to think nesquick whole grain cereal, fat free milk and no added sugar juice is relatively healthy for a fussy eater

[twistedsista]

Hi,

My 7 year old Ds is a very fussy eater, tried everything!

I would love it if he would eat kale with cottage cheese on rice cakes for breakfast but get real no child eats perfectly like that.

Today he had a normal sized bowl of whole grain nesquick cereal with skimmed milk.I know it has some sugar in it but its only about the same as a banana and to counter this he has a glass of sugar free orange squash. Both the cereal and juice have added vitamins. Does everyone else agree this is pretty healthy and realistic breakfast?

Thanks

Marie

"No child will willingly starve themselves!"

You should rephrase that to no child you know will willingly starve themselves. I have had the health visitor breathing down my neck when DD was little because DD was skin and bone because she did not want to eat anything I put in front of her.

It took many years of perseverance and she does eat a reasonably healthy diet now, although I can't control what she eats at school if she won't take a packed lunch.

I used to think that fussy children were pandered to until I got one of my own. So I don't think anyone should criticise until they have walked in the same shoes as parents of fussy children.

As an aside DD has for breakfast either: cereal, poached egg and toast, scotch pancakes or bagels - with various toppings.

bun if you had read my post you would have seen that I do have a fussy child and HAVE walked in your shoes.

I know you have and some other posters have as well MrsW. It was some of the other smug comments from other posters that irked. It took years of perseverance to get DD to expand the range of foods that she will eat. My problem now is trying to get iron rich foods down her because she doesn't like most of them.

I notice the OP hasn't been back

Are you surprised?

I snorted at the Healthy poster who claimed bacon wasn't processed :) Wonderful.

My DCs had toasted chocolate bread this morning. It was homemade if that makes any difference.

Dear God, this thread is Mumsnet at it's very worst best.

OP: I have a very fussy eater, tried everything etc etc

Mumsnet: Ooh, have you tried granola/berries/olives/spinach/cornichons

I used to think exactly like you mrswinnibago that fussy eaters were pandered to by their lazy parents. My Dc1 would eat absolutely anything, still does now she's 16. Then I had Dc2, who was a brilliant eater until he was about three and a half - when he seemed to go on a hunger strike. He wouldn't eat anything, and I mean anything. I was frantically back and forward to the HV and GP, but was continually fobbed off with 'oh, it's just a phase, he'll grow out of it'. Meanwhile, he was getting thinner and thinner, was always tired and listless, until one afternoon he fell asleep in my arms. After a while, I couldn't wake him - and literally ran to A&E with him, where he was whisked into a paediatric ward and fed intravenously. I've never been so terrified in all my life. He's nearly 7 now, doesn't remember any of that time, and eats well now. But I certainly changed my opinion on 'fussy eaters'. Yes, a child WILL starve themselves and no, it's not just a simple case of saying oh, they'll soon eat if they're not presented with chips/biscuits etc.

I think people have little sympathy with fussy eaters because it is almost always the case that the only things that fussy eaters will eat is crap.

White bread, sugary cereals, over-processed shitey versions of things that could be good (eg. cheese strings instead of cheese, sugary yogurts rather than plain greek yogurt for example).

No-one ever says 'he will only eat steamed cabbage and organic hoummous'.

You're reading me all wrong, vindscreen.

I'm in the camp of if a cheeseboard and cornichons meant that my children didn't go to school running on empty, then that's what they'd get.

Having kids with ASD means I've been exposed to all sorts of theories about what foods they should and shouldn't be eating. By the time we've avoided sugar, sweeteners, gluten, casein, salicylates, nightshades, mercury, arsenic plus the current popular backlash against grains and in general, processed meat... given that one boy can't eat chocolate or citrus and the other gags if he even touches a vegetable, they'd be existing on boiled organic chicken. And that would piss vegans off, no end.

I forgot legumes and soya in that to avoid list.

