To not want to live off spaghetti bolognese?!

[Bancha]

I am trying to do the weekly meal plan and I don’t want to eat the same meals yet again! Toddler is 2.5 years and is quite fussy with food. On nursery days we get a pass because she has tea there and something small when we get home depending on how hungry she is. But that leaves four days a week to find something she will eat for tea with us.

I think I’ve followed all the advice on here - we eat the same as her, sometimes adding bits to ours that she won’t touch. When she doesn’t eat we don’t comment on it. Try not to put any pressure on her or seem like we want her to eat. If she doesn’t eat she can have toast or cereal so she’s not hungry but not another meal or snacks. But she will only reliably eat spaghetti bolognese, sometimes pasta with tomato sauce (extra veg blended in), pasta with pesto, and pizza. God forbid I try to add peas.

Of course, madam eats nearly everything at nursery.

Am I alone in this? Is this my life now? I’m so sick of bolognese!

She knows that she can hold out for something better, in this case toast. Keep her dinner, if she is hungry offer dinner again. If you always offer toast that she prefers she’ll just hold out for it.

This is the best resource for helping with picky eating, even if you just watch the stories. They have a resource for helping with difficult eating, it is written by leading medical professionals that specialise in weaning and eating. They offer a course also, is paid but if it is out of your price range just emailing and they provide free access no questions asked. It completely turned eating around for our daughter!

@FinallyHere I think this is good advice

OP, try not to let this become an issue. You know she can eat, as she's eating at nursery

This book has great strategies for getting children to widen their diet

www.amazon.co.uk/Food-Our-Children-Eat-Like/dp/1841154776/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

I have the same - 2 year old eats absolutely everything at nursery but god forbid a vegetable touches her lips at home.
I dont offer an alternative meal, but I do leave her dinner plate out and quite often she goes back half an hour later and picks at it.
At this age they are working out what they have control over and food is one of them. I think you are doing it right - just offer it, dont make a big deal out of it - treat all food the same. Apple? 'Here you are.' Chocolate biscuit? 'Here you are.'

DD spent a few months (it felt like longer!) where she just wanted plain pasta. I found that if I gave her that she would have other stuff - so she'd eat veg sticks, fruit and such at different times of the day, so overall she had some balance in her diet. At least it was easy to prepare! It was just a phase and she could grew out of it naturally. I'd agree at freezing spag bol.

Honestly, if you feel like you have to do everything advised online to raise a 'happy confident intelligent well rounded fantastic eating' child you will drive yourself insane.

I had a fussy eater (still is at 10) and I am doing the best I can, they eat far more variety and don't gag over textures like they did over everything when 1/2/3 and they have a will of iron in refusing food. It has been a gruelling long process and is still ongoing for me, but no way was I going to have a dc that only ate potatoes/pasta and pureed vegetables. Now they eat a variety of cooked vegetables and will drink fruit juice, but still won't eat fruit even though they like the taste and we are working on salad items, but again it's texture, anything crunchy is rejected.

I am fully prepared that I have, at times 'got it wrong' and am sure I will be lambasted by dc about any manner of failures I've had as a parent when they are old enough to reflect, but I don't believe any parent gets it right all the time, so cut yourself some slack!

I haven’t read all of the replies but my toddler DS can be similar, some days he will eat everything and other days barely nothing.

We too give toast or cereal before bed if he wants it. If not he wakes up hungry and crying for food in the night and will not resettle until he’s eaten. He’s always been a terrible sleeper and now he generally sleeps through I’m not having the night wakings start again because he’s hungry! He hasn’t learnt yet that if he doesn’t eat he will wake up sad / hungry - he hasn’t made the link so until he does he will be given something else if he wants it.

She’s playing you, and she’s winning!
my son refused green beans, couldn’t get him to eat them at all, he was three. Told him if he left them there would be no ice cream. He left them, then sobbed as his sisters relished their ice creams in front of him( as big sisters do) he got down from his stool, got his plate back and ate every single one of those beans!!
He never messed around with food again!

I have no idea why you are only cooking the couple meals she likes for the family. You should be eating a wide variety of meals and she can eat what she likes from it. You can always include one thing you know she will eat in the meal (noodles etc) but you and your husband aren't supposed to deprive yourself of a healthy and nutritious diet because your child is a picky eater. Also if she only ever sees you eating those few meals, that is going to be very unhealthy meal modeling for her. Eating the same as your kids doesn't mean the adults only eat picky toddler food.

