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

"the posts where I explain why I think totally ignoring children's feelings about food"

Not offering to prepare separate meals when a child expresses a dislike of what you've cooked is not 'ignoring children's feelings about food'.

You can acknowledge that someone doesn't particularly like a particular dish and still expect them to eat it every now and again, or if they can't bring themselves to eat it then have toast instead. There's nothing unreasonable about that. We all, children included, have to sometimes compromise on what we want to do/eat/listen to/watch, because of living in a family.

I expect my children to eat what's put in front of them when I cook a meal, and on the whole they do, whether they like it or not. Doesn't mean I don't sometimes cook them a meal of something I know they especially love (and often do this even when I myself don't particularly like it just for the sake of convenience, and knowing that eating something I'm not mad about every now and again isn't going to harm me).

I love veggie food. But the casserole does sound a bit like a slop.

Can this be called Casserolegate from now on?

Fairy, glad it worked out. Having read your other threads, though, I was more alarmed that your stepdaughter's first action, when crossed, was to phone her grandmother to complain she was being given no dinner!

Is this a regular occurrence? If so, how undermining...

"People who force kids to eat what they hate are wrong and mean"

Nobody on this thread has talked about using force to make children eat.

This is a straw man argument.

As is the argument that not preparing different meals to cater for the whims of your individual children means you are 'ignoring their feelings about food'.

It's all so much bollocks. Straw man arguments.

You can acknowledge that a child prefers one thing or another, and you can point out that you can't always cater for this preference because it makes cooking and shopping onerous, and that in a larger family it can set the sort of precedent that eventually makes life very hard for the person responsible for preparing meals. Dare I say as well, that there is evidence that allowing young children to regularly restrict their food choices to things they find unchallenging is not generally helpful in the longer term in encouraging a varied diet in adulthood (despite anecdotal evidence to the contrary on this thread).

I agree with what you say, essentially, Mini! I don't think tge op was BU not to cook another meal and offrr bread as an alternative. What I disagree with is the attitude that entails totally ignoring any protests and refusing to offer even a few noises along the lines of: "It sounds you really don't feel like casserole today.I'm sorry, but I'm not going to cook anything else. However, how about you try a bit and see if you like it and then you can have bread if you'd like that instead, ok?". Same end, both parties are happier.

OK, seriously what the f** is wrong with that casserole?! Confused at the level of boak faces and downright RUDENESS of some people on here!
There's no wonder there's some fussy kids out there if they have parents who offer a multitude of different options if they fancy another meal.
I's not a bloomin' cafe!
Not to mention parents who turn their noses up and pretend to vom at a perfectly good meal.
I can cook. It doesn't mean you can't cook if you served that casserole up!
I've done similar in the slow cooker.
Mine though is vegetable stock cube, tin of tomatoes, lentils baked beans and sausages.
It's a dish EVERYONE loves and actually has everyone clearing their plates!

You say you are strict like it's a good thing

Nothing wrong with strict. If 'being strict means not giving in to every tantrum, cooking three different meals just in case one of my kids doesn't fancy dinner that night, and pandering to every single whim then I suppose I'm strict.
Rather that than a complete and utter wet doormat who caves at the first sight of a tantrum (quick, give them what they want - what's that going to teach?) and lets them dictate what everyone else has to do.
THE OP'S DD TRIED IT ALL AND ATE THE ENTIRE LOT!! LIKED IT!!
Just wanted to see if by having a tantrum could be served chips or whatever instead.
No wonder there's some entitled kids out there.

Jelly - im sorry, i meant to qualify my statement, i didn't have time - i don't have time now either Im on the fence about it, but watching with interest and wonders, after the update, if the OP could take my DD for a while and sort her fussy eating habits (or maybe i just make shit casserole!)

Slightly OT but wuldric where I'm from we have a dish called 'Lobby' which is basically a stew/casserole of meat with any veg you can find to chuck in. Mine usually contains swede, parsnip, carrots, potatoes, leek, celery and a tin of baked beans. It sweetens it, thickens it a bit and to be honest makes the taste. Certainly not unusual in these parts to chuck a tin of beans into this type of dish.

Tonight we are having casserole and my veggie daughter is having a bit of frozen salmon that I have bunged in the oven. One more thing to do but I do it.

