to have no idea how to get 10 year old dd to stop being a fussy eater

[believebelievebelieve]

Dd has always been incredibly stubborn in general (has to do things her way). This includes what she will and won't eat. I try to cook healthy meals and she is old enough now to understand what she should be eating, but still she continues to be fussy. With vegetables, she will only eat them her way (eg. only the top of broccoli) and a lot of the time she insists on covering food in tomato ketchup. This is my fault as I let her have it to try to get her meals. I don't really get cross with her as there is no point. When she doesn't want something she either flatly refuses or has one mouthful which she proceeds to chew for literally hours until I clear the food away. She loves to cook and always helps me prepare the food, but still doesn't eat it! I was hoping she'd have grown out of it by now but it's got to the point where I often cook what I know she will eat which isn't fair on us or her older DS who isn't fussy. I have started to worry about her health but just don't really know where to start.

What bout roasted veg.its lifts any food to yum.
Ask her to help whole fam eat more vareity.get her to pick 3 things to add each weeek.
Veggie stir fry with all the different flavours worked fr us.
Risotto with bacon and peas
Pasties and making spring rolls together.

I was/am a fussy eater and the absolute worst thing you can do is put pressure on her to eat certain foods. I’m not saying this is what you are doing but she is much more likely to dig her heels in if she feels pressured in any way. Trying to ‘make her’ eat will just backfire and could cause further issues with food.

It’s hard because we all want our dc to have a healthy balanced diet,but let her take the lead. I was terrible up until around you dd’s age when I slowly started trying new things on my own terms. Not always the healthiest of things, I remember when I ate a Big Mac from McDonald’s for the first time when before I just used to get a plain hamburger, remove the meat and eat the bread for example, but any progress is good progress.

I still have my food issues, my diet could be better. But I exist on a lot more than just toast, chips and spaghetti hoops these days.

My DD is 13 and very fussy. Won't eat any meat or fish, no beans, eggs, pizza, bread/wraps, cereal, saucy or cheesy pasta, yogurts, cheese, milk, won't eat veggie stuff like veggie burgers or fingers, no soya/quorn/tofu,
In fact I think it's easier to list her likes, chips/roasts, crisps, salad, veg, curry, rice, yorkshire puds, chocolate, sushi(veg) err I'm pretty sure that's it. It's a nightmare and hoping she grows out of it soon. (though been hoping for the last 5 years)

I disagree and actually think fussy eaters is a problem and should be addressed in a firm but calm way to reintroduce as many foods as possible.
A simple .... we are going to do this and over the next few months we are going to introduce .... say these 3 foods, for starters.

I was a very fussy eater at that age and still am but not to the same extent. I'm better if I know exactly what is in food so I did start cooking at around 11 or 12, to start with with my mum but not long after on my own. When I went to university people introduced me to new foods and a veggie boyfriend helped me realise that veggies could be tasty.

Now my issue is mainly with texture and dairy and eggs. I will only eat fresh bread, no supermarket sliced. I hate butter ad Mayo so sandwiches are out of the question generally (unless I made it myself). For lunch I find things like cous cous, fish, sliced meat etc are a staple.

Making me eat food would have made me even worse.

You can't honestly let her eat what she eats keep offering food and let her eat what she likes. My 25 yrold was a complete nightmare i fought and fought for too long by the time she was 10 i had stopped fighting and just let her eat what she ate as an adult her diet is better.

Mine was very similar - I used to find it infuriating. However, as long as she is healthy it should pass. And obviously if the rest of the family eat well. My son is 16 now and eats mostly everything.

Meant to say Dd said it is a texture thing

I had one like that. At 17 he has cottoned on to the fact that he is going to need a variety of food to sustain his body- and has had time to grow bored with the junk food that his friends eat and that he always resented us for not providing at every meal.

What worked for us was carrying on serving a variety of food (including one or two meals every week that were specially his thing), but not getting uptight if he didn't eat much the rest of the week.

Making mealtimes a place where we talked about cheerful things and had a good laugh, but did not spend too much time staring at each other's plates.

Never dishing food out for other people, always letting everybody help themselves.

Obviously, that wouldn't have worked for a child with real sensory issues, but it worked well for the common or garden fussy eater we had.

Is there such a think as fruit and veg. Boot camp for kids? If there is, I would send DD. She is impervious to any subtle or sledgehammer ways of helping her to eat them. And I really think that as an adult she will eat none of them.