I agree with Midlifemusings - out of carb, veg and main dish, then I used to do 2 of those that they liked so it didn't matter if didn't like one component.
This only lasted a very short time before they just got on with it and I barely noticed

"I think I’ve followed all the advice on here - we eat the same as her, sometimes adding bits to ours that she won’t touch."

slightly wrong - they are suppoed to eat what YOU eat ... maybe with a couple of bits of what you kknow she will eat on it too ...

I can talk the talk but my dd was a terrible eater until she was about bloody 18 lol

It isn’t that she doesn’t like anything except pasta, toast and cereal. It’s just that she prefers them, which is very different. Basically pasta, pizza, toast, cereal and yogurt (or whatever) are her top five foods. She has realised that if she refuses other things, she is absolutely guaranteed to get given one of her favourites, either as the family meal or as the ‘alternative’.

She knows that isn’t the case at nursery, so at nursery she will deign to eat things that she merely likes, rather than loves.

It won’t kill her to go to bed hungry a couple of times, honestly.

Hi OP, a different perspective here.

I had sensory issues with food as a small child. Bribing me or blackmailing me really really only made it worse - I remember being told at school that if I didn't eat I couldn't leave. I cried and cried, finally ate, and then was sick everywhere. It wasn't on purpose. I genuinely - no idea why - got so agitated I felt sick. Honestly, looking back, it really truly was not a calculated ploy to get something I wanted to eat more. I was actually physically repulsed by certain foods.

Please don't make it a big deal. I remember the more it was a big deal, the more I was afraid to try something new. What worked was my parents making me a separate meal to eat with them. I look back now and ask them if it wasn't loads of extra work, and they say yes, but less tiring than having a battle with a crying child every night. Something no frills - I ate a lot of toast. I was happy with toast.

And suddenly one day I was genuinely enthusiastic about trying what my parents were eating. It took until I was about 8, but my agitation about food just went away, as something I'd grown out of. I still really enjoy trying new foods as an adult. Out of all my friends, I'm the one that cooks and bakes and looks for new restaurants to try.

Please don't worry about a child not eating certain foods. Work around it. If she's happy to eat the same meal seven days a week, why not? Batch cook one and freeze portions for her, and then cook what you like for yourself. She really will just grow up about it one day. In the meantime, don't punish her for not liking something. No-one forces adults to eat things they don't like.

My DD is super fussy. If I ever see another spag Bol it will be too soon! She will NOT eat things she doesn’t like. Wild horses or sitting there all day won’t make her. She will try any new food, but rarely likes them. (She has my sympathy. I’m not a massively fussy adult, but my mother can’t cook. Her food was truly awful (partly because of the times) It wasn’t until I went to university and cooked for myself that I discovered that there were lots of nice things out there that tasted good, and I realised I wasn’t that fussy. The options she was offering were almost all pants. (To be fair to her she hates cooking, and now lives on plain steamed fish and salad, which I’m not keen on. Not without seasoning, at least!) and nothing on earth is going to make me eat plain boiled mince and potatoes again! or dolmio sauce. Ugh!)

It really helps mine to have some control. So she has a list of dinners she likes that she picks from (either quick or frozen in portions). You’d need pictures if you went down that route. I’m sick of all of them and we different things. Don’t care. She eats, I eat. There’s only two of us, it’s easy enough to pull out a spaghetti boldness and nuke it, and we eat together. She often tries what I have and it works for us.

She doesn’t get snack-type foods, instead. At primary, I provided two meals. One right after school, one with me about 5.30. And I offered ‘bedtime snack’ at 7 which was cereal. This meant she never went to bed hungry, but avoids power struggles around dinner, as it’s a separate but dependable option. She’s a bloody awful sleeper, and often used hunger as an excuse, so I wanted to pre empt that. (But then, if you’re flapping around in your bed for hours, you will get hungry eventually!)

Once she had prescription meds for her sleeping (hallelujah!) we could chill a bit about eating.

Now, she has a substantial after school snack (usually a ‘tea’ type meal. Beans on toast, boiled eggs, cheese and crackers sort of thing). Then dinner at 7. We don’t do bedtime snack any more, but up until about age 10 I was offering it. Dinner was a bit earlier then, and as she was often awake until 9 or 10 o’clock, she did need something as late as possible. She’s asleep by 8.30 now, so I know she won’t be hungry later.

