to be really miffed and maybe a little offended at this fussy eater?

[afussyphase]

Ironic given my NN (which is taken from an annoying comment my own mother made once) .. I actually can't believe this happened.
DD2 has always been a fussy eater. I'm against using sweets as a bribe and we don't usually do it, but today I commented that we wouldn't be having ice cream unless we (each) had eaten a healthy meal. I had made a (very lovely IMO) veg lasagne with greens, pesto, nice and creamy, mild... all flavours she likes except the greens.
She was giving it a go, reluctantly, and she ate a bit and then she started doing this theatrical-seeming gagging thing. So I said to take small bites etc. And she ACTUALLY VOMITED a bit of it back up.
Now, my mother is, shall we say, not interested in cooking and has come up with some really humdingers in her day but I NEVER actually hurled anything back up just because I didn't like it. DD is 3 1/2 and is otherwise well. No vomit bugs etc; ate some carrots, nuts and eventually a few bites of ice cream no problem.
DH loved the lasagne. DD1 (6) thought it was OK. It was BY NO MEANS revolting. And, childish though it is, I am actually kind of a little offended. Talk about all the efforts of mothering going down the drain. Hmph.

Maybe it was the texture that she found difficult to swallow. DS resisted for years to eat bread, because (we found out later on) that he has verbal and oral Dyspraxia and couldn't swallow bread or anything such as donuts, cake, etc. He's fine now but it does take a while for some textures to be easy to swallow.

But I do sympathise with you - I remember spending ages to cook something that would go straight in the bin and it's quite depressing.

I think it's easy to underestimate the power of psychology when it comes to things like this. She may genuinely, for whatever reason (probably extremely likely it is entirely irrational as she is only 3) have found something in that dinner so revolting she was sick. Whether it's texture, flavour, smell or look. As adults it's easy for us to try and transfer our own mindset and experiences over to a child but that just doesn't work.

For example pesto is a very interesting, unusual and some would say unpleasant taste (I for one think it's lovely). If she's never had pesto before that could have been enough for her body to go 'no thanks!'

I would try not to be offended and not make it again (at least for a few years anyway)

Pesto also makes me gag, I avoid it like the plague now. I find fresh basil makes me feel so ill.

I wouldn't worry, it's one of those things. My DC3 hates crisps, DC2 hates fruit and DC3 (16) has only just realised that cheese isn't the spawn of the devil.

Just posting to offer some 'parent of fussy child' solidarity. My daughter is just over 2 and entered a fussy stage. What makes it worse (imo) is she's right down in the centiles anyway so it is really hard not to get worried about it when she's refusing to eat. Some days it really does seem like she's surviving on air! Another poster got it right, it's soul destroying and just flies in the face of your instinct as a parent to do the best you can for them.

I had a fussy eater, now as a teen will eat anything so they do grow out of it. After years of throwing away food, disguising certain foods, trying one new thing after another - I just decided to stick to the basics of what he would eat. Yes it sounds quite restrictive, but I realised that I was less stressed about mealtimes, and so was he. The only thing that as a 15 year old he now wont eat, are mushrooms.

Your offered meal sounds lovely, but I know that my child would have gagged too as pesto has a very strong flavour.

I was never going to have a fussy child, my child was going to eat everything I put in front of him, eat lots of vegetables and fruit and have no pickiness whatsoever....yeah right!!

He was a bloody nightmare!!! I despaired, tried everything to get him to eat, and then he started to gag and/or cry at mealtimes and I felt absolutely terrible. Like the most wickedest mother in the world. So I backed off, I gave him what he wanted to eat, although he did always eat a healthy breakfast....I worried about it but I figured better that than give him a complex about food.

He is now 19, six foot tall, bursting with health and soooo handsome and eats most things, although mushrooms still make him heave!! My advice is to leave off the pressure, encourage but don't get upset, and definitely don't get offended!! Things will be ok in the end!

Loads of children are fussy at that age. One of my DC wouldn't eat much else but sausages and yoghurt! He is far less fussy now, aged 9 yrs, and I think thats partly because his tastebuds have actually changed and partly because we were very relaxed about it, but didn't pander to it.