OP, I was exactly like your DD (probably worse) and my own DD was the same. Both of us began to eat a wider variety of foods after we left home (me at 20 and DD at 19). We both now eat almost everything, meals are a pleasure and we love trying new and unfamiliar foods, although as children we experienced meals as a very stressful thing and were afraid of trying anything new.

Hopefully, your DD will eventually grow out of her fussiness. But in the meantime, I would say don't try to force it, as that will not help and may actually delay her progress. Let her eat what she feels comfortable with for now.

I can also recommend the book mentioned above first bite.
It's a really interesting book about how we learn to eat and why we enjoy some foods and hate others, and how you can go about changing things if you want to. It's not too science-y, very easy to read.

This might be helpful;

nutritioncare.net/three-steps-bust-picky-appetite/

I've had a fussy one who eats pretty much everything aged 12.

I agree with a pp here:

Make dinner time happy.
Have serving bowls with a variety of foods- including something you know they will eat.
Don't force the issue.
Be patient.
Educate on healthy foods, why we need the nutrients.
Get them cooking.

I think most get to a point where they increase the number of foods they will eat. Mine eats most things now and will try new things when out and about. She'll always have a low appetite/little interest in food I think. But she makes good choices now. Has a lot of fruit and veg in her daily diet.

My eldest has been terribly fussy for years and I used to stress about it terribly and get cross at him, over the past year I stopped stressing and started taking the little victories which helps. I also made a list of the food he does eat and it is better than I thought, he is still fussy by many people's standard but compared to how he was a year ago we have come on leaps and bounds. We have just discovered he has sensory issue's and this can be linked to the fussyness.

I'll second anyone who says not to force her to eat something she truly dislikes. I may, just may, have discovered that I actually liked fish, had I not been forced to sit, for endless Thursday evenings, in front of a congealing and rapidly cooling plate of fish in cheese sauce, with cauliflower and potatoes. I would sit until bedtime, at which point I was made to feel like shit and sent to bed hungry. I hated my mother, I hated fish and I still won't eat it to this day (and I'm 50 next year). She gave up trying to force feed me fish by my teens as it finally got too expensive. I was "punished" by being told repeatedly how much money it had cost, and how wicked I was to not eat it and to waste it, so a guilt trip was piled on the despair I already felt all day every single Thursday in anticipation of a very hungry night, full of stress and distress.

My DTD1 is 12 and has a limited range of things she will eat. Mostly pretty good stuff but very very limited when you are cooking for the rest of us (including DTD2 who loves food and eats and tries anything).

She just isn't interested in food, she can now explain to me that she doesn't like the texture of many things and finds tastes too strong. We try and work round it now, just not worth the stress on her and us for mealtimes. She will occasionally have the tiniest taste of something new that I think she may like - I am scrupulously honest and would not get her to try something I know she would find difficult so she trusts that I am not just forcing her to try something too different to what she has had. However having said that it has been a while since she added a new option to her food (last one was Yorkshire puddings!).

I try to have something that she will eat as part of each meal (even if just the particular veg she eats) and quite often we have a slightly different main part of the meal but at least she is eating.

I was quite a fussy eater as a child. I was just fed things I liked with the option to try others. The only foods I wont eat now are any type of fish/seafood (I have a huge problem with it, but haven't a clue why!) I eat pretty much everything else.

My sister was also a fussy eater. She has sensory issues, but actually, although a few people call her fussy, she isn't too bad. She doesn't eat fish/seafood, no fruit or smoothies (she vomits), no yoghurt (has to be a mousse like texture) and no peas and carrots. Sandwiches are also always the same, she wont eat salad, but everything else she's ok with.
I've had people tell me 'You need to just let her get on with it' 'Just give her what she doesn't like or make her starve' (My friend said this to me, yet her own child doesn't eat fruit and she doesn't make them eat it or starve) but honestly, i'd be gutted if someone said I had to eat a food I hated or starve, so I wont do it to her. She has improved hugely and I hope it continues!

Good luck!

Ds takes a food flask to school with pasta with bolognese in it.

My 12 yo has been pretty fussy for years. The less fuss we make about it and the less we try to control it, the better she gets. Dh doesn't see it this way unfortunately, so still has a tendency to have a go at her when she won't eat things. It is very clearly counter-productive but doesn't happen that often because I do most of the cooking! If I could go back in time, I'd be more relaxed about it from when she was tiny tbh.

Oh and when I say she's getting better, I mean that she is choosing to try new things, expand her diet and choosing to re-try things she used not to like (rather than getting better by just doing what she's told and eating her meal even if she hates it!)