To tell my DD3 to starve if nothing is good enough?

[sidesplittinglol]

Ok a bit OTT but she is driving me to the edge at the moment. No food is good enough for her. Meal times are so hard as she has limited me to the amount of food she will eat. She then complains she's hungry but won't eat anything that's good for her. She'd live on biscuits and chocolate if she could.

Things she won't eat:

Pasta
Cheese
Tomato sauce
Any type of meat
Potato (apart from chips)
Rice
Egg (only boiled)
All veg
Beans
Toast (hit and miss)

I'm not great at meal ideas as it is but I feel this list limits me so much.

I've tried to make the food fun and look nice but the second she sees something she doesn't like it sets the tone for the rest of the meal and she won't eat it.

Can anyone please suggest anything I can do or make.

My dd is 10. She used to be very fussy. She lived on about 3 different meals. I’d go to friends houses and they’d make food. All the other children would tuck in apart from dd. I’d have to bring her food.

I always encouraged her to try things and when she was about 4 she started eating vegetables, just peas at first. Then slowly it became more and more things. She’s still fussy though but will for example eat certain vegetables if prepared in a specific way.

As for the meat thing, that’s more difficult. I assume your dd won’t eat it in a composite meal such as puréed bolognese sauce with lentils in it served with perhaps bread or a meat paste sandwich.

With dd some of it definitely was texture. I cried when she finally ate a chicken nugget as apart from toast she really wouldn’t eat anything other than mush. Before that when she was really little she went through phases and really only want a couple of foods. So I’d be spreading meals on toast in her toast phase or mixing them in Greek yogurt in her Greek yoghurt phase etc.

We couldn't force DS to sit at the table short of tying him down, nor can you really force a child to eat (unless you mean force feed).

I think most kids try being fussy at some point and of course their tastes are changing too.
I just used to leave them to it, but nothing else to eat if they didn't eat it.
I used to put it in the fridge and microwave when they did want it.
It's surprising how they suddenly like it when they're hungry.
Mine lasted a few days like this, then no more fussy eaters.

(But we wouldn't send him away if he was happy to sit, but not eat. Usually he isn't, though).

That’s why I let my son down and don’t force him to sit st the table.

Ah, see now you’re saying you let him down. Previously you said you took him down and said it was because the others would refuse to eat if he was there not eating and then later you said it was because it adds pressure if he is sitting at the table. That’s two completely different things. Letting him down of his own choice is very different than making him get down.

I take mine from the table because my other dc will start saying they don’t want to eat etc.

There is a middle ground between sitting at the table and being force fed veg until you vomit and having to leave the table. You can just sit there, not eat and join your family as they chat.

The rules are, you decide when the tea is on the table and she sits down. You give her what you have decided is for tea. She can decide not to eat it. No cajoling or persuading. If she refuses that's the ok bit she gets nothing else. No snacks between meals. On a bad day, supper can be fruit or plain bread. Don't have any battles or get cross, Just be pleasantly persistent. If she refuses a food do not offer an alternative. It takes a while so be patient, she wont starve. A paediatrician once told me a toddler could go without food for a week without harm provided they had water. Its a developed country problem

@IfIWasABirdIdFlyIn2ACeilingFan The OP hasn't said their child has SN etc so I fail to see what this has to do with her situation.

@sidesplittinglol Yes, in my view you have to play the long game...hard though it is.

some people have a list of things shorter than that that the kid will eat.

relax. present her with food she likes. leave new foods on your plate/on the table to look at. don't make it a battle.

look up the nutrients she needs, see if you are meeting her needs from the list of stuff she will eat. It helps when you know that they are more or less getting the right things.

The OP hasn't said their child has SN etc so I fail to see what this has to do with her situation.

I didn’t mention SN in relation to OPs situation. I mentioned it in relation to your comment that French parents don’t put up with children not eating. So do SN not exist in France or do French parents just refuse to tolerate SN?

I just get so upset with the effort and time wasted not to mention the food waste.

You don't have to bin the food, you can save it as leftovers for lunch or something. I'm always baffled by people binning perfectly good food just because it isn't eaten.

It's not much good to anyone if your DC has spat in it, Pickled.

I really rate the Ellyn Satter approach - basically your job as a parent is to provide healthy, nutritionally balanced meals and make mealtimes a pleasant experience and model good behaviour, and your child's job is to decide what and how much to eat and learn good behaviour at mealtimes.

www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/how-to-feed/the-division-of-responsibility-in-feeding/

I'd try to design meals around 50% what your DD 'like' and 50% new and varied things. Don't restrict your diet as that will in turn entrench her likes and dislikes - foods need to be experienced quite a lot of times before they become accepted as 'normal' so if you never try new things your DD will not get the experience.

But you never need to force or fuss about food. Keep things light.

