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.

One thing that worked for my son was getting a paw patrol plate with all of the different pup faces on it. I then put different food on top of each pup and he had to eat each bit of food to see which pup was hiding underneath. I used to make sure there was one or two options I knew he would eat without fail and then a couple of new or previously rejected ones!
It didn’t work over night but definitely helped encourage him to try things and also acted as a bit of a distraction to the actual eating which he’s never been a massive fan of!
I also used to make basic ‘food faces’ out of different food and he would then eat ‘the eyes..’ etc... and I’d say things like ‘oh my goodness he can’t see now!!’ He used to find it amusing!
Ultimately when she starts school send her school dinners, works wonders when everyone’s eating around them 😉!!

Please don't turn it into a battle with her, my dd was like this at 3 and it drove me mad, she ended up eating even less food as we're both very stubborn. I backed off in the end and just fed her what she wanted.

My advice now would be feed her what she likes, once youve established there's no battle and you're not going to make her eat stuff, eat lots of nice things in front of her without offering her any but make comments about how nice it is.

No snacks. At all. Under any circumstances! This is what sorted my boys' eating at meal times out. Masses of structure- three meals a day, if they don't eat their dinner there's nothing else or pudding. I let them decide how much food they have on their plate too which helps.

Having grown up on the poorer side of things (and being aspie), I tend to be uncomfortable about wasting food, especially if I've put a lot of effort into making something, but you have to grin and bear it, however you feel about it.
DS1(14) & DS2(9) will usually try anything, but have some things they don't like - DS1, for example, has sensory issues with noticeable pieces of mushroom, tomato, and onion, but is generally ok with the flavour if he can't actually see them; If he can he just picks them out.
DD(7) gives it the fussy eater bit about anything new, as does DW; I occasionally make light-hearted comments about fussy eaters - the standing joke with those being that I'm the fussiest eater of all because I've been vegetarian for 30+years.

DW and I live separately but are still a couple, so both parent meals are probably different to when it's just one of us.

We generally run with 2 basic rules, but don't make a big fuss about them.
Rule 1: It's not a restaurant. If you don't want to eat it, fine, but you don't get something special just for you. This doesn't mean preferences don't get taken into account when deciding what to make, but everybody gets the same for a main meal.
Rule 2: If you don't eat your meat, you don't get any pudding; How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat? (Usually said in a Scottish accent, copied from Pink Floyd's The Wall). Also expressed as "If you haven't got room..." Pudding may be a possibility if most of the meal is eaten. Surprise surprise surprise: it's usually the vegetables that get left.

Might not work for everyone, but it seems to do the trick for us.

Also have the approach of "If you've not tried it, how do you know you don't like it", which seems to have worked well on DS1 & DS2 - DS1 went through a picky phase, DS2 skipped that one. Again though, just as a comment, not as a way of putting pressure on, and if they have tried it, or do, and don't like it, then fine: they've tried it and know they don't like it. DD sometimes listens to it.

And at 56, you're still blaming your parents...

Says a lot about the damage that that sort of approach can do.

Try a book called Getting the little blighters to eat. Really helped me get my head right about it when my 3 year old DD was like that!

Saw this

Just tagging on to say that the OP's child sounds like my son's (former) 15 year-old girlfriend:
no cheese,
no tomato,
only veg - peas,
only fruit - apple,
only meat - sausage or chicken,
no eggs,
no nuts,
no mushrooms..... I still have the list somewhere - she was a nice enough girl but what a nightmare to feed! She lived on chips and unfortunately it showed.

I absolutely agree with Sitting down for a family meal no television or distractions

I used say try 3 teaspoons if you don’t like it you don’t have to eat it he always ended up saying that’s delicious !! There was nothing else if you didn’t eat it I have a very lovely young man now who will eat anything

Our gd is just 3 and is quite a nightmare to feed. Yet today she ate everything we gave her! It's all about preocupying whilst she's eating. We normally try and feed her wholesome foods but today I thought sod it. But she ate beef lasagne (hidden veg) for lunch and for tea she ate smiley faces potato things, spaghetti, and mini turkey Kiev balls. She ate the lot!

Icanttakemuchmore that's really good!

I had one very picky eater at 3. Baby nurse reminded me that milk is a whole food, so as long as she was drinking her milk, not to worry.
Helping prepare things in the kitchen and letting her choose her food from the array on the lazy sussan helped.

She does have her glass of milk every night before bed so I do feel a bit better that she at least has this.

