Being unreasonable from my kid's perspective - food related.

[loopylass13]

I have a very fussy just turned 10 year old, who just had her first filling at the dentist (with two more needed) - feeling like the worst parent! As we have become a bit lacking in our good habits, I just needed some perspective on how to reduce sugar and the over snacking.

If you could tell me what your children's average day meal plan looks like then that would be helpful, what you feed them to maintain good body health/teeth health and so that are not driving you up the wall with the sugar pestering. Would I be unreasonable to say she can only have veg to snack on between meals? That the meals can't be so ready-made types anymore. She is outraged.

Example

Breakfast

Lunch

Dinner

Snacks and/or additional meals.

What are YOU eating op? Are you having family meals? Does she eat in front of screens?
The example that you give her is what matters, not weighing and counting what she eats. This can be damaging actually.

Seems to be a bit high carb and low protein, which may be helping drive the urge to snacking?

What do you eat? And when- do you eat together??

You are giving her a huge amount of carbs, beans on toast with mash seems a really weird combination.

These a r e the kind of things my son eats (he's 14 now so portion sizes are bigger, but essentially food is the same).He's never had a filling, cleans his teeth with an electric toothbrush after breakfast and before bed.

BREAKFASTS: cereal, milk, fruit (at 10 he would be having 2 weetabix). Beans on toast, occasionally brioche
LUNCH: sandwich (bread roll or pitta or wrap), ham, cheese, peanut butter & jam, turkey, chicken, tuna (all generally with salad), apple, sugar free jelly, pepper / carrot sticks
DINNER: savoury mince with jacket potato, veg
Chilli, chips, salad
Curry and rice
Spaghetti bolognese /lasagna/ salad
Chicken/beef/pork stir fry with rice & veg
Fish pie,
Fishfingers, chips &peas
Stews, grilled meats, sausages, new potatoes, veg
Fajitas
Desserts are usually fruit, yoghurt occasionally icecream / custard

We tend not to snack - we do 3 meals a day, but if he is hungry, there is always cheese, fruit, cereal bars, but he has to ask, he's not allowed to help himself.

Crisps & cakes are a weekend treat.

He has some form of sweets or chocolate every day after his main meal.

We drink squash, water, milk shake, tea, coffee

Most things are freshly prepared and we eat together. We have always eaten this way, he has always eaten what we eat even when he said he didn't like something we asked him to try it, he'll eat pretty much anything now.

Persevere, the habits you reach you daughter now will last a life time

She seems to eat a heck of a lot of pizza and often seems to eat multiple types of carbs at one sitting, which I find a bit odd tbh. I'd be trying to give her more (non-processed) meat/fish plus plenty of veg and one carb type meals. Chicken stir fry, lamb steaks and roast veg, fish with potatoes, peas and carrots etc.

My DC are grown up but neither has ever had any fillings
Desserts sweets or snacks were only allowed at weekends
Porridge weetabix type cereals or egg/toast for breakfast
Sandwiches for school with fruit and yoghurt
Cooked meal in evening with veg or salad made from fresh ingredients
Sometimes I batch cooked things like chilli, curry or bolognaise if we needed a quick option
Pasta and sauce is always a quick option

If she will eat cucumber, carrots and tomatoes (assuming fresh?) then I'd give those every day. Then try to find another veg that she will eat, maybe peas/mangetout/sugar snap peas/green beans? Or sweet corn/baby corn/corn on the cob perhaps.

Breakfast is small because she won't eat two Weetabix - porriage at the moment seems to be a big no but will work on that. You are right, there are more carbs than there needs to be but was just trying have a middle ground for the moment. Load up on these carbs rather than the crisps/noddles type carbs she was having. I'll look at reducing. The mash was small, no more than 3/4 tablespoons. The pizza was also a mini one, about the size of a bowl rather than a plate and that was cute into a quarter. I let her eat at much rice as wanted to fill up.

