To just not give my 7 year old dinner?

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Tl;dr - my son doesn’t care about eating and won’t eat anything new. Help!

I have a son who is a really fussy eater. He's always been the same. He just wants to eat pizza or breaded chicken, or cereal.

He was like this from a really young age. People used to say that he'll eat when he's hungry, but he never seemed to give a shit! He's always been happy to go without a meal, it's like he totally unarsed about eating! He also rarely snacks, and he's equally as fussy about sweet food!

We've tried all the usual things - reward charts, giving him choices, letting him watching tv while he eats, tried being firm with him, being super relaxed about it, but nothing works! He basically decides he doesn’t want to eat it even before he’s tried it. So when he does eat it he just regurgitates it tries one small piece and says he hates it. So he just goes without, which he’s more than happy with.

So now, I’m just giving him whatever he’s very unfussy brother has for dinner. Today was pasta in cheese sauce and peas, he tried one piece as usual, then says he doesn’t like it. So I’ve said nothing else at all then, which is fine with.

Thing is, he can’t just keep missing dinner, which is what is basically going to happen. How can we get past this?

For ref, on a normal day;
1 or 2 bowls of wheatabix or shreddies with full cream milk
Lunch- either marmite sarnies if packed lunch, or small pizza or chicken burger if at home
Dinner- chicken burger or small pizza (depending on what he had for lunch)

An occasional apple or biscuit for a snack.

FYI - no SEN or anything

What can we do? Or what type or professional can we see about this? So at a loss 😩

You can test for supertasters with a little strip you dab on your tongue. Most people can't taste anything, a supertaster can - and it's not nice!
Presumably GP may have these.
Two out of three of mine and DH kids are very particular about what they eat. We tried all sorts of tactics with the older child as DH was worried. Nothing worked. As she's got older though her tastes have changed and she now eats a perfectly reasonable range of foods.
Now I am firmly of the opinion that stressing about food at mealtimes is actually worse than just letting them eat (within reason) what they like.

Don’t get into a battle of wills and don’t use food as a reward - if breakfast is the time of the day he is hungry then why stop him eating what he wants because he hasn’t eaten enough the day before?

Ds has arfid. He can and he has gone days without eating or surviving just on apples and salad leaves. He is now tube fed to top up calories as it got so bad but the more people try to persuade him to eat the less he will eat. Taking away a safe food would be the last thing I would do.

As I said, my son had no dinner at all last night, didn't care at all, In fact was pretty jubilant about being able to miss a meal

You are edging into dangerous territory here.

Please just make him food he likes, drop the tug of war rope and take away the meal time pressure.

DD (5) is like this. She only voluntarily eats 'beige' food and eats very little at dinner. It just seems to be the way she's built, if she's eaten well at breakfast and lunch (which generally involves cereal / toast, eggs and sandwiches which she likes) she manages without much (or any) dinner. Dinners with pasta or potatoes she will eat. Rice or salad she won't. My rules are we all sit at the table, no pressure to eat but not allowed to complain / play at the table. Had a breakthrough recently with an incentive that she would get a pair of shoes she wants if she tried one mouthful at every diner for a month. She discovered she actually likes curry!

I utterly hate the "if they're hungry enough, they'll eat it" thing. That's partly what led to me being around 5 stone at 15-16 (and I'm tall, 5'8). Also my dad's parents used to save the meal if my dad or his sister couldn't eat it, and it would be saved to the next meal and on and on, until they ate it, really horrible.

He is obviously really struggling, it sounds awful that he was jubilant he was allowed to miss a meal. That suggests he hates eating really, I don't know many children who would be happy at missing tea.

I'd feed him what he eats but try to expand on the variety.

For example, there are a lot of cereals. Can you branch out to one with tiny pieces of fruit, then add real tiny pieces of fruit, then add tiny cut up strawberries on a little side plate, maybe he would eat strawberries from then on. Being really gradual about it might help.

Is it possible he could have constipation? That can make you feel full and not care about food. You just are disinterested.

