FUSSY CHILD AND GIVING HIM A ROAST DINNER..

[BLUESEAPARADISE]

We have DC friend over tonight and we are all having chicken pie, roast potatoes, peas, carrots and Yorkshire pudding with gravy,

The friend is incredibly fussy ( and I understand it's very difficult as my DC is fussy) however his mum has told me to give him a roast dinner just like everyone else to try and encourage him to try something.

How would you serve the meal with as little stress as possible? One potato? Or a small bit of potato? One carrot? One pea?? How about the pie?!

The friend apparently is very unlucky to try any of it but mum still wants me to serve it to him in a hope he will try!

I don't really want to overwhelm him with a large plate of food but It would be nice to say to his mum when he picks up that he has had something!

Sorry for this post I am such a worrier!

Any tips on how to support a child ( who isn't yours) who is incredibly fussy?

Well done OP - you achieved the most important thing, which is that this boy was not forced to feel overly anxious about food 👍🏻

I'm PMSL at the PP who trotted out that old shite about "he'll eat when he's hungry".

Oh the expertise of someone who hasn't lived with a food refuser

Oh and in future you could serve a picky tea instead. I never usually use that term, but i saw it pissed off some of the Reddit critics so am determined to crow bar it in as often as possible. ( wink at Liney)
You're very naughty MrsK

Thankyou everyone,

Once again I know it wasn't the best real in the world but let's be honest everyone has days like today!

DS friend was allowed to eat what he wanted and he decided to leave all of the roast dinner and that's fine by me, he stayed at the table and he didn't go hungry because he had pudding(s) and his mum was fine with it and that's the main thing.

My son also ate something other than chicken burger and salt and vinegar crisps .. something I never thought would happen!

So today's meal time wasn't the physically the healthiest I know but emotionally it was the best meal in the world and it has given us a lot of confidence in that my son will try something else other than chicken burgers and crisps again!

Both children are happy and fed, and all the parents are over the moon that their child ate something ... even if it was carb central or two puddings!

As the mother of a fussy child who hasn’t yet grown out of it I say well done OP. Two fussy kids ate something you cooked even if it was topsy turvey

Chalk that one up to a win!

Oh and I tend to think of any meal is a good meal if they eat it. I’ve given up trying to be nutritionally perfect - so long as something gets eaten it’s good here. Usually he then surprises me by eating something quite random that I didn’t think he would. But the next day refuses a rather mundane meal.

One day he will grow out of it or so my mother says (I was a fussy eater!)

It sounds a fine dinner to me id be happy if i was served this

Well, if we are going to be pedantic about it all, no modern day roast is a roast unless it's a hog roast or a spit.

If it's meat in an oven then it's actually a bake. The old classical definition of a 'roast' is meat hung up and turning over fire.

OP- you hosted a young child who may have been stressed about eating, and you did it with thought, care and compassion. You did great.:)

(And I've learned some great tips about food not touching- DS is fussy, autistic and largely non-verbal. I'm going to try some of the tips on here).

I haven't read the thread but lie AND Yorkshire pudding...op I love you... you've opened up a whole new world to me!

And I mistyped pie in my excitement

SecretSmellies - my DS1 likes a plate which actually has separate compartment so things don't touch. Everything has to be dry. Changing to those plates made a real difference. Good luck.

MrsKoala thanks so much! Oddly I was looking at plates like that just today (not for him, for me, for portion control) and did not buy them.I will go back tomorrow and buy!

Feeling hopeful. Yesterday DS ate an entire clementine. I nearly fell over in shock. :)

My DS has two puddings every day because it’s the only way I can get calories into him. Ironically, I rarely eat carbs. But I have child on the spectrum so I’ve had to learn to not be a judgemental cunt about what food other people eat.

Secret - My DS1 has started eating half an apple a day. i do an internal fist pump every time. It seems weird to those with non fussy kids but half an apple or a clementine is amazing when they eat hardly anything. keep going tho, even tho it's soul crushing. I saw our peadiatric nutritionist the other day and she said the most important thing was not make food an issue, keep giving food he likes/is familiar with and just keep offering/have visible and available other foods. She also said to change our vit drops to a brand called Well Kid, and give lactulose for constipation. Not sure if any of that helps you.

Yes the vitamin info is very pertinent right now for us, thanks. I had been using a sort of powder that he could only tolerate if very well-hidden (I usually put it in pancake batter, but he won't eat that now). He's now reduced right down to eating only carrot sticks, kinder chocolate, white bread and butter, cherry tomatos, ready slated crisps and capri suns. I could mix vitamin drops in the capri suns. It would make me feel immensely better if I knew something helpful was going in.

I hate food police with a passion! If I want a Yorkshire with a roast chicken,guess what,I'm an adult I'll bloody well have one. And if I want to chuck a bit of horseradish on there I'll do that too. I've had people tell me I can't call it a hotpot because it's got all the wrong veg in and wrong type of pastry - and yes I like a steak with white wine!
Seriously well done OP. Everybody fed, you got your DS to try new things and eat a load of veg. Your meal sounds delicious!

secret I had really big trouble with food growing up and definitely agree that not making a thing of it is the way to go. I'm now an adult who will eat most things.

It took me til I was 18 to bear what I classified as "lumps in wet", whereas eg a sausage was manageable. I used to not let foods touch and always (still do if I can) have them in the same order on my plate: protein on the right, carb at the back, veg on the left.

My mum tended to introduce foods by the linking method: so a second type of kinder chocolate, or a different type of ready salted crisp etc. I was fed a Lot of multivitamins.

I was left to stay with my grandparents once, they were of the "if they're hungry they'll eat" era. I stayed for 4 days and still hadn't eaten anything when I got home. So I tend to be pretty skeptical about this approach.

Daily strawberry haliborange here.

You sound lovely op, I have 2 fussy eaters (annoyingly they are fussy about completely different foods too). It's so nice that you just want to make the friend feel comfortable and not make a huge thing about the fact he is fussy, which only ever makes things worse.

I was also a ridiculously fussy eater as a child. I only really started getting over it as a teen but now as an adult I will eat most things. Your doing the right thing being patient and kind.

I still want to know why OP was criticised for making a meal with three carbs? The posters who said this haven't explained what's so terrible about it??

The OP was criticised by those who have little knowledge or understanding of nutrition - the proper science of it looked at from a global perspective, not contradictory snippets published by the Daily Mail. Demonizing carbs is the new puritanism - I suppose it makes them feel cleaner and more pure than the rest of the world.

My dd was a fussy eater - is getting better. I would be grateful that someone offered to give her a meal and tell them not to stress about balanced nutrition for one meal. That would be my problem as a parent not someone else’s problem for a one off event with a pal.
My dd is fine, fit and healthy.

Thanks so much Etymology and Jiggly.

I like the sound of the linking method very much indeed Etymology.... that is inspired!

I have a fussy DD too - she is 10, and no real signs of changing much.

We are having lasagne for Christmas dinner - saves going through the whole "urgg roast" saga.

yes to not plating up.
let them chose (you might be surprised), maybe stipulate before that the rule is to chose & try 3 different things.

Definitely let guest serve himself. If you can't be bothered to use serving dishes on the table then just let them serve themselves in the kitchen from the dishes and saucepans you used to cook them in.
That way everyone gets what they want on their plate.