For fussy eaters to drive me crazy?

[MrsPreston11]

Kid in my daughters class (not SEN, that I can sympathise with) is the fussiest eater ever.

To the point I won't have her over for dinner.

Just eats plain pasta, peanut butter sandwiches (has to be certain PB and certain white bread, of course) and chicken nuggets and chips but of course alllll the sweets.

I feel like every fussy kid I've know has had that as their menu.....

I just cannot get my head around it. HOW?

My only assumption is that the parent feeds them what they want for a quiet life. Unfair?

Or am I being totally unreasonable and missing something?

I have two DC. One eats anything, one doesn't. Fussy DC is 4 and would starve before eating something she doesn't want. I was the same as a child and I grew out of it eventually. Thankfully my best friend's mum accepted me anyway and made me spaghetti hoops on toast every other week for 4 years. YABU.

My DD gets the occasional day when she is feeling brave. The other week she tried 2 baked beans. 2. With the sauce washed off. I could see her swirling then in her mouth a few times, looking stressed out and heaving because she wasn't used to a new texture. Eventually she did manage to swallow them which was a huge achievement. I'm sorry but if you've never had, or cared for, a child with genuine issues around food then you really have no idea !

For a child it doesn't bother me. I would only ever eat plain pasta and cheese when I was a child, or spaghetti bolognaise but my mum had to painstakingly strain all of the liquid away from the meat

I have completely grown out of this now. Adults who are fussy eaters aggravate me to no end, I had an ex boyfriend who was completely averse to fruit and vegetables in ANY shape or form. Wouldn't even have cakes with jam in. It drove me mad as we couldn't eat anywhere that didn't serve steak and chips, he wouldn't even have the lemon when doing tequila shots. Perhaps being with him has given me such a low tolerance toward it now???

I was a fussy eater as a child. My parents didn’t push it and now as an adult I eat a wide and varied diet. Unlike my Mum who was forced to eat things she really didn’t like as a child and now won’t go near them!

Ds is autistic and has a lot of food related issues and would happily not eat. Anyone who thinks “just give it to them and they will eat it” and “they won’t starve” are true needs to watch him and they will soon realise it’s not the case!

Takemedowntopotatocity Yes my son did the same about a week ago! I was half encouraged to try more but you have to be careful.

Also my son does not eat for pleasure. He will forego sweets if he isn't hungry.

I'm with you OK, just eat it, it's not going to hurt you. Parents with fussy kids, they'll soon eat once the realise there's no choice and they get hungry! Try it

Its just weird how all these fussy eaters can only ever seem to manage eating absolute crap like frozen oven food. Weird how you never meet a fussy eater who only likes vegetables and fruit...

DC of fussy eaters tend to be the same parents who have dc who "won't drink water because they don't like it" next they'll tell me precious dc isn't keen on breathing

Ah, and there we go, the holy fucking trinity of shattitude. From the same mindset as, 'depression....just snap out of it!' ...and....'anxiety....just chillax!!' Honestly why you guys aren't writing a book curing all life's ills is a fucking mystery.

Sadly my ds isn’t keen on breathing either. It’s why he has to take multiple medications a day just to let that happen! It’s probbaly also part of the reason we have so many food issues!

What is going on this today - every thread seems to judging everyone else's parenting 🙄

Of course if a child is a fussy eater it must be the parents fault..... my parents put all kinds of food in front of me for years and I pretty much ate bread. I was very underweight until my teens when I suddenly grew out of it and ate everything. It's just a thing for some children.

I love my mums cooking btw, she's a professional chef so definitely nothing to do with the food 😁

I was an incredibly fussy eater. My parents tried very hard to get me and my siblings to eat a more varied diet, we all refused, so much so that we would refuse to eat for days at a time. We would prefer to be hungry till the next meal we liked than eat something else. Eventually our parents gave in. I had the same packed lunch every day for 12 years and was perfectly happy and healthy (peanut butter sandwiches, 1 tomato cut into quarters, a packet of skips, and an apple).

All 3 of us were also particularly bothered by textures, sounds and smells. Something that my children have inherited too. None of us are just stubborn or defiant, it really, really, really upset us to eat/touch/wear/hear other things.

I was a fussy eater as a child. The reality of it was I never actually tried things but said I didn't like them. I grew out of that the older I got.

The ‘adults who don’t like spicy food, garlic etc.. dull’ things puzzles me. Why is it dull if you don’t like the taste of something?

Could the problem be with people being called fussy eaters when in fact sometimes it's just that they don't like certain foods or textures but still have a varied diet? For me a fussy eater is someone who only ever eats a very limited diet. Usually due to a medical or sensory reason. I wouldn't call someone a fussy eater if they ate or at least picked at a variety of different food types. Even if it's just a few types each of fruit, veg, meat, carbs.

Ok, the pasta thing I can't manage to phrase properly...
My point is pasta/toast are carbs and yes carbs should be part of a balanced diet but a lot of people eat too much carbs. Why is that?