Good luck in solving it. It would really worry me, but I'd try to keep things as relaxed and low key as possible. What about buffets? Where he could pick his own little items? Does he like cheesestrings?

I utterly hate the "if they're hungry enough, they'll eat it" thing

Totally agree with you. Some people just don't understand that some children have special needs when it comes to food. One of them is food neo-phobia recognised by NHS.

I strongly advise you to join a group called Mealtime Hostage on FB which offer guidance on Division f Responsibility.

Children can have serious problems eating for a variety of reasons, e.g. problems with the structure of the mouth or larynx, allergies and reflux, past traumatic experiences with food, sensory sensitivities, etc but sometimes the underlying cause is not known.

Children will starve themselves, how do posters think children end up underweight with NG tubes? They will also develop serious stress and anxiety problems if the food issue is not handled correctly.

I would be saying tough and that you won't cook different meals to suit him. He either eats his dinner or goes without.

We went by weight. If she was losing weight, we worried about food. If her weight was tracking ok, we were relaxed about what she ate.

. He either eats his dinner or goes without.

And how will that help when the child isn’t bothered by not eating?

Honestly I’d feed him what he will eat if that’s pizza or nuggets so be it. Give vitamins pills too

He’ll grow out of it the always do I...

Thanks again everyone!

We've defo learned to not let him miss a meal again! I was kind of hoping he'd get really hungry, but he just didn't care so at least I know that's not the solution!

Regarding why we're stressing- the thing is I can't figure out if just decides he doesn't want to eat the food we're giving him. As in- can't be bothered to try it, as sometimes he up for trying things and other times he isn't. So we never know if he would eat it if we try the right tactic.

Also- my partner worries and stresses about it way more than I do. But I do sometimes worry he isn't getting all nutrients he needs. Plus, going out for dinner anywhere is almost impossible, which is so annoying.

But, after everyone's reassurance on this thread, we're already far less worried than we were.

Although, he's never ill! And isn't constipated as one poster suggested, so I'm guessing it's all fine.

Im going to give him bolognaise tonight, but put the pasta and sauce separately, so he can just eat the plain pasta if he chooses. I think it's the way forward 👍

My two year old is the same. It's always bread, toast, mash, bananas, fish fingers, yoghurt, weetabix. I still try though. Every now and then he will actually eat what I put on front of him and would eat a lot of it! I'm talking about weeks apart, though. He would also go hungry the entire day if I let him. Never has he told me hes hungry.

Does he take a multivitamin and mineral supplement OP? In particular zinc and iron deficiency can suppress appetite which would exacerbate the problem.

OP, we had this issue with DS2. (He does have SEN - ASD though we didn't know it at the time) and he too would prefer not to eat than try new things.

With him, we taught him about the nutritional values of different types of food and started to let him choose something from each food group. For about five years it was just tinned spaghetti , bread, cheese and apples with the occasional breadcrumbed chicken or fish, peas and carrots thrown in. But very gradually he started to accept other stuff. I'd make healthy food and if he wouldn't eat it, I'd open a tin of spaghetti and grate some cheese on it to stop myself stressing at all the wasted effort. He had vitamins daily too.

Gradually I introduced tiny amounts of new foods. Once he'd eat burgers I started making my own with 1/4 onion and a cube of frozen spinach in the mix (blitzed and mixed with tomato puree so it didn't look green, then increasing the quantity of veg until it counted as a portion of the 5 a day.

I'd make banana milkshake in the mornings, blend red peppers and onions until smooth and hide them in tomato sauce on pizzas under mozzarella. Bit by bit he started eating a wider range.
Now, he's really experimental and tries loads of new foods: prawns, squid, rabbit, lots of types of veg.

My 8 year old will just go whole days without eating (or rather only eating apples, which he always has access to) if meals are nothing he likes.

