To only feed my child sausage and mash

[Talulahbeige]

Me and my husband love food
We have a 6 year old who eats like a 1 year old, always has.
(I blame baby led weaning but that’s another thread!)
4 mouthfuls and she’s full, but will eat her body weight in cake, ice cream etc if I let her, I don’t! )

DD has always been picky, she’s very much a meat and potato type of girl. If you ask her what she wants for tea it’s either sausage & mash or pizza.
She would eat gravy like soup but won’t touch anything in a sauce.
Tonight I made hunters chicken, chicken, bacon, tomato, cheese, all things she will eat in their basic state. She wouldn’t eat anything.

I’m at my wits end, I personally can’t eat sausage and mash (or similar) for ever. I’ll happily give it to my dd every day (to prove a point that it gets bloody boring)

HELP please!!!!!!!!

OP I have aspergers and when I was a child ahem maybe a little bit now too ahem I had real trouble with eating foods that were touching each other and I had even more trouble with sauces and gravy touching my food. It was nothing to do with the individual foods or tastes or textures as such but more that I could only cope with one texture/flavour at a time. I really love food and have always had a keen interest in cooking and a varied palate but it wasn't until I was an adult that I managed to have the gravy on the actual roast dinner and even then I had to mash all the food together so it was more uniform before I could eat it. Try just giving her the same foods as you but separately. If you have pasta then put the sauce in a separate bowl etc

The one thing I will say is that I was anorexic as a teen and still have some issues around food now at 30 (mostly due to chronic illness, when I'm feeling particularly low I tend to revert to bad habits if I'm not kept in check) and while the eating disorder had absolutely nothing to do with my sensory issues they did not help and made recovery quite a bit harder, especially as I had very little support outside of cahms. When I was in hospital some of the staff were "helping" by trying to push me to eat things I was uncomfortable with for sensory reasons and that was very traumatic. As I say I am not trying to link my ED with the sensory stuff, more warning you against pushing her (which it doesn't sound like you are planning on doing, you sound great actually!)

This is why I still feed my soon to be seven year old. If I left him to his own devices the only food he would eat would be crap. He has zero appetite (my three year old also has zero appetite. Nor does their father but that’s a whole other thread).

So I make sure they both have a vat of porridge with berries for breakfast. Lunch gets picked at at school and dinner is made and fed to them both by me. That way i know they are getting vegetables, protein and carbs and it’s just easier!!!

I’m sure I’m not going to be literally feeding him as a teenager so I’m rolling with it 🙄

OP my 3 year old is very difficult with food and I blame BLW too, because whilst it introduced him to a range of textures, it was such slow going he didn't get a big range of flavours. He won't eat anything mixed with sauce or gravy, won't eat meat in its plain state (just bread crumbed things and sausages), won't eat pasta, rice or potato because of the texture. He'd live on cheese sandwiches if he could! He was anaemic when he was 1 (we saw the hospital dietician who was useless) and had a series of infections, for some of which he was hospitalised with very strong antibiotics. I also think this has something to do with it.

I'm now done beating myself up over it. I tried everything, then I made a decision that meals would no longer be a battle ground. He's growing well, he has something from each food group at each meal, he eats several raw veg, peas and sweetcorn, plenty of fruit and even though it's mostly bread crumbed, does get protein.

He tried a frankfurter at nursery last week and I practically did cartwheels! So there is hope. My only plan now is to give it time. Good luck and don't be afraid to step back if it's all become too stressful.

If she likes things separate then the easy answer is to give things to her separate. Thinking of the hunters chicken they can all be quite powerful tastes so it’s easy to see why someone with sensory issues wouldn’t want to eat a mouthful of all the ingredients at once.

Don’t make it a battle of wills. You won’t win!

I also recommend not hiding things or serving things mixed together, unless she has cooked it with you & knows exactly what’s involved - try tiny bowls of what you are eating, with some sides in separate tiny bowls, all out on the table & she can pick and choose. She will get there, don’t make it stressful, add new foods to the bowls to try, each try gets a sticker on a chart, an agreed number of stickers gets a treat (non food related( as a reward for tasting new things

One thing to be aware of is that some kids with sensory issues can’t recognize the feeling of hunger so putting food in front of them and not offering alternatives doesn’t work for them.

My 6 yr old is exactly the same, she saw a paediatrician as a baby due to weight loss.

She also loves meat, veg and gravy so we have lots of meals along those lines, cottage pies, various meats with veg (she likes the frozen mixed stuff) potatoes (boiled, mashed, roasted, baked) and gravy, boiled ham with potatoes, veg and onion sauce, you get the idea.

It's not so bad. They have to be proper cooked meals though and I have to keep an eye on her or she will stop eating meals and try to get away as many sugary snacks/stealing snacks! as possible. We have lots of proper cooked meals around the table all together and she is getting better. If I feed the children seperately with 'child friendly' type foods like spaghetti hoops on toast/fish fingers/pizza she gets worse, but it's ok once in a while.

Randomly she does love to eat mussels and can eat a full portion to herself. And baked camembert. She's a funny child who thinks she is a werewolf and likes to sing her 'killing song' and run around on all fours growling.
Kids are weird.

theendoftheendoftheend your daughter sounds wonderful!

That's not too bad, my ds at that age would only eat fish fingers and instant noodles, sometimes agree to an egg on toast or mac'n'cheese. Everything else was an enemy.
I'd just cook family dinner as normal, but have a fishcake reserved for him.