The problem with saying no child will willingly starve is how many parents are willing to take their child to the point of starvation.
DS2 regularly goes to bed having not touched his dinner. I don't make a fuss or tell him off, I don't serve anything else, if I am doing a pudding then he gets it if I am not then he gets nothing, I involve him in cooking our food. He has been doing this since he was 15 months, he's now 3 and a half.
I could give him pasta with bolognese, curry and rice, fish and salad, Macdonalds, spaghetti hoops, or pizza every night and he would eat every night, but I really want him to eat other foods so I dish up the other food knowing he won't eat it feeling a bit shit. I cook the meals he will eat three nights a week and other foods four nights.
I don't want to be cooking different meals for him than the rest of the family, and we don't want to eat curry, bolognese and fish every night but how long do I carry on?
How much longer does he live on fruit, porridge, yoghurt, pancakes sandwiches and salad for most of the week?

How in gods name can pizza be better than a slice of toast?

There are some absurdly smug people on this thread who clearly have too much time on their hands. Homemade granola!

Its like the "If you only give them water then they will drink it, all children will drink if they are thirsty enough"

Well no, actually they won't. Maybe the children you know will, but not ALL children.

So bloody arrogant.

Expat I'm not assuming the op is on a low income. I was saying that people are throwing their hands up at others talking about eating olives and cornichons for breakfast as if it's a ridiculous middle class answer and they ought to be embarrassed boasting about it. There is a proven link between poverty and eating shit food. I was just trying to say there is nothing smug about feeding your kids olives for breakfast. People here are getting cross being told cereal is shit, and saying you are pretentious to be giving your dc olives.

If you go to lots of European countries, food like olives, gherkins, some meat and cheese are a healthy , normal nutritious breakfast. For people on low income and high. End result... Better health across your life span.

And shreddies might be cheap but most kids cereals really are not cheap. Coco pops, frosties, nesquik, all expensive. Eggs you can get cheaply.

And minty I do agree it is smug to insist children will eat what you give them. Of course some children starve themselves.

No problem ouryve , I'm in that camp with you - would you like a cornichon?

I also have a child who would quite happily starve. He forgets to eat at all if he isn't reminded, and on at least one occasion has managed to make it all the way through to bedtime before eating anything that day.

He's now 14, so I'm not all that hopeful that he is going to change anytime soon.

Yes onilkley but that's because the shitey over-processed versions of things all taste bland, have good mouthfeel, very little texture and are always consistent. There are reasons people with food issues choose them - it's not just because that's all they've ever been given to eat.

As I said up thread, I used to bake my own bloody beans! But as DS got older he started refusing different foods and not eating, particularly at nursery. So the range of foods I offered reduced (not consciously, I'm talking with the benefit of hindsight) to give him things that he wanted to eat.

Now, actually, the individual items of food in his range were actually pretty healthy, because all the foods he was weaned onto were healthy, but it was still a restricted diet because he didn't eat enough variety.

So yes, I started introducing the processed shitey things because I realised what he craved was predictability.

I now have an 8 yo with a mostly alright diet, but it's still far from good (and we are massively into food). But social issues are his top priority, so he now has one meal he eats in MacDonalds, one meal he eats in Frankie and Bennies, he will eat 2 (only ever 2) slices of pizza at a friends (previously he would only eat one brand).

Phase two is now expanding his range, and again, sometimes that means more processed food. For eg he eats pasta but not bolognaise sauce. I have been gently trying him with the M&S kids version of that because when he rejects lovingly prepared food, it upsets me. And guess what? Two weeks ago he announced he liked it, so last week I home cooked it. Tiny, tiny steps.

Anyway, that turned into a rant. Cathartic. Not all aimed at onilkley but I will not add lack of calories to my child's other significant issues. His life at school is hard enough without going there hungry.

Well, I'm in the camp of "would rather starve" and also in the camp of "won't eat crap". DS won't eat potatoes (in any form including chips), sausages, fish fingers, chicken nuggets, burgers, jam, chocolate spread, in fact any sort of sandwich, doesn't really eat bread but prefers wholemeal, although will have toast. He is very slim and will happily go to bed hungry rather than eat for example a roast dinner.

He will eat pasta and tomato sauce (every night given a chance), curry, pizza, noodles and couscous. Also feta, parmesan, stilton, houmous. No to cheese strings though. He likes strong tasting foods. However DD prefers plainer "British" type foods and DH doesn't like pasta.

Luckily DS likes breakfast cereals ranging from Frosties to Bran Flakes. Breakfast is one of the few meals we don't have problems with.