I think she just couldn’t eat enough in one go to get through (she was later diagnosed with silent reflux and hyper mobility), and she doesn’t like my food. I tried to do a meal plan and shopping project once, but she asked for spaghetti bolognese EVERY SINGLE DAY. I gave up on day four. She still often asks for the same meal for weeks on end. It’s no big deal, so long as I don’t have to eat it too!

YANBU!!

Find out what the menu is at nursery and give her the same.

Our 2nd DD was horrendously fussy, but I just plated up what we were having and didn't comment. If she didn't eat much all day and I was worried about her going to bed on an empty tummy, she'd have buttered toast and fruit.

I don't think that toddlers are clever enough to play mind games but they're very keen for routine and predictability and that seemed to include food for my DD. Funnily enough as an adult, she now eats anything and everything

Instead of having the fruit and yogurt afterwards, you serve it

sorry not sure what happened there.

Instead of having the fruit and yogurt afterwards, you could try serving it at the same time. If it’s all good you’re happy for her to eat, then giving it the same status by having none of it being a reward could help. And that way there’s no issue with feeling like you should give it to her after she hasn’t eaten her dinner or worrying she is going to be hungry.

I know we are supposed to eat with children but in RL I've ended up having 2 dinner "times" as children wanted / needed to eat earlier than was practical for us parents. So "nursery teas" it was for years except at the weekend. Disadvantages besides modelling eating and so on were obviously two loads of meal prep if it wasn't something like Bolognese. Advantages were we got to eat what we wanted. Believe me - I did all the "right" things initially but all three children hit two years old and started refusing foods they had previously eaten. The good news is eventually all foods were re-introduced so they will now eat most things. Never had a problem with any fruit or veggies, just "sauces" really - ten yr old still won't eat chilli or stew which is boring.

People will tell you not to give in and to serve up exactly what you want to eat - if you are happy eating at the same time give it a go! Nursery food is usually fairly basic though so I doubt her palate is being challenged there which won't help.

If you won't send her up hungry then she will just continue to hold out for toast. Skipping one meal won't kill her. Realistically nothing will change until your approach does. Make sure there is at least one component she likes, for example potatoes.

I have a one mouthful rule. You aren't allowed to say you don’t like it until you have tried it. And a proper bite, not a teeny bit on the tip of your finger. If you try it and don't like it, fine, eat the bits you do like and I'll do you some toast afterwards. If you try it on 2 occasions and still don't like it, I won't serve you it again.

Refuse to even try it and that is fine too but you're not having anything else. No fruit/yoghurt etc. Usually I allow that after meals but not when they haven't even made an attempt at their dinner.

I've got custody of 3 kids atm none of whom are mine and I do not have time to fuckarse about with fussy eating. This is dinner. Eat it or don't.

9 times out of 10 they eat it.

Madam has you wound round her little finger.

Feed her the same foods she happily eats at nursery, where no alternative menus are provided. If she refuses, do not offer toast and cereal.

My son has asd and arfid and only eats a small range of foods we just stick to those and try to use a good multivitamin that he will accept.
we were told not to worry about food just see anything as calories and take all pressure off offer safe foods then something new but never any pressure

My youngest has been like this since he was around 2 and he's now nearly 10. He will gladly go to bed hungry, he will happily miss out on dessert, and I could re-offer him his dinner a hundred times throughout the evening but he won't eat it. He has sensory issues around food, he can describe in minute detail the differences between the nuggets served at various fast food places. So he's not gobbling up his green beans so he can get dessert, or polishing off his salad so he doesn't go hungry, that doesn't work for him no matter how many people insist it will. We've gradually, gradually increased the range of foods he'll eat and we work within those parameters. No separate meals, and we don't eat spag bol every night, but I have a repertoire that meets everyone's needs. In the meantime, he's happy, healthy and growing well, and we just keep plugging away at it. Good luck!

Why are you eating the same as her?! I've never heard of this. Presumably you don't eat dinner at the same time? (or even if you do..)

Anyway, I would stop eating the same as her immediately. You aren't 2. Offer her a simplified version and double freeze her food so when you are having a spicy stirfry you can get something out the freezer for her.

I understand you don't want to send her to bed hungry, but just offer her dinner again. If she's hungry she'll eat the plain bits at least - pasta without the sauce etc. At the moment she has your number.

You've never heard of a family meal time?

@Luredbyapomegranate We nearly always eat together with our dd, unless we are in a rush or having a takeaway etc. We enjoy it being together. It might change some days when school starts, but I actually think it is important to sit and eat together sometimes too.