To only give kids shit food?

[Crocsandshocks]

Bear with me. I'm cultivating an inner scream.

I try to make a real effort to cater to my kids tastes. They are completely and entirely different to mine. I like curries, Thai, veg stir fries, tofu, lentils etc. I'm pescatarian. My kids have different tastes. They like ham, pasta, bolognase, Burges, fish fingers, sausages etc.

I try to meet them in the middle and though I dislike cooking meat, will cook it a couple of times a week and offer up soups or Dahl and flatbread or something the other days.

I have started getting hello fresh. I deliberately ordered a chicken flat bread Street food one, as I thought they would like that (I adapted my portion to use mushrooms instead of chicken).

It took 50 minutes to cook it. I burned my finger in the process. It used up most of the baking dishes and frying pans. When I served it just now, one moaned constantly about the topping on the corn. The other rocked on his chair and sat with legs acimbo, with bits of food hanging out of his mouth.

I was a hot sweaty and sweary mess. Over half of each of theirs was left untouched. I've refrigerated what leftovers I can and am going to sneak it into their packed lunch tomorrow.

However, I am a bit broken. They're getting ready for bed and are now claiming they are hungry 😩AIBU to just go back to shit food? Like frozen pizza and pesto pasta.

My advice stixk to your guns. One meal for all or nothing.

Thanks. I think this is how I feel. I'm not going to mess around catering to ever diminishing tastes which change from day to day.

You don't have time to put pre-made pizza in the oven, you have time to make the curries and daals you like?

Anyway, they may not eat half of that, but they'll eat the other half, so that's a start, surely? The one who doesn't like soup can just have beans on toast with cheese on top, or a toasted sandwich 🤷🏻‍♀️

Do whatever works for you. Honestly it's about a million degrees, you're a single mum, you're working. Just give them whatever feels manageable. Stick on some cucumber on the side. You sound like you're doing great and they're some smug MN people on here who are busy getting their kids to eat 17 fresh vegetables a day....honestly I lived on pesto pasta for about 11 years and all is fine

It’s annoying. But surely they only know they “like” these alternatives if you’ve offered them up and continued to do so?

Not judging, I fell into the same trap for an easy life and now my youngest wouldn’t dare try a curry or stir fry but I’m working on it.

Sit down with them and do a weekly meal plan, and let them choose a couple of meals each. Then stick the plan up on the wall so they remember what they chose. Might help if they were more involved?

Ya that's kids

A big plate of chopped raw carrots, cucumber, peppers etc etc in the middle of the table covers a lot of bases. I wouldn’t worry too much if they’d eat something like that plus pasta pesto. Or I sometimes used to do a big cobb salad and let them choose which bits they wanted.

Would they eat omelette / tortilla? That’s a good quickie. Would they be able to look through a cookbook with you and pick a few things each to try?

i sympathise re the drudgery of cooking dinner for unappreciative kids every day. It does get better honestly. I’d probably bin off the Hello Fresh meals as IME the recipes can be quite a faff given the results.

I feel your pain. It's absolutely soul destroying and has really sucked the joy out of cooking for me. I have four and they all have different tastes with the bottom two being much more limited. The dishes they will all eat are all carb heavy, not to my tastes (spag bol, Mac cheese, cottage pie etc) and are time heavy too.

**Dontwanttooffendlocals · Today 21:16

If they didn’t like it for dinner they aren’t going to like it for lunch so that’s 2 meals they can’t eat.

you don’t want to eat what they like, so you don’t, so why do they have to eat what you like when they don’t like it?**

Because what they like is over processed shite and the more they eat it the more they want it (there is a thread on ultra processed foods in chat). As a responsible parent it is your job to teach them a healthy, balanced diet.

Sorry OP I have no real answers for you, only solidarity. I tend to cook like you with a mixture of food for them and food for me.

God some really smug parents on here with zero empathy 🙄

I feel your pain OP, my 7 and 9 year old are fussy eaters. I'm able to sneak veg into some meals (pasta sauce, burgers) and they only know the whole wheat versions of pasta, bread etc but it's soul destroying trying to think of meals they will eat. Those people saying just cook one meal obviously never had to listen to the whinging and moaning of my two 😆

My ExH tried the 'eat what you're given' tack with one of our DC. That stopped when DC projectile vomited a load of unchewed swallowed-with-water fish and 'delicious accompaniments' onto the table, himself, and the floor.

I did warn him.

My DC would literally have been happy with a bread roll and a glass of water or milk.

My DD will eat most things, my DS has a more limited diet - I don’t cook more than one meal, but I’ll always include some element my DS will eat.

If he really doesn’t like something he’d starve before he ate it so he can have yoghurt and fruit or some toast if I’m making something I know he might not like. I’d rather they were fed than fight with them over food.

I don’t resort to freezer food every night, but don’t get into battles either, there’s always a middle ground.

Marginal gain perhaps, but I generally swap meaty processed crap for the veggie version and feