AIBU to force my son to eat school dinners?

[TakeawayAgain]

Hi all, I apologise if this gets long.

Backstory, my DS (5) is a very fussy eater. Having started on home made Annabel Karmel recipes from weaning, he will now only eat Birdseye chicken fingers and potato waffles for dinner, cheese, strawberries, grapes, banana at a push. No other meats, no veg, no pasta. He will eat chocolate and haribo of course!

We met a child dietician 6 months ago and we have a follow up booked for 18th October but not much has improved in that time, he will now try a new food, albeit the tiniest little mouthful, without making himself throw up but will very quickly decide that he doesn't like and sticks firm with that decision.

He started Reception two weeks ago and we decided that we would try to encourage him to eat food available at school (not have a packed lunch as he did in pre school) and would review this at half term having got feedback from the school and the dietician. We thought that at 5 he is old enough to understand that there are lots of different foods out there to try and that he could try to do with new friends eating theirs. This hasn't gone particularly well but not poorly enough for me to consider packed lunches earlier than half term. However, due to a very early hospital appointment, my DM took my DS to school yesterday and when it came to choosing lunch, he threw himself on the floor and a proper tantrum (for info, he is not this kind of child and has never done this with me). The school have mentioned that they don't think he is eating enough during the day (although he is eating crackers at afternoon break so there are some carbs going in), he has breakfast before school everyday and then his delightful chicken and waffle in the evenings.

I feel that the school are going to try to push us into switching to packed lunches asap but DH and I feel that this would be giving into DS' fussy eating and letting him regain control. I feel trapped in the middle because DH feels very strongly about this and I suspect he will think I've given in if I start to make packed lunches. However, I don't know if the school are right instead.

Would I be unreasonable to ask the school to continue supporting our decision on this until half term when we will review the situation? Funnily enough we had a huge breakthrough this week when DS sat with DH and ate an impressive amount of plain pasta so perhaps that's making this decision harder as there is a glimmer of progress.

If you made it to this point, thank you for reading! AIBU and what would you do?

I think it's a good idea with the school dinners as hopefully he will see the other children eating and just go for it without any pressure. School will want to make their own lives easier so hold strong against them.
Could you compromise tho and he have a packed lunch a couple of times a week or on a Friday or something? Although that might be giving big mixed messages.

Martha

Dc1 ate only bread and sausages and pasta literally until he was 6! Milk too thankgod.
Totally healthy kid and now a dad himself with a child who eats anything.

I'd give packed lunches. My dd doesn't like school dinners and she has refused to point blank eat them and come home hungry.
She's also fussy at home- she has an incredible sense of smell and taste so this is a factor. She also has large tonsils so struggles with textures.

We go slowly with trying new food as she's small enough as it is.

I didn't say the ops child was naughty. I said my own daughter was naughty. she are spaghetti Bolognese at school and refused to eat it at home. that is naughty.

op said that her child can manage sweets and that she us happy that he's eating enough to experiment a bit longer with seeing if he can manage school dinners. I said I agree with her view.

so I do know what I'm talking about thanks.

Or do packed lunches Tuesday and Thursday only as a compromise.

It's harder to retrain a palette once they've got a taste for processed foods but school dinners are generally unremarkable and bland so a great first step.

Sometimes we cook three or four new recipes each week. My boys don't enjoy everything but have got accustomed to me experimenting on them! They expect it!

I also have a fussy eater who wouldn't even eat a packed lunch at school when she started! No way would I have tried school dinners.

If you know he'll eat a lunch that you give him, why wouldn't you? I know a lot of posters will suggest starving him (he'll eat if he's hungry) but my own experience shows that not to be true - my daughter didn't eat anything for months

I tried it with my son, who was a fussy eater.

After a year or so, thinking all was going to plan, we ran into one of the dinner ladies who told me how they all feel sorry for DS as he leaves his food untouched, sitting there with a face of misery ....

So we went back to packed lunch (back in the day when I was still allowed to give him crisps or a cookie with his sandwich)

ummm that isn't naughty in my book. Could be a multitude of things first of all the fact that spag Bol recipes differ so much!

For many children with food issues location also plays a part strangely. When we are out eating ds will only eat - burger (less and less recently), chips or garlic bread. Yet at home neither burger or garlic bread would be acceptable.

For children with "proper" issues around food it is so complex it's very hard to second guess motives

she are spaghetti Bolognese at school and refused to eat it at home. that is naughty

Why is it naughty? What is her really motivation for not eating at home? Maybe it doesn't taste the same... maybe she felt under pressure to eat it at school even if she didn't like it....

Ummmmgogo I don't see that as necessarily naughty. It could be an attempt to control you - but I'd still not that class that as naughty until I understand why.

But in any case, your bolognaise and school will taste different. My SD (before I met her) was very fussy. But she also had very sharp tastes. There was one type of cheddar she would eat - if they bought another without her ever seeing the packet, she knew. And she wasn't naughty. She'd look miserable and apologise but say that it tasted funny.

Wow, such a lot of responses already, thank you!

To the question about how much he is eating at school and what he eats in a packed lunch, by the sounds of it, very little at school, so far he has chosen jacket potato with cheese or their own version of packed lunch, which beyond being told what the sandwich filling is, I have yet to find out what else goes in it. He has told me over the last two weeks that he tried 9 bites (nibbles) of cucumber, another day it was two pieces of sweetcorn, another day he had a small bit of jacket potato so I feel that, however small, this has been positive. The question is how important is this when weighted against the low volume of food he is actually eating?!

In his own packed lunch, he would eat cheese sandwich or cheese and crackers, strawberries, grapes and a yoghurt. He would eat crisps, cake and chocolate too but we were asked not to include these at preschool.