Stop buying the empty food.
Let her help you prepare food.
Put only a tiny portion of one thin her plate ... supposedly to look manageable but enough to make her want to have more
As adults many of us love food. For children as young as 3 their perspective is totally different.

Stop buying the empty food.
Let her help you prepare food.
Put only a tiny portion of one thin her plate ... supposedly to look manageable but enough to make her want to have more
As adults many of us love food. For children as young as 3 their perspective is totally different.

Some children eat when they see others eating, so eating at a family table or eating at nursery can be a huge help, but for other children eating in front of other people adds stress and they do better in front of the TV. When the aim is to get some calories in them you learn to adapt to what the child needs.

I went to boarding school too and if I didn't eat the garbage on offer I went hungry.
You have to be firm about the sugary stuff, just don't have it in the house, the alternatives should only be fruit, cereal (healthy cereal) or bread and butter.
I would not let a child dictate to me what they eat.

With respect, most of the people on here offering ‘helpful’ advice do not have fussy eaters. You can’t cure a fussy eater overnight by sending them to bed hungry. Please don’t turn mealtime into a battle.... it’s the worst thing you can do.
One of my dc did something similar at that age and it turned out she had an undiagnosed food allergy. The paediatric allergist told me it is quite common for a child with an allergy or an intolerance to go off lots of different types of food as a self preservation mechanism. Even if she doesn’t have an allergy, just give her what she wants, always with an option of something new or healthy left on the table within reach but with no pressure. Can you imagine how we would feel as adults being continually pressured to eat things you find off putting / nauseating?? ( sheeps brains? Roasted guinea pig? Insects? Perfectly normal meals in certain parts of the world)
Look around you........ there are literally millions of people with desperately unhealthy attitudes to food.... eating at a particular time even when they’re not hungry/ finishing meals when they’re already full / eating food they don’t even want..... they’re the generations who just ‘ate what they were given’.....

I follow a mum’s mealtime blog where she regularly posts tips on fussy eating. It’s really helpful - she also offers 1:1 sessions too. m.facebook.com/Happy-Little-Eaters-473205449779802

It’s really funny and reassuring!

x

I was a dreadfully fussy eater op. I am in my 50s and grew up poor in a very large family and I was the only fussy one. There were no snacks, no treats, no fruit bowl, you ate your meals or you went without. I went without a lot, to the point that I was hospitalized due to malnutrition. I just hated potatoes, vegetables, most meats, fish, etc etc. Looking back now I think I had sensory issues around food, and while I eat well now there are still a fair few things I won't eat. Only you know if this is a phase or your child has real issues with food. If it's just a phase stick to your guns, but if you feel your child has real difficulty around certain foods perhaps you should seek professional advice.

Yanbu. Three year olds are the worst!

Here I just don't react whether they eat their dinner or not, perfectly up to them. If they don't eat it I do offer toast as an alternative but that's it! Nothing more interesting than toast. It works. It's been very, very difficult getting my partner and in-laws on board with this approach though. They make the mistake of trying to 'encourage' them to eat (even when they have eaten sufficiently we have irritating comments like 'come on, just another bite for Grandma' or 'are you going to eat all your dinner / clear your plate?) Winds me up no fucking end! Just causes strops!

My daughter started like this age 3
To this day she will eat
Mash (as long as it has gravy) not keen on potato wedges or chips
Pasta with cheese
Ham and sausages (only meat she really likes) will occasionally have chicken nuggets
Egg fried rice (no other rice)
Bread and wraps
Peas and sweet corn and carrots (no other veg)
Noodles
Fish fingers if the mood is right
She loves fruit, yogurt and cakes and sweets (we have to be strict with cakes and sweets)

Weirdly she loves sushi!!!! 🍣
Olives
Salami

Frustratingly even if she had a plate full of her favourite foods she would get bored half way through.

After years and years of nagging her we have discovered that she has ADHD (as do I... which explains my awful eating habits)

Since being on medication she has slowed down when eating and actually seems to genuinely like eating. She has tried a few more foods. She even tried baby new potatoes today x
Baby steps! But we are getting there x

My DD is also allergic to tomatoes and oranges and paprika which means that we have to avoid loads as well as her fussiness above x

I think the fear of trying new foods is also hindered by this as well as the sensory aspect of her adhd x

You have just said "She has limited you" on the amount of food she will eat! She is 3 years old! Make a meal, if she leaves itlet her wait till the next one. Make sure plenty of fruit for snacks available.