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?

I just wanted to say l am so pleased that your child with Autism is now eating more variety. I hope you all enjoy the meal. Good luck OP

MrsKoala I tend to find the people who peddle that shite are people who are not actually trained experts in that particular field. You know, the experts that have spent their lives and careers actually studying the issue.

[Bit like my aunt who thinks peanut allergies don't exist and felt that the way to prove DS's allergy was all in my head and I was an attention-seeking drama queen was to feed him a little bit of a snickers bar from a celebrations box. Thank fuck we caught it in time.

I really really want a roast now. And not a roast made out of pie but beef maybe.

There is IMO middle ground between the view that a child will eat when it's hungry and that a fussy eater should be pandered to on every level.

I was the child who would rather go hungry than eat something I didn't like, and for a period of time all I ate was dry breakfast cereal.

I do have some textural issues though with things like jelly and custard and certain fruits and vegetables. I would have gone without rather than eating any of them.

That being said, i do think it's important to make foods available to children as they get older, with an understanding that while they don't have to eat anything and everything, they are never going to expand their likings as they grow up if they are only ever faced with e.g. Biscuits and chocolate buttons because they refuse to eat anything else.

I am not nearly as picky as an adult and I have not pandered to my DC on any level. But neither have I ever forced any child to stay at the table until their plate was cleared.

As a toddler my mum took me to the GP and he said that if parents only stopped for an instant to consider how small a child's stomach is they wouldn't get nearly as worked up about what they don't eat and would go with the flow a lot more.

Yes I agree Secret. Unfortunately those voices are very loud and led to enormous stress and fraught meal times with my DS for many years.

Chris Packham saying that he eats the same thing every day because it’s comforting and reassuring in an unpredictable life really resonated with me.

I also think there’s a huge difference between children who are a bit picky and children who have Avoidant and Restrictive Food Intake Disorder and conflating the two groups is not helpful

I make chicken pie from the remains of yesterday's roast chicken. Therefore by definition it is a roast

no it isn't.

Exactly Jiggly.

Over the last 6 months working hard with specialists i have managed to add half a chopped peeled apple, homemade oat bars (with hidden goodness), very crispy cheese on toast and the 'leaves' off broccoli trees and a few 'pennies' of carrot to my DS1 diet. I do a roast (with plain roast meat) every Sunday and that is the one meal i am happy if he just eats nothing. The food i offer is similar enough to his designated foods that i feel he could tolerate and sometimes he will eat some . Saturdays i do something he can adapt so like a toad in the hole and he can just eat the sausages and some of the crunchy parts of batter, or a 'picky tea' (got it in again!) or Mezze/Tapas where i know there are some things he will eat and he can survey all the rest and will often try some (altho he always says he doesn't like it but trying it good enough for us). Friday lunch at school is fish and chips, so i wont make him a pack lunch on that day because (while he would prefer one) i know at a push there is something he will eat.

The rest of the week i don't challenge him too much and give him the few foods he likes and he just watches us eat other stuff.

This approach has worked really well (altho i am bored to tears with the menu) and he has put on weight and height (grown 4.6cm in 3 months!!). I also, as i said upthread, give a vitamin drop and lactulose.

It's still not great, by a long way. But it's better than only eating sausages for 6 months. :(

I do resent how much of my time i dedicate to food tho. I long to just make. a. fucking. dinner!

*Lass-what would you have served then?(

Certainly not a dead bird pie and gravy. My own experience as a child is that having an aversion to eating carcases was interpreted as "fussy"

I firmly believe a child will starve themselves as my 10yr old dd has and is doing exactly that at the moment. Completely different from a fussy eater believe me - since July she has lost over 2 stone and eats only chocolate cake because that is safe. ( she is having a vast amount of medical care ) but please don’t ever assume they are fussy and will eat when they are hungry because they may not.

I have 3 kids who are all totally different in thier eating habits. I’ve brought them all up the same and we only cook one meal in this house (so I havnt pandered to each child and made them all different things) yet they all are fussy about different things.
DD for example won’t eat gravy/stew/casserole or mash yet will eat blue cheese, olives, prawns, mussels and Thai curry

I would be one of those kids who would rather go hungry than eat food I don't like

But I have food phobia sooooo

mrskoala you sound awesome.dont see it as something draining.see the end goal.see how much progress you've made.or even the day you don't or seem to go backward.instead then still see the tremendous effort you are all putting in.this isn't easy for any of you yet as a family wow how you are trying.what if you came out the other side and it was wonderful.and if not then your efforts he will always remember and u will too. we got like this when sometimes I actually felt I would cry over it "oh god not again" but each time I did and little while later I got a hand in mine "thanks mum" best feeling ever!! something that also helped was acter a wee while we also on one of our supermarket trips said.right if there was one thing in this shop you want to try what would it be.and because struggled with time and uncertainty we gave three minute time limit like supermakartet sweep.this became a monthly then weekly things.and it was amazing how this got her over fear of trying new thing,fear of asking us if she could,fear of change.sometimes it just wasn't going to happen but the most time it did.
she now loves so much more food.and we spot symtoms of fear towards stuff or situations.and we always have the safe foods.
its very hard with fussy eaters.there are of course fussy eaters who will eat if hungry.but there are those who actually have a extreme fear and will do anything but eat.and it will only get worse with anxiety over force or going without arguments.

Thanks - It is unspeakably frustrating tho. I often want to shout 'just eat your goddam carrots for fuck sake'. But instead i exclaim theatrically 'I just want to go to Swindon' and do a fake cry. It makes us all laugh and i hope it means they wont get a life long complex about carrots. They may never be able to step foot in Swindon however, but i'm not sure that's such a bad thing

MrsKoala I got Wellkid drops yesterday and put it in DS's juice. He drank it down very easily and I am very happy about it. :) Thanks for the advice.

Great. Sometimes the little beasts can detect it. You have to perfect the 'i'm not bothered if you drink it or not face' while inside you are desperately pleading, 'just drink it for the love of god.'

I found once i added the vit, i felt a lot of the pressure was lifted and this must have translated to ds1 as we all just breathed out a bit.

That's exactly what I felt.... the pressure had been lifted. I had a physical letting out of breath when he gulped it down.

Lass we get it, you don't eat meat. But you still haven't suggested what you would serve to the young guest?

I would not assume he would eat a roast dinner. What is so difficult to understand about that? If I knew he was unlikely to eat it I would ask him when he arrived. How difficult is that?

I well remember having food which made me physically sick being forced on me by adults showing no comprehension that eating eating the flesh of something that used to alive is vile if you don't think "roast dinners" are lovely.

Lass if you bother to read the OP, the child’s mother suggested that the OP give him the dinner they were having.

It’s academic now as the dinner has been and gone

I would not assume he would eat a roast dinner. What is so difficult to understand about that?

I don't know, why are you struggling so much with the fact that his mother TOLD OP he would eat a roast dinner?

Not that this was, by any defintion, a roast dinner.

he child’s mother suggested that the OP give him the dinner they were having

No, she suggested he was given a roast dinner. Which he was not.

He was given most of the elements of tge roast ie roast potatoes, variety of veg and yorkshire pudding and gravy. Just the pie was different.
Fwiw the meal was a success as Ops ds and visitor polished it off between them

a pie is not a roast, and the only thing roasted was the potatoes!

I have just made a roast dinner. Roast chicken, roast potatoes, roast carrots, roast broccoli, cauli cheese, peas, stuffing and yorkshire.
That is a roast dinner!

Not in my house messyjessy
Never have roast carrots or roast broccoli ( why would you broccoli ?)and only very occassionally cauliflower cheese.