Sorry to drip feed but I forgot to mention that his self imposed terrible diet has meant that he's been on a maintenance dose of lactulose up until about 3 months ago which we have had to start again as he's been uncomfortable and unable to go to the toilet again!

I wish I could just teach him that foods are fine and get him to understand that if he just tried some things he might like them! I'm not expecting him to like every single thing but just a few more nutritionally useful foods would be good!

Nope it's not naughty sorry you really don't understand. I have never idea about your child but I can absolutlry assure you that mine were not naughty but had food issues and would literally just not eat all day if made to eat school dinners. That or vomit.

I have a son with asd who is 5 and has a very restrictive diet. For most of his life all he has eaten and will eat is plain bread and pasta. He is under a dietician who prescribed multivitamins (you can actually buy the same ones from boots - wellkid liquid as it contains iron, many don't) and she said let him eat whatever and whenever he wants to eat. So we do and as time has gone on things have slowly improved.

We have been the family at McDonald's whose kids has had two regular sized milkshakes and nothing else.

We have been the family who has sat there eating a proper meal while our son eats plain bread.

Sometimes all he has all day is mini doughnuts and a few strawberries.

It is INCREDIBLY difficult but the last thing you want to do is make eating a negative experience. It may cause huge issues later not to mention put him off food completely.

Honestly, special needs or not I would never make food a battlefield: food should be fun. If he is growing and thriving then whatever he eats is okay, long term things may change.

I think my extreme fussy eating may have been due to my ocd so not being naughty just very distressed by food. As long as he is eating and a healthy weight thats the main thing.

but I only said it was naughtiness causing my own child's issue. twice.

From what you've said it does sound as if school lunches are expanding his repertoire slightly.
I'm going to back track from what I said earlier - is there an option for him to have school lunches say one or two days a week and pack lunch the rest of the time?
If not I still think you should switch to pack lunch. The school has enough to do without worrying about starving DCs - and they're really not going to tell you about him not eating, if it isn't a real issue for them.

@utterly the irony is I'm such a fussy eater I wondered if mine was blander than the schools 😂

anyway after a year of school dinners she now eats lasagne and spag bol and cucumber at home and school so school dinners were a financial and fussy eating success for us!

School dinners can be rank and would more likely put him off food than encourage him to eat. My ds loves pasta and he wouldn't eat the school pasta, apparently it would be a congealed lump with sauce splashed on top 😷

My kids were fussy but started asking for more different stuff in their packed lunch as they liked the look of what their friends had, plus you get a better idea of how much they're actually eating.

Ummm no I understand you mean your own child, but sometimes other people secretly think it too. My gran was convinced I was being naughty and felt if my parents starved me i would soon eat. I wouldnt i would have starved to death.

Just to respond to the comment upthread about eating something somewhere else and not at home being "naughty" - my son will only eat specific things in specific places. Pizza express pizza (no other brands etc), jacket potatos from Sainsbury's cafe (!), chips from a specific chip shop etc. Plenty of children with sensory issues (which doesn't necessarily indicate asd either) have huge issues with different brands of food etc and they absolutely know the difference. My son knows the difference between baked beans in a blind test. They have to be Tesco! It's very difficult.

At the moment, you have the 'easy' meals - the one you know he will eat - at home, and it is at school that he is being required to try different things.

i would say, especially as he is so new to school, that that is the wrong way round. In particular, choice at school is very limited, and thus their ability to 'back down' and give him something that he will eat when he cannot learn because he is so hungry is very restricted.

I know why you tried it - the hope that peer pressure and different adults around him might just make him 'do what is expected in school' and eat a wider range of foods - but it hasn't worked, so there is no point in continuing the experiment for the moment.

So what I would do for the moment is give him packed lunches, then try to introduce new foods when he is in the familiar environment of home. You could do this as an 'extra' to his main evening meal, if that will calm the situation down. For example if you are cooking your meal o eat later as well as his 'safe' food, you can give him a little plate of it to have a nibble at while you cook, which he can do safe in the knowledge that his safe food is coming later, and you can do safe in the knowledge that he will still have a (boring) adequate dinner afterwards.

Two techniques which worked brilliantly with DS when he went through a similar phase:

• Build out from what he does eat. Chicken fingers...homemade chicken fingers....chicken meatballs in crunchy breadcrumbs...chicken meatballs alone...chicken strips with dipping sauce.... chicken strips in sauce. Getting him to help cook, to see that you aren't smuggling in anything 'unsafe' - and getting the pride that you / his dad eat it too - was also helpful on top of this,. but not alone.

• Start with tiny 'rations'. DS's carrot ration started as half a tiny, thin carrot round. He ate it, we cheered, no more was offered. Next night: a whole carrot round. Next night: 2. Sweetcorn we started with a single grain. He knew it was OK to eat it, because we never made him eat any more than his ration. It can be so tempting to say 'that wasn't so bad, was it? Now have another', and that just didn't work with a child who had screwed up all their courage to eat the tiny amount they had been given and was exhausted by that.

If there are no other health issues, continue with the school meals.
Also, I have a very fussy eater... We do a lot of cooking together... BUT there is no pressure on DC to actually eat it. It's more a can you help me ... get 1 carrot from the fridge, put a cup of rice in the saucepan,... its about getting to know the different foods, becoming familiar with texture, sound and changes during cooking. Curiosity will win in the end!

(We also never over praise or get upset over eating- but we will make genuine comments where appropriate. "The veg. rice tastes lovely" "Oh I'm pleased you like it, DC helped me choose the veg today." Natural and normal is the key.)