So I class pasta as treat food, as "most people would eat too much of it if they didn't consider their health and weight".

Applies to sugar as well.

Not that many people have to restrict the amount of veg they would want to eat if they didn't care about diet at all.

FWIW I'm not trying to be obtuse, I have myself vivid memories of being sat at the table as a child in front of a plate, gagging and being accused of faking it, so would never say force a child to eat this or that.
On the other hand, I have seen countless adults who by default will feed children "children's food", pasta, breaded fish/meet, hidden veg, sugary yoghurts and cookies.
Of course the child then isn't keen on eating more grown up food, wich might be more challenging sensory-wise.
That is the "fussy eaters" I talk about, as opposed to the DC who have a genuine aversion.

God that was long

Yanbu to get annoyed by it but yabu to assume the parents have given in to her for an easy life.

My dd eats under 10 things. 3 of those 10 are certain types of biscuit, chocolate and crisps. It has not been easy. I try and make food fun, I try to offer variety. Anything she doesn't like the look of (anything not on the list) brings her out in a panic and she backs off. She literally won't touch it with her finger. Binning meal after meal is not easy. I hate the waste. Watching her survive on plain, dry, bread more than half the time isn't easy. Finding out one day that she will no longer eat mashed potato (one of the foods she did eat) pretty much brought me to tears.

But she's 4 and she's growing and she's healthy. I'm hoping her diet will expand as she gets older.

MyDarling The NY resolutions have failed and they need something to cling on to as they open their frozen kale!!!!

Drip drip drip... shit, anyone got a cloth for my energy drink spillage?

There are no 'treat' foods, just food. A lot of disordered eating seems to stem from demonising some foods and/or categorising them as 'bad' or 'good' 'healthy' 'treat', etc. Pizza and pasta are staple foods in many cultures. We can chose to be picky because we are lucky enough to have easy access to a myriad of foods and protein sources.

I'm a fussy eater and I'm well aware I drive people mad sometimes I also NEED to be fussy as I have some serious food allergies. But I am also fussy.

Give the kid a break, it's not the end of the world. If it means that much to you, don't invite the child round!

Thing is my kid definitely tries it on sometimes, I don't make a battle out of it and I don't pander to it and it all works out nicely in the end. Ex- he goes through a phase of only wanting pepperoni pizza, I just give him something else he'll normally eat happily, say a baked sweet potato and go in another room a bit. He'll have eaten most of the potato when I pop back in. If I'd pander to him, his diet would be rubbishy.

Same kid goes through phases of refusing protein- he's 3, he doesn't have a clue about food groups, but he'll refuse all meat, yogurt, cheese etc. Even the rubbish alternatives! Not much I can do about that.

He also virtually lived on steamed veg for a couple of weeks. Certainly didn't touch chocolate or anything like that either as I tried giving him some just for the calories!

I absolutely do acknowledge harmless preferences though- he doesn't want the cheese grated over stuff, I put it next to it on the plate. He likes the omelette plain so I cook the veg separately and he'll happily eat both.

If I'd add the veg to the omelette, 100% he'd leave both.

Totally unfair assessment - I gave my daughter everything, tried every trick in the book to get her to eat a well rounded diet. Up until she was a year old this worked reasonably well, then we started losing items. We are now limited to plain pasta/rice/couscous, jam sandwiches, chips and junk food (no meat btw ever). I am constantly trying to encourage her to eat new things or even the same thing in a different form (homemade chips are a no btw)

My DD might be HF Autistic but as she hasn't been assessed we don't know for certain and will fall into "fussy eater" category for anyone else.

For the record my DD WILL starve rather than eat new food or things she doesn't like - I have tried that.

@Urubu how gracious of you to (vaguely) admit that it's only a certain sort of fussy eater that is a problem. Have you even tried listening to what people are saying?

You say you've had problems so why on earth do assume that parents who purée food to hide vegetables all do it as a 'default'? Once my son got old enough to have sufficient dexterity he picked out all the veg from meals. Now he's older, he knows there are vegetables in the purée but he's fine with that. He simply cannot tolerate the textures. He's an intelligent boy and he absolutely understands the need to cover all the food groups. I've watched him try eating 'difficult food'. It made me cry.

I've watched him try eating 'difficult food'. It made me cry.

I don't think anyone who hasn't experienced it can understand what it's like watching their child find the courage to put something in their mouth when they find the experience so stressful and terrifying.

It's only since he turned six that DS1 has started to be able to rationalise this stuff and even to express what he finds difficult about different foods, or be willing to try new things on a regular basis. He doesn't like most of the things he tries but god, the fact he's willing to take three bites is such a major, major thing for him.

But that's only on a good day. Under pressure, or in a stressful or unfamiliar situation he'll go straight for 'I hate it' and refuse to engage.

Meanwhile, his brother calmly nicks food off his plate. (And mine.)