A veggie eating salmon? Interesting

When I was growing up, we had to eat what we were given. The words 'I don't like this' or 'I don't want this' would have barely left our mouths before our plates would be swiftly taken away and that was it until the next meal time. There are a lot of parents these days who seem to think that kind of parenting is barbaric lol.

Looks like she did eat her dinner in the end. I'm glad she enjoyed it.

Ahh Juice, now my DH calls what I call 'Stew', "Lob Scouse" or just "Lobby". North Wales?

We add Butter Beans to it though rather than Baked Beans.

Our house is not a restaurant. You eat what's made. If you don't like it, then don't eat it or spruce it up with something you do like.

Dd is going through a terrible stage at the moment of picking on everything on her plate. DS is watching her and copying. I've persevered for the past 3 weeks and she's been eating everything on her plate for the past 3 days. Even ate egg fried rice the other day which was a shock.

I used to hate peas and mince when I was younger. My mum still made food using them and I used to either not eat or pick out the peas. Now I love both. Not giving small children food they apparently "don't like" is stupid. They've been alive for less then a decade. How can they make such a big decision about what they like and dislike?

Our house is not a restaurant

That's what my mum used to say to us

I'm astonished by the level of horror that occasionally a meal gets cooked which not everyone in the family likes.
Now I'm having flashbacks to all those occassions in my childhood where my mother served up sprouts. Evil things - sprouts. But every winter there they would be -on my plate - regardless of my wailings.
I coped.

Its such a bad lesson for children. They don't want to eat their dinner so they get something else instead . Learning to be spoilt, entitled and wasteful. The equivalent of 6 meals on average are wasted by British householders each week. This attitude certainly contributes to that waste.

I do hate baked beans.

When I were a nipper I was forced to chow my way through loads of things I didn't particularly like, but baked beans were the one thing ( oh and add tinned spaghetti and tinned Heinz tomato soup to that) that I could not force down. I used to cry inwardly when it was cowboy pie at school - a delightful mixture of smash, spam and baked beans .

So I have to say that I wouldn't have eaten the OPs casserole, but I would have filled up on couscous, that's yummy.

"It sounds you really don't feel like casserole today.I'm sorry, but I'm not going to cook anything else. However, how about you try a bit and see if you like it and then you can have bread if you'd like that instead, ok?"

Did you mean to be so funny. She's eight, she's not going to have a meaningful conversation when she's having a strop - which is what it was.

LtEveDallas Lobby is a North Staffordshire thing, though it's all derived from the same beginnings. Cheap cuts of meat cooked for a long time to make them more palatable for the working class on a budget. Scouse is the same sort of thing.
I believe each region has its own version of the same dish and everyone does it slightly differently. My MIL drowns hers with celery salt which I think is horrid, but then she thinks me putting beans in is weird.

And I have played host to too many children who expect to be offered a choice of meals when they come for tea

Oh yes, fondly remembers hosting for four of dc's little friends, and them all wanting something completely different from each other! Where are the manners? I absolutely despair.

I'm going to ask something that might be considered controversial but could there by a link between parents pandering to their child's every whim regarding food and fussy eaters?

I ask because like I said above, when I was growing up, apart from very few exceptions we had to eat what we were given. If we said that we didn't like something, we had the meal taken away and that was it until next meal time. We were also never allowed to say we didn't like something until after we'd tried it. Now as adults, my db, dsis and myself will eat pretty much everything and there's not much we won't eat. We now all love food and love trying new food.

On the other hand, my friend and his sister were pretty much allowed to dictate everything the family ate. They were allowed to say they didn't like something before they even tried it and when that happened, their parents would make something else for them. If they'd tried it and didn't like it that would be one thing...but they didn't. Even as he got older he was still an incredibly fussy eater and lived off ham sandwiches, crisps, biscuits and noodles throughout his teens and twenties. My mum says he's pretty much the same now.

I'm not sure there is a link all the time though. I know some people who just have very sensitive taste buds therefore a lot of food simply doesn't taste nice to them which is fair enough. Nobody can be held responsible for that.

There are also a lot of parents who think my parents methods were cruel but I beg to differ.

My 4 year old is able to have that conversation. Why not an 8 year old? Also, the point is not to get them to necessarily agree (sometimes it's not possible), but make sure they know that their feelings have been noted and listened to.