My rules were always that you cant just say you dont like something without trying it, you have to eat SOME vegetables at each meal (he was a complete veg phobe, but found the few veg he hated least and stuck with that) and if I occasionally cook something you don't like, you have to try to find at least a part of it you like (so he hates my stew, but will pick out some chicken and potatoes and have it with bread, for example).

I wouldnt take offence at a 3 yr old not liking my cooking .

Also, in my experience, lots of fussy eaters dont like sauces, stews, anything with bits in it (like lasagna), as they cant properly identify what they are eating, which can be an issue for picky, anxious eaters (I know DS was like this and I am still a bit like this today. Fishpie or unidentifiable meats in casseroles give me the heebies).

Poor love. I think while as an adult that meal sounds lovely, to include something like the vegs which you know she's not keen on was a recipe for disaster.

As much as having a fussy eater is a pain - my DS aged 4 is very fussy just as I was as a child - I would guess there is a genuine reason why she gagged on the meal. Some textures or smells can be difficult and she's too little to explain why.

My mum was of the view that fussiness shouldn't be pandered to and I spent many years having very miserable mealtimes. She did give up on a couple of foods like salmon and tuna after I vomited them back up when she made me eat them.

OP, there was this thread a few days ago about gagging on food and texture, which you might find interesting too.

As others have said, lots of children are fussy. My theory is that it's actually a survival mechanism from prehistoric times - being careful about new foods, not liking things too mixed up - to identify anything potentially harmful.

At that age my dd liked all her flavours separate - no stews, pasta sauce would be served on the side, etc. Now at 8 she eats a huge variety of food. I think forcing children to eat food they don't want to eat can be very harmful and lead to long term food phobias.

By the way, I personally love italian food but I am not a fan of lasagne - a bit too cheesy/slimy for me.

Be careful with this. I used to do very similar things when I was a child and it turns out it was because I had food allergies and was my bodies way of saying don't eat that because you are allergic. Of course it could just be because it's a small child but thought I would put it out there.

Offer a wide range of healthy food, serve a small portion and let them get on with it.
No coaxing, cajoling or bribing. I don't allow messing with food and always encourage good manners but other than that I just serve up and clear away.
I try and serve safer meals three times a week and other meals the rest of the time. There's no alternatives if it's not eaten and there's no pudding that is it until breakfast.

It is difficult, draining and frustrating. I have been tempted to just give him fish fingers or pizza every night but after over two years DS2 3.10 is finally starting to eat steamed veg, potatoes and some meat.
Last week he asked for more carrots, ate all his cottage pie and ate a whole chicken fajita. I was over the moon!

I think it would be textural too, tbh. And therefore YABU - she probably couldn't help it :(

I remember doing this with fried egg white once - I think I was around 7 or 8 - my parents kept insisting I ate it, I really really loathed the squeaky sliminess of it, but they forced me and it just "bounced" straight back up onto the plate. Oddly, they never did it again.
I bounced cod liver oil into my Dad's hand once too - that was the last time I had that (years previously) - I don't like oily textures either.

My 2 DSs have issues with slimy food - cooked mushrooms and onions being prime candidates - so I make sure that I really mince them down (using a machine) so that they can't be "found" in the food in any sizeable pieces - it's not the flavour that bothers them, as they'll eat the food quite happily so long as there aren't big slimy pieces of onion or mushroom to be found.

I can't stand parents who think thAt their child eating anything is done sort of badge of honour.

My children eat pretty much everything but there are some pretty clear dislikes. Because they are individuals

ds3 throws up if made to eat food he doesn't like (or medicine - I gave up giving him any in the end).

He's very sensitive to textures.

As far back as I can remember I didn't want to eat meat, I would rather go hungry than eat it, which is saying a lot because I have a very fast metabolism and am always hungry and didn't stop eating as a child! Nobody took me seriously until I actually gagged on some pork that my mum made me eat, and nearly vomited at the table, I was 12. After that when I said I wanted to stop eating meat my family said OK, I still think they thought it was a phase, that was 20 years ago and I haven't eaten meat since. I just hated the texture of it and the smell of it being cooked, it turns my stomach. I cook meat for ds though, I've learnt to live with the smell etc as long as I don't have to eat it .

Sometimes it's not being fussy, we all have things that we dont like .

My fussy eater (nearly 4) is only fussy at home. At nursery she happily eats anything and everything - they sit the fussy eaters next to her because she is a good example!

