to trick my child into eating by giving him pasta with every meal?

[bluecheeseforbreakfast]

Ds is 11 months old, he adores pasta, he would eat pasta (with a dash of pesto and fresh tomatos and a little grated cheese) every day if he could choose what we had for dinner.

We give him the same food that we have for dinner, it is often rissotto, salmon+potatos, beef/chicken stew, meat, potatos +veg vegatable curry that sort of thing, we probably eat a pasta dish a couple of times a week.

Ds is relucatant to even put the other food to his mouth (he eats everything so it seems very contary that he refuses to put his dinner in his mouth!) If I give him a couple of pieces of penne mixed in with his other food he will pick them out and eat the pasta and then just continues with the other food happily.

AIBU to do this? Am I setting us up for food problems later down the line? He will eat everything after the pasta trick but he is reluctant otherwise.

I am imagining sending him to school for his first day with a little tuperwear pot with penne in, and to uni with a big bag of pasta.

No YANBU!! One of my dc is very fussy, I feel your pain!

Sounds like a winning situation to me (unless it's a pita to do pasta all the time). It's like the opposite strategy to the one where people mash veg into other food to get their kids to eat it!

Seems a great idea to me.

I used all sorts of tricks to get my picky DS1 to try new things. Like cutting things up very small, only putting v small amounts on a plate, raw veg instead of cooked, tomato sauce on everything, choc powder in milk for a while when he went off milk

I used to then gradually alter things so it was getting more towards "normal" - less and less ketchup, bigger pieces of sandwich, cooking the carrot more etc etc.

And think how cheaply he will be able to live at uni if he eats pasta all the time!

I would say use every trick going to introduce him to as much food as possible. If it works go for it.

I wish my DD would eat pasta! She's 2.10 and just pulls it into pieces and leaves it.
DH and I love pasta, so I don't understand it. Keep offering, but so far no luck.

Carry on - at least he eats everything then. You won't be sending him off to uni with pasta....
My DD took Bovril sandwiches for lunch every day for four years when she was at First School - everything else (even jam!) was refused vehemently... She's now in her 30s and eats pretty well anything....

I don't see how it can be wrong to give him something to eat that he likes. If he was Italian he'd be eating pasta with every meal anyway, and they seem to do all right. I can't see any harm in it.

Thank you for the reasurance!

We tend to just save a little bowl of pasta from the days we have pasta meals and give him a couple of bits out of the bowl, it doesn't even have to be warm strange boy We renew the pasta bowl every 3ish days so no extra cooking, I don't think I could cook 2 bits of pasta and no laugh.

My dp was and still is a really fussy eater, I was determined I'd never cook seperate meals but I think it's one of those situations where your principles go out of the window when you have your own kids.

Ds is very happy eating jars of food, even the ones like "fish pie" that smell like cat food. He has a jar for lunch as we are usually out, he'd be very happy with a jar for dinner but I think he needs to learn to eat proper food and they are so expensive!

Great idea of serving him normal meals with two bits of penne in it just to get him started. I gave mine normal adult food too from the word go and they still eat brilliantly now.

We decided not to do the two meals thing either. Couldn't be bothered. Oddly enough my DS was 7 years old the first time I bought a packet of fish fingers for tea.

YANBU

I am imagining sending him to school for his first day with a little tuperwear pot with penne in, and to uni with a big bag of pasta.

I regularly send my DDs to school with little tubs of penne pasta and I fully expect to send them to uni with big bags of pasta

I think it sounds like a really clever trick!

DS1 used to have a tiny bowl of dry Cheerios with lunch and/or dinner, he would indeed then eat the other food.

Wish it worked now, he it's 4 and will just eat the bits he likes. Anything plain.

YANBU