nails (however, being 'ard as nails, they still probably wouldn't give a shite about it).

I wouldn't offer my children food they didn't like in the first place.

You are allowed to dislike certain foods.

But, usual, won't they be terribly impolite refusing the oysters at the company dinner in 20 years?

ToySRLuv I don't force my kids to finish food. When I say they are encouraged to try things again and again I don't mean in one session, but at every meal they are expected to taste each component so over time they get used to the taste. And I don't have kids that gag or cry because they don't like things. They pull a face and take it out of their mouth and put it on the side of the plate. There's no drama, they are allowed to not like something, so there's never any fuss.

DH and I love food and it was really important for us to have children who also enjoy food. We have emphasised the fun aspect of tasting different and unusual food. Children won't starve themselves so we don't stress if they won't eat a lot of a meal.