I try very hard to be calm about it and know that at least on nursery days she will get 3 balanced meals, so what's in between is in between. But it's seriously infuriating - how can ALL forms of potato be unacceptable at home, yet all completely fine at nursery. Gah!

At home the only vegetable she will usually eat is green beans, so we have green goddamn beans (plus other veg) practically every goddamn day.

And as for not making pudding a reward, yes in principle I can see that but if there is anything other than yoghurt or fruit for pud then I do make it a prize - if you won't eat even one mouthful of the thing I know you eat at nursery all the time, then there's no cake or ice-cream, no fuss, just matter of fact. No-one else has any either - DD2 is too little to notice and is full up from her main, so me and DP just scoff it after they're in bed.

DP lived entirely on dripping sandwiches and plastic ham til he was about 12 so I blame him entirely and am waiting for this to pass.

I have been on both sides of this. I was an exceptionally fussy eater as a child and some foods just revolted me. I was really hypersensitive to lots of stuff (unpleasant textures, sights, sounds etc) and mealtimes were just horrible for me. It wasn't deliberate - I'd have given anything to be a normal eater - it was just the way it was.

And now as an adult with a DD of my own, I have regularly been infuriated by her refusal to eat stuff I have cooked for her. It is upsetting when you have slaved over something to have the kind of reaction the OP describes. I once had friends around for lunch, and I made a chocolate cheesecake for dessert. Their six year old took one bite and said it made him feel sick. My friend said, You don't have to eat it, which is fair enough, but I really wished she'd told him to be more polite.

We have a rule that you are allowed to say you don't like things but not that they are horrible, or disgusting or whatever.

I am so happy to hear all of your success stories of fussy DC who have grown up to be less fussy. And I really agree with not forcing DC to eat food they really hate. She has had pesto many times before, so I'm sure it's not the pesto taste (though I'm interested to know that there are so many pesto-haters out there!). I imagine that it was either the complex texture or the taste of the veg. Whatever. Of course I do know she didn't do it on purpose, at all; she has her moments but I totally agree that no 3-year-old would do that manipulatively (certainly not MY little darling ... )
I'm oddly proud on behalf those of you who managed to vomit on (evil) lunch ladies / cod liver :)
We do always make sure to have pleasant mealtimes, often by making her something separate or some simpler variation on what the rest of us are having. So if we're all having burritos (which she would never touch with a 10-foot pole), she gets some rice with beans mixed in, beans put through the 'baby dan' grinder thing so it's all the same texture, and plain yogurt on the side - no veg but at least healthy in what it is. And we don't talk about it or focus on it. If we're having pasta+pesto she will eat it just fine, but won't eat salad with it; pretty normal 3yo there. If we have soup it has to be pureed. If she could, she would eat crackers, occasionally eggs, apples, and maybe smoothies and milk. Which I guess wouldn't be the end of the world. I make her granola by hand because I can grind loads of nuts to a very small size (then toast with the oats), and she then eats nut-rich granola. She won't eat it if it has a more complex texture. I guess I'd hoped that by 3 1/2 she would have stopped needing the baby food grinder ...
When she's 4 I'll try more with involving her in cooking. We made ice cream together recently (she wanted to; vanilla). She really wanted to put sprinkles in, and then didn't like the result... because it had, er, sprinkles in!

Sometimes fussy isn't fussy. I'm all for "trying" things but if i don't like them, I don't like them.

Have you ever heard of super-taster? I'm not saying this could be her, i'm just suggesting that not everyone's tastes are the same.

www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/love-vegemite-but-hate-brussels-sprouts-heres-why/story-fneuz8zj-1226511303121

Whoknows - we have that rule too - I have no objection to DS1 not liking something, but it's truly dispiriting (and completely mannerless!) for him to say "Yuk, that's disgusting/horrible/awful" etc.

Wow syka, that's a cool article, thanks. I didn't understand the super taster test though, but it's amazing to think that there are so many things that can affect taste.

I think my own mother has a much weaker sense of taste than the rest of us. Would explain a lot. And she isn't interested. So I have told her what pesto is many times :). Not that she's not adventurous, and she will eat just about anything, but she isn't discriminating, really... Whereas we all enjoy food and I want my DDs to grow up with a healthy relationship with food.