Apart from children with autism or other issues I would make them eat what's in front of them or they get nothing.
my eldest still sometimes puts up a fight when he's offered something different to what he's had before but he knows he has to eat it and once he does he usually enjoys it.
I was a fussy eater and my parents catered to me. I never tried things like lentils or certain fish or even salad until I was an adult. All because I was too defiant and my parents too soft on me, the only one who suffered was me.

There is no way of distinguishing in medical terms between a child who is a fussy eater and one who has AFRID. Sometimes there is a physical issue, or a sensory disorder, but sometimes it’s a matter of degree which is a subjective assessment. Added to that are psychological reasons for avoiding food, which may have developed from a bad experience, from general stress and anxiety or from a desire to have more control over their lives.

In the end, unless there is an underlying issue that can be treated, it doesn’t really matter. It helps more to think about what doesn’t work about eating habits and what you want to achieve.

Coincidentally there is a similar thread on at the moment which you may want to read:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/a3357056-To-ask-if-anyone-has-expert-knowledge-on-young-children-refusing-to-eat-or-drink?msgid=80808227#80808227

What worked for us is Division of Responsibility. Briefly, I am responsible for offering the food, I always include some safe foods, and DC is responsible for choosing to eat. All foods are good foods and I make no comments, positive or negative, on his choices (or lack of). I gave more details in the other thread if you are interested in this approach.

I was a very fussy child. I ate chips, chicken, tomatoes and bread. I was given the same as the rest of the family but didn’t eat. I then cooked for myself so at least gave my mum a break. It was awful when we went on holiday and finding somewhere to eat. I am much better now though but still pretty fussy. At least I can find something on the menu I will eat.

I stopped bothering to put peas and sweet corn into my DD’s pasta because she never eats them and I resented scraping them into the bin. Tried again today - here’s a photo of the result

Honestly, the wisdom on this thread sounds amazing, and I’d love to serve one disliked/unfamiliar thread to DD night after night in the hope that one day she’d crack and try one, but she just won’t.

I think confusedbeetle has the right approach. It works well with younger children.

I think it's important that both parents make healthy choices if they expect small ones to.

Sorry ladies I'm not ignoring you all! I'm about to serve dinner so will let you know how I get on and reply to your messages

Apart from children with autism or other issues I would make them eat what's in front of them or they get nothing.

Children don’t come with a sign on them telling you what conditions or current issues they have. Many autistic children aren’t diagnosed at age 3. How would you know if the child was refusing because they felt like or if it was one of the other plethora of actual reasons for refusal?

“Fussy” eating (hate that term) is not about being contrary. People who don’t experience this themselves struggle to understand it. I was a reluctant eater, two of my DC were. You can’t deal with it by issuing ultimatums or locking horns.

She will almost certainly grow out of it and eat normally as an adult. In the meantime find a few nutritious things she will eat and keep serving these up. Crispy food often goes down better than sloppy food. Sweet potato fries, for example, as a change from chips.

Best of luck!

I’d love to serve one disliked/unfamiliar thread to DD night after night in the hope that one day she’d crack and try one, but she just won’t.

That’s ok too. not everyone likes every single food. Food refusers are still allowed to have foods they genuinely dislike. It doesn’t mean they’re still refusing just because they will never eat something, or several things.

Also, stop looking at it as her “cracking” or not. It’s not a battle.

I don't understand the attitude that certain posters have which implies that disliking certain foods is unacceptable. It's perfectly OK for anyone, adult or child, to dislike certain foods and IMO it's cruel to try and force someone to eat foods they dislike.

Let them try new foods in a relaxed environment if they want to but never force/bully etc. If you force them that will lead to trouble.

It's no good to serve up a meal you know the child doesn't like and say "eat that or your only alternative is cereal or toast" when your child is like mine BTW - he'd have happliy gone for the cereal or toast. If it was eat that or starve, he'd happily go to bed hungry if he didn't fancy the meal (and he did on occasions). He would wait until breakfast the next day when he'd get the cereal or toast!

I agree with whoever said it's worth trying to analyse why a child is refusing food: attention-seeking/power struggle/sensory issues/food phobia (this is what my ds has, we think - developed when he had a problem with his throat that made it painful to swallow). It's not as simple as some people think it is.

I can attest for my methods though. Ds2 is now 13 and eats most things :-)

my dd has asd and had very extreme food fussiness. She has started at a specialist school where the approach is to give her somethng liked with a tiny amount of something new. The tiny new food can then be very gradually increased. It works but takes time. I agree as well with not getting involve din lengthy debates about it or showing too much emotion when she doesn't eat.

jelly, I don't understand the attitude that certain posters have which implies that disliking certain foods is unacceptable. It's perfectly OK for anyone, adult or child, to dislike certain foods

but the OP says she will ask me for a certain food and then when I give it to her she says she doesn't want it or like it before even tasting it.

With some children, the 'this or nothing' approach wouldn't work. A friends ds was really stubborn and refused to eat it and starved himself (wouldn't even eat fruit from the fruit bowl) just to prove a point and ended up in hospital