He has a bit of an issue with textures - won't eat pasta or rice for that reason. Wouldn't eat any form of egg until he was 7 but now eats scrambled and has started to attempt an omelet though usually only a fork full. He didn't eat bananas til he was 7, also made him gag because of the texture, but started eating them at 7 too. Oranges he still won't eat, despite desperately wanting to because he likes orange juice and his adored older brother considers tinned mandarin oranges one of life's great treats - 8 year old gags on oranges though. Gummy bears and sweets (as opposed to chocolate and biscuits) have the same issues, so it's not a preference for sweets.

His texture issue sort of feeds a more general fussiness though, it's hard to separate the two sometimes.

On the other hand he likes lots of quite "adult" things and is usually game to try a small bite of anything new - what's hard is getting getting him to give something a second chance if he's tried it once and not liked it.

I must say though that "he'll eat when he's hungry" or "he'll eat it if there's nothing else in the house/ his preferred food isn't in the house" don't work for all children. My eldest was and is the kind of child who ate whole tiny octopus and muscles and mushroom risotto and everything else at 2 and still does as a teen, so of course I thought I knew no nonsense sensible feeding children what we were eating without fuss worked - dc2 just didn't eat in the evening but tanked up before 3pm, until he was 6 or 7, but dc3 really is different and has shown me that you can never assume that your luck with a few children was down to your parenting methods when it comes to food and sleep!

What I do for dc3 now is that I don't plan around what he'll eat, but if I'm serving something he won't eat he can always have porridge and/ or apples. Porridge and apples aren't tempting favourites but just things he'll eat if he's hungry and there's nothing else, so that works for us. I couldn't offer bread as he'd happily live exclusively on just bread and butter 3 meals per day and be completely constipated

School lunch club actually asked me to take him off hot meals as he never eats anything and they felt bad I was paying 5€ per day for apples - especially as several months a year he was climbing trees in the school garden and picking the apples, not even having them provided!

Despite his odd eating DS3 is exactly on the 50th centile for weight and 75th for height.

Good luck.

It is not your job to get him to eat, that I said his job. You provide the food.

Do a list of his safe foods. Cook dinner as normal. Present dinner buffet style as deconstructed as possible, e.g. sauce separate from pasta, with cheese on the side, and include 2-4 safe foods in the selection. He can choose what he wants to eat. If he doesn’t eat anything, fine, in 2-3 hours offer a selection of snacks which include 2-4 safe foods. If he wants to eat all of one thing on offer, talk about your portion sizes and hw other people should be able to serve themselves.

Don’t label food good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. Food is food, we don’t yuk someone else’s yum.

Yes, it does all cause social problems with food, but the more you implement a relaxed approach the more relaxed he will become, it doesn’t mean he will eat, but he may manage to go to a restaurant and eat bread.

Good reply OP. Give him the food he'll eat, stop stressing and maybe give him a multivitamin. 99% of fussy eaters I've encountered as a kid are fine with food now.

Serve dinner as normal (not pizza or breaded chicken - give him what everyone else is eating). Then you all sit down to eat and completely ignore what he does or doesn't eat. Don't even look at his plate. Talk about something else. Don't engage in conversation about the food, just change the subject to school or start talking to his brother/your DH instead.

When everyone has finished eating you pick up the plates, get to him and if he's eaten nothing say "have you finished?". If he says "I'm not eating this because I don't like it" just say "ok that's fine darling", and take the plate away and tip the food into the bin. That's it. Dinner Time is over. No more food is given until breakfast. No conversations about food.

Repeat this as many times as necessary.

Also just wanted to add - please don't let your DH go down the "force feeding" road. If doesn't work and will probably cause big food issues for him.

And maybe once a week you could all just have pizza and salad for tea? You guys could even make the pizzas yourselves if you have time after work. Might be fun :)

We found the pick and mix buffet style food meal choices worked well. Something like Mexican - wraps, salad, chilli, cheese, etc. So even if the girls just had cheese and wraps with a hint of salad we all are together.
The eat it or leave it approach really doesn't work for all kids. Personally I think it's borderline cruel to offer a person a meal you know they don't like, make them powerless to choose and then say they must remain hungry until the next meal. I wouldn't like to be treated like that. So why treat your children like that?