Been too relaxed about dd's fussy eating and now she's 11!

[Summeristhebest]

DD has always been a stubbornly fussy eater and after a few battles when she was little I decided to take a relaxed approach. This has resulted over the years in me tending to cook things she likes - probably to the detriment of the rest of the family. She also has tomato ketchup with a lot of meals (and vegetables.) My ds will eat anything but dd flatly refuses. I've tried getting her to cook stuff which she loves to do, but then still won't eat what she's made or will only eat a tiny amount of the healthy stuff (often with ketchup.) I feel like I have completely failed her. I need to get this sorted but just don't know how. Don't want to create eating issues etc. Please give me wise words. I feel like a complete failure.

I sat my five year old down and we talked through what would be the worst thing that could happen it he ate something he didnt like. He didnt have an answer to that and it helped him reframce food as something to be explored rather than scared of. He also autistic and i thought his problems wih food would be insurmoutable but ive pretty much sorted him out by talking about it calmy. also

1. write shopping lists
2. help meal plan

find favourite fruit n veg and create dinner around that/

I was a pretty fussy eater until I was about 21. Then I started to relax about it and eat most things now (in fact am probably more adventurous than average). I can still get the anxious response to feeling pressured to eat food I just don’t want to though, so I think it is important she doesn’t get stressed or anxious about eating.

My 10yo DS1 is a bit like this. He'll basically live off cereal, sandwiches, fruit, beans on toast, pasta with tomato sauce, pizza, instant noodles, spaghetti bolonese/lasagne, chilli, and chicken nuggets/fish fingers with vegetables. (He won't eat chips).

I don't think the ketchup is harmful. She doesn't need to be weaned off it FFS, it's just a flavouring. At least it's one which is almost universally available.

What happens with DS1 I think is that he decides what his favourite foods are and then rejects everything which isn't his favourite. So we've tried to counter this a bit by explaining that everyone has foods they love, foods they like, foods they tolerate and foods they hate but the hate list should be a tiny percentage of all foods. We decided to create in the family a list of 5 foods each which are total no gos and nobody is allowed to make you try it, but if it's not on your list of 5, you have to at least make an effort. If you want to swap a food out you have to try it first. He thought this was fair. I also pointed out that when he just eats his favourites in rotation, he gets bored of them and then he's left with no foods he likes at all.

We've talked about techniques like mixing a less liked food with the food he does like. But mainly I think it's a mental block and he gets stubborn about it. Because he's never been forced to finish a plate it isn't something he'll push himself to do.

Idk- I was a VERY fussy eater as a child and my parents didn’t want the arguments so let it slide. By 13 I was refusing to eat quite a few entire food groups and developed crippling anxiety around food and eating. Spiralled into an eating disorder followed by my being crazy controlling with food in general.

It got better at around 21 and now (mid twenties) I’m pretty much totally normal.

However, I do wonder if my parents had done more in my 8-12 stage would I have avoided the terrible anxiety and eating disorder.

It’s a minefield, isn’t it? And I worry about DD’s size as well because although there’s a very limited amount of foods she will eat, she is getting quite hefty & I have to buy clothes for much older kids. With her it’s a lot about control. Also she gets confusing messages from my parents because on the one hand they are going on about not eating so much sugar, trying to do more exercise etc but on the other they give DD things like egg custard tarts & porkpies.
I wonder if I pandered to her too much when she was younger. It’s really difficult now. DH & I tend to eat on our own as he works quite late most evenings so we rarely sit down to a family meal, which would make things better I think. There is such a huge list of foods that DD won’t even try. But she’s very healthy considering & doesn’t even get many colds. All I can do is not make too big a thing of it & keep introducing new stuff into her diet

This book is very helpful. It's not a recipe book. It explains why some children have issues with food and suggests strategies to help them to eat a wider variety. Various posters on this thread saying that their diet became more varied as they grew older. That's great, but doesn't always happen.

www.goodreads.com/book/show/871425.The_Food_Our_Children_Eat

Extremely fussy eater, gradually gotten a lot better since about 16+. Now 25 and will try pretty much anything, doesn't mean I like it all but nowhere near as bad as I was.

Also used to have ketchup with EVERYTHING, don't anymore. She will be fine.

What an interesting film about the eating disorder. DD has sensory issues & actually ticks a lot of the boxes for ARFID. She does get very anxious around food. She will also say she doesn’t like a food that she’s eaten before, which is frustrating!
I am aware of my own issues too, from childhood, also that there is a certain amount of “ button pressing” going on!

Stop buying ketchup. I actually think by 11 a lot of it’s ingrained habit. If she is almost forced to consider different foods and she’s hungry she has no choice but to try something new. Biggest way to get her used to the new normal is to get rid of her crutch (ketchup).

ARFID looking at that video made so much sense, To see the children smelling food before eating is so familiar. I do think that some people have a heightened sense of smell and taste. There is also an aversion to texture. I found similarities with the radio presenter, sauces, thick soups or any dressing is a,no for me...

OP, DS2 was exactly like this. I went through a phase of the family eating his very narrow range of food, tried cooking with him etc. I kept offering and introducing new stuff.

In the end, I left him to it. I explained he had to have something from each food group to stay healthy at every meal time, but he could choose what it was. Every single day for his primary school life he had a cheese sandwich, an apple a frube and a bag of crisps. No deviation.

But he'd be far more adventurous if we ate out, and that was a starting point for trying to introduce new stuff.

Another trick was to lay everything out in food groups on the table and let him choose. So he knew at his main meal he had to have three portions of fresh stuff. He could choose to have the veg we were having or to have carrot sticks and cucumber slices from the salad and a banana afterwards. We focused on healthy choices not fussy eating and gave him as much control as we could..

If you find something she will eat, try a homemade, healthier version. He'd eat burgers so I made them, then started sneaking a bit of onion and pureed veg into the meat mix. Chips got replaced by sweet potato fries etc. Now he eats a wide range of foods and is the most adventurous when we eat out.

florentina I have a heightened sense of smell and taste and love food.

Another former fussy eater here. I grew out of it when I went to uni with catered halls and being fussy was not an option any more.

Could you try separating meal times and new foods a bit? So like keep doing what you're doing with family mealtimes, but make a challenge with a big chart for trying new stuff with a reward at the end, done as if it's a science experiment rather than a meal? It could be tiny amounts of stuff, just to prove to her that it's not all that bad and get over the idea of trying new things. I think a friend did it for her fussy kid.

@abacucat, I am guessing that what you have is a refined palate. Lots of chefs have this. They can taste a dish and tell what ingredients it contains just by taste and smell. They enjoy lots of different flavours and often can taste each individual one as they eat . With food avoidance it is the foods that are at the extreme ends that cause the problems. Very sweet, sour or strong tasting foods. Which is why a lot of people who are deemed as, fussy, tend to stick with bland foods. I quite like soup but even one split pea, lentil or tiny bit of tomato in it would been I could not enjoy it.

I'd say age 11/12 is peak fussy eater age. They usually do grow out of it

florentina Perhaps. I can tell for example if milk is on the turn when everyone else says it smells and tastes fine to them. To me it tastes very obviously as on the turn - even in tea.