I can also imagine the response to this as an AIBU:

My DH keeps cooking meals I don't like, and then when I don't eat them says I'm not allowed anything else to eat. I went to bed hungry twice last week and today he's making something else I hate. What should I do

LTB would be the universal response, but it's OK to do it to a child?

So much nonsense on this thread

www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp

Wilson - we frequently go through the same thing with DS1. (For the benefit of the person who says they've never met a child who will only eat cabbage, we have had meals where he's eaten a few pieces of broccoli and nothing else). He enjoys foods from most food groups, but not many of them. So he gets bored and stops eating the things he will eat and his dietary repertoire gets smaller and smaller. I was overjoyed when he tried and enjoyed some breaded chicken and eventually extended to fresh chicken or turkey presented in thin slices or small pieces. It doubled his repertoire in a few weeks.

He's been off eggs since he had a constipation episode a few weeks ago, so he's been having bacon or sausages for breakfast every day. Not ideal, but better than going in hungry, with the effect that has on his behaviour. We went through a fish fingers for breakfast phase, but that ended with DS2 finding some hidden in a toybox about 8 hours after they'd been served and biting into on [boak].

And he does have squash with his breakfast. He'll drink twice as much of that as plain water (see constipation episode above).

Well my son would willingly live on pitta bread, Philadelphia, carrot sticks & cucumber, plain pasta & rice.

However that's not a healthy balanced diet.

So birds eye crispy chicken, fish fingers & quirn sausages are used to get some protein into him.

Texture is a big issue.

I don't get the ' I have to feed cereal as lone parent and don't want to get up at 5am to cook an egg brigade'

Boiled eggs - 5 mins in pan, make toast at same time.

How can anyone not have 30 secs to add egg in pan and turn on? Surely it's the same time as cereal?

You can brush hair/ go for wee / finish getting dressed whist eggs boil.

This morning mine had x2 boiled eggs, beans and grilled mushrooms. Eggs 5 mins in pan, beans in microwave at same time, baby mushrooms whole under grill. I helped ds2 get dressed, poured milk in glasses, and laid table in that time.

Sorry but choc nesquik is a crap breakfast. I didn't know they still sold it

That is because no one gives a stuff about the fussy kids who only eat restricted healthy foods OnIlkley.
When I mentioned at clinic DS was fussy I was scoffed at because he eats fruit, salad and fish. I'm not allowed to be concerned he is loosing weight and looking scrawny because he will eat good food just not enough of it.

DS, given a chance, will sloooowly eat the chicken and veg from a roast dinner (carefully scraping off any trace of one from the other) and outstare the potatoes.
Will peel apart a sandwich and extract the insides.
Will eat cereal but only if the milk has soaked in just enough and not too much.
Will forget to eat or drink at all if not nagged reminded.
Has never eaten a recognisable egg.
Starved himself at 8 to the point that we were told (by a paediatrician) to get some chocolate hobnobs down the boy urgently, if that was something he would eat.

No advice but a sympathetic AAAARRRGHHHH to the OP from me

I really hate these threads.

My ds eats an enormous bowl of shreddies with milk for breakfast.

I really, really cannot see what is wrong with that. He has fibre, iron, complex carbs, protein in the milk etc etc

Most of the alternatives offered on here are really not any different.

I sometimes make porridge in the winter, he will only eat it with a spoonful of brown sugar, so wholemeal shreddies with have sugar in v. porridge with sugar added

I don't make breakfast, they get their own while I make packed lunches.

If he has anything else, it doesn't fill him up for long enough, so by 11 am he is like a bear with a sore head.

he pretty much rejects any processed food, only eats wholemeal bread and loves fruit and veg.
he does however love McDonalds (sigh)

Yeah Lance apparently it's not OK to starve your child, who knew

ouryve I'm sure we've talked before about this, it's really tough. Breadcrumbs were what moved DS over from fishfingers to chicken - Dh and I had a bottle of Prosecco that day, massive step forward wrt protein intake!

The same trick worked with breaded salmon, so he now eats pink fish.

In fact, typing this makes me realise how far he's come, but it's been incredibly hard work and DS has wanted to change. Me just plonking a new food in front of him and letting him crack on would have resulted in a trip to the peads similar to lance.