There are some really great suggestions/advices/examples here :)

ps - I wrote down what she ate - she said she was stuffed. I gave a range of things at the meal, fruit included. My breakfast plan was two Weetabixs and a banana, that didn't happen etc. Didn't look like enough kcals to me either but I figured it was a start …. that the no snacking will eventually get her to eat more for a set meal.

Do you eat a meal together in the evening?

How about a bagel with peanut butter or cream cheese for breakfast instead of weetabix or porridge, if she's not keen on those?

Mine are a bit older, but have cereal for breakfast, or sometimes a bagel or toast.

Lunch is a sandwich, roll, wrap or pasta salad with a protein based filling like ham, turkey, cheese. One likes plain things so we put in cucumber, cherry tomatoes, carrot sticks separately, the other likes more adventurous sandwiches, so it's easier (in some ways!). They have a packet of crisps and squash in their packed lunch too.

After school they have a smallish snack, the plain child loves Ryvitas! Otherwise it's Graze pots, crackers, biscuits, bread sticks, porridge oat bars. There's a mix of healthier and unhealthier things in the snack box...

We all eat tea together, bog standard stuff, pasta, chilli, curry, pies, bakes, pizza, stir fry, paella, sausages. I try to get at least three veg in to the evening meal. It's pretty easy to hide veg in pasta sauces and chillies. We get a veg box so my meals are planned around what I've got to use.

I have enforced no screen eating and no food allowed upstairs either.

I am specifically having to sit down and have a meal too, lead by example as someone said.

Also, the rice is brown rice as was the bread also brown. We do use a lot of wholegrain products.

Does she use a fluoride toothpaste? And do you supervise brushing? I’d focus on that for a start, as it is really the key, once she’s not sucking sweets continually.

Seems to be lacking proper meat or fish .

Why doesn’t she have normal milk.

My Ds - 11 . Bearing in mind I am decorating . Has had 2 crumpets . No idea what was on them as he made himself. Lunch - tuna and sweetcorn mayo sandwich with carrot and cucumber sticks and tortilla to dip in hummus and just had a mini magnum , beef and vegetable curry for tea tonight . Drinks have only been water. He is on the low side of healthy bmi.

Op you are doing the right thing by sitting down and having meals together. That’s really the only thing you need to do to raise a competent eater.
I would caution you against making her eat certain amounts and portion restriction. This can backfire. Your dd is not a toddler. Soon she will be eating at friends’ houses, buying her own food (if she doesn’t already) and sneak to eat whatever she wants. How will you control her then?
There is also a side effect to this called restraint and disinhibition, when someone binge eats after they are restricted in what and how much they eat.
The only thing I limit is sweets. My kids have one portion of dessert per day, usually at dinner. But again, they have days when sweets aren’t limited, like birthday parties or Easter, so they aren’t obsessed with them. Once a couple of weeks or so they have Nutella sandwiches for breakfast, or cookies and milk for a snack. Again, I don’t limit portions.

My Dd is 10. She is 4ft 7 and weighs 4stone 9lb . Typical days meals are

BREAKFAST
Scrambled egg x2 mushrooms and grilled tomatoes. Slice of granary bread. Water/milk or both to drink.

LUNCH
Chicken and salad wrap, her handful ( luckily she has small hands)😁 of " Off the Eaten Path" crispy tube thingys. Cherries, raspberries. Fizzy water and lime

DINNER

Salmon with dill sauce. New potatoes, broccoli, carrots and courgettes. Piece of lemon tart. Water to drink.

SUPPER
Hot chocolate whatever the weather!

I don't offer snacks , they tell me if they are hungry or if they just fancy something. They don't help themselves apart from ds1. Someone up thread mentioned teeth disclosing tablets, we do that as spot checks every so often! They think it's hilarious as Dh is the worst brusher I am really lucky though, none of the children have allergies or fussy.

Agree about the electric toothbrushes.

General question: does nice food seem cool to some kids these days? There just wasn't a foodie culture when I was a kid.

At that age I was also extremely strong-willed, hated brushing my teeth, and was near obsessed with chocolate. (And as soon as I started walking home from school by myself I would buy it, typically 2-3 bars, and certain flavours of crisps. ) Always ran marginally underweight, but so did most relatives. The healthy food at home was very boring and didn't taste good (breaded chicken with lettuce cucumber, tomato and boiled potatoes, lean cuisine meals). Carob and Just Juice cartons felt so uncool.

I was already very into lifestyley media things targeted at adults, like in the Sunday papers, and if things like celebrity chef recipes had been around I'd have felt we should have been having the things they cooked.

If I were dealing with another me at that age I'd be doing cooking together where possible, and teaching her to cook, especially of stuff from TV (these days maybe instagram?) and get exciting fresh ready meals (there are plenty with very few additives now) for when there wasn't time.

If chocolate biscuit bars were as much of a thing for school lunches as they were in the 80s, I would get one pack per week and no more, plus one fancy big bar of expensive chocolate which would be kept in
the house, and again no more would be bought through the week if it got finished early. The idea with the latter there would be to reduce the taste appeal of cheap chocolate and also to normalise eating a bit at a time.

In my teens I used to eat a lot of chocolate I thought actually wasn't very nice, partly because it was just there, partly because of ads. I also don't think I was actually eating enough in some meals at home: some were too small and some also weren't nice enough that I'd want to finish them. I wasn't allowed to use the cooker until a rather stupidly advanced age because of concerns it was dangerous - I remember as I got older and that was finally relaxed, I would cook stuff like Chinese egg noodles for myself when I got in and would look forward to that more than a lot of the chocolate. If I'd been allowed to cook for myself more when I was younger I do think I'd have eaten less crap chocolate. I don't remember feeling free to cook multiple-ingredient meals I thought sounded interesting and try out recipes until I got to uni.

It's a lot of processed and/or beige food - but i'm guessing that this is the best you can do immediately - no point on serving beautifully nutritious meals that she won't eat or which cause WW3.

Does she like strong flavours? Curry? Spicy food? Mexican? Chinese?

We can maybe come up with some suggestions of tasty and healthy / nutritious things she might eat.

You've not answered my previous question about stir frys - honestly these are amazing for packing veg in and can be made very non-threatening to an unadventurous palate - start with chicken, onions, beansprouts, grated carrot and noodles, plus a handful of spinach. Add whatever sauce would be palatable (hoi sin, sweet chilli, sweet and sour - yes, all and contain sugar, but at least the veg and protein are otherwise a well balanced meal!) you can then introduce peppers, cabbage, water chestnuts - all kind of things!

Hmm I know from experience my fussy eater would totally balk at stir fry - he would eat the meat, sauce and rice and reject all the obvious veg.

OP - my take is that her diet is really lacking protein and good fats, and has way too much carbohydrates, especially processed ones. If she’s eaten a decent amount of protein (meat, fish, chicken, eggs) she won’t need to eat lots of rice to ‘fill up’. Protein and fats are much more satiating / satisfying than carbs.

Good luck - I know the pain of having a fussy eater! I too fell into the trap of thinking my 10 yr old would self-regulate a bit by now - nope! He will nod along with my healthy eating talks- then repeatedly ask for sweets / biscuits / etc and refuse all veg :-( it’ll come.

You have a fussy eater who will eat sauce?! Wow.

Watermelon is not the equivalent of a bar of chocolate.

Lol lljkk, he’s got better with age - he’s 10 now. We’re in France where virtually every school meal is served with some kind of sauce, and he responds very well to peer pressure now / seeing his mates eat different stuff. He eats food at his friends houses that he’d never even look at if I offered it!

It's probably a lot to do with tooth brushing rather than diet. Yes drinking fizzy drinks and eating a lot of sugar won't help but I think it's so easy and 'on trend' to blame sugar for everything when actually a decent brush twice a day will help massively.

he responds very well to peer pressure now / seeing his mates eat different stuff. He eats food at his friends houses that he’d never even look at if I offered it!

That's really interesting that seeing other kids eat different food is making a difference. Shows the difference between these influences and when someone actually really dislikes stuff.