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

Ouryve

Trust me, I know a fair bit about the nature-nurture stuff, youthecat -it's kind if my job. Anyway, does the SW recipe really include 4 different legumes (one of them baked beans) and cheese?

In fairness, yes. You haven't been the rudest. I have probably tarred you with the same brush as some others that have been so ridiculously horrible throughout this thread over something very very minor.

I have found this thread very upsetting and I have probably jumped on you, toys as you have been the one carrying on the goading. I apologise for that.

But I won't lie, I am upset.

I should have known after all this time not to post in AIBU I guess.

As do I, Toys. As do probably many others on this thread.

Dd1 doesn't like white sauces like carbonara - she's 5. She genuinely doesn't like it. If it was every meal I'd tell her tough, eat it our eat nothing (i'm harsh too) but we're all allowed to not like something.

Toys - have you got come across any research into the issue of choice and how it impacts on children's eating habits that is relevant to this discussion?

We're all relying on anecdotal evidence here. I know I am. My children have three cousins on my side and nine on their fathers. Only my husband and I are consistent in not allowing our children free choices at meals to determine what they eat - they are given what we eat, and not offered an alternative (apart from toast and fruit). My SIL's cook different meals if their children express a dislike for the family meal. Certainly within my extended family my children are very noticeably less fussy than all their cousins. And that includes my youngest child who is the only one in the family with ASD, and my middle-child who is highly sensitive to smells and neurotic about hygiene.

"but we're all allowed to not like something."

Of course.

My children don't like me going out for the evening with my friends, but they simply have to accept that sometimes they have to put up with things they don't like. If something works for me and DH, and it's not actively distressing or harmful to my dc's then sometimes they have to SUCK IT UP for the sake of convenience. Life's like that you know, and it doesn't harm children to learn this.

How is this even still going on? The DSD ate the damn casserole, and enjoyed the damn casserole. It's hardly a Dickensian tragic story of workhouse woe!

Mini I allow choice in so far as I'm happy to provide an alternative if they really don't want what I've cooked. Out of the five the NT ones aren't at all fussy the ones with ASD have various sensory issues which, for me, I consider a valid reason as to why they don't eat certain things particularly when the things they won't eat include any type of sweets or fizzy drink or squash. I'd say I offer an alternative once a week to dd with ASD, more often with ds who has far more pronounced issues and occasionally to the other three. Dh will eat anything and he was allowed a free choice as a child, I have a few things I won't eat probably because as a child I wasn't given a choice not to eat them. I tend to think that choice or not isn't what determines whether or not a child is fussy it's down to the individual child/adult

I'm going to be flamed big style, but here goes...

I'm forrin and have noticed that the more child centric Britain becomes, the more these children are pandered to, the less they are liked in society.

I'm from Southern Europe where, hands down, we are far stricter with children and yet culturally children are mostly welcomed and appreciated everywhere and there's no need to specifically cater for "families" like in the UK.

The reason being, as a society British people don't tend to like other people's progeny and honestly I can't blame them (you only have to read threads on MN about how PFB kicked someone on the bus and they dared to utter an "ow").

I totally agree with LaQueen and Brianthemole and it's lovely to read sensible posts like theirs.

Disclaimer: Please don't inundate me with tales of terribly behaved little Italian/Spanish/Greek children you saw on holiday; of course they do exist and I'm generalising, so please spare me the tiresome anecdotes.

So you can use "tiresome anecdotes" to make generalisations about british culture as long as none are made about other cultures. Fair enough!

I think you are absolutely right, poppy.

I am generally quite child centred but I am very much of the opinion that children should fit in with the family as far as possible.

I it is an important life lesson.

Would you accept if I told you that generally speaking people in Africa have darker skin than in Norway?

I generalised the behaviour of Latin culture ina few different countries; very different from little Paolo's tantrum on the ferry.

Nail on head,PoppyAmex.

Mine was in reply to post of 17:26

Mini:Research on that particular issue is ongoing (although small toddlers have already been shown to have a wide, healthy repertoir, given free choice).

True food fussiness/resistance (not mild dislikes) is a driven by sensory sensitivity, which has been shown to have a link with other sensitivities, such as refusing to wear clothing with scratchy labels or certain materials, audio sensitivity, etc. This sensory sensitivity has a strong genetic link and is most often manifested in individuals with ASD.

Food fussiness can also have links to neuroticism and personality traits like persistence, etc. Last time I had a lecture on ut (in 2006) the influence of genes on overall personality (with relation to the big five factors) was over 80%.

Also, there is "normal" fussiness (neophobia) in toddlers between around 2 and 5 years old (evolutionary biology driven).

Calling Toys an offensive little person is distinctly not on

Oh I don't know. I think it is under the circumstances.

Shall I call you something, just for balance's sake, Brian? Are you little or large?

My ds is 18 now and is more experimental than me.
When he was little he always ate earlier than me and my ex as we ran a youth hostel and we ate quite late as we were constantly busy at the desk.
After I left the hostel when he was about 9 he ate what I ate, but if he said he didn't fancy it I'd make him something simple.
I'm far more a fussy eater than he is now, he's learnt to cook basic stuff and would probably eat your casserole though I wouldn't touch it.
As I said above my experience of being force fed school dinners when I was at primary and secondary has a lot to do with my opinion.

Call me what you want toys. I doubt it will make much difference to my life

This is a bit of an aside, but can people (including the thread-starter) please stop saying 'offensive' when they mean 'rude'? It gives me the fucking rage.

But what about my nieces and nephews, who unlike my son with ASD are not on the autistic spectrum, and have been given free rein to eat whatever they like and as a result:

• one eats NO VEGETABLES at all, and only fruit eaten is bananas (at the age of 8)

• one only eats peas, carrots and sweet corn, only mashed potatoes (not roast or chips), won't eat turkey or lamb or anything spicy. At the ripe old age of 32

• three who won't eat fish or lamb (teenagers)

• three who won't eat any leafy green veg (teenagers)

• none of them will eat any 'challenging' veg like beetroot, artichokes or kale.

I could go on. None of these nephews/nieces are toddlers (who understandably go through a developmental stage of rejecting a wide range of foods - normal, and something we managed to cope with without force and without cooking separate meals), none of them have ASD (like my ds who just happens to be accepting of a much wider range of foods. We're not talking about sensory disorders, but about children who've never had the experience of GETTING USED TO SOMETHING that they don't immediately like (as most of us here have done) because nobody has ever expected them to.

"Food fussiness can also have links to neuroticism and personality traits like persistence, etc. Last time I had a lecture on ut (in 2006) the influence of genes on overall personality (with relation to the big five factors) was over 80%."

And it can also have something to do with children being encouraged and facilitated to reject foods they find challenging by parents happy to always dish up alternative food which is invariably much, much blander than what is being rejected by the child.

I mean, which group is ToysRLuv supposed to be offending? Step-parents who cook unappetising food? Parents who cook unappetising food? Step-parents in general? Parents in general? Lovers of root vegetables?

Lady I wouldn't touch the casserole, dh would eat it without comment, my three nt would eat it if they were hungry and nothing else was offered although it wouldn't be something they'd request, dd ASD would pick out the recognisable bits but leave the mush, ds ASD would think I'd taken leave of my senses if I dared to put anything like that within six feet of him

"As I said above my experience of being force fed school dinners when I was at primary and secondary has a lot to do with my opinion."

Sigh.

Except nobody, but nobody is advocating FORCING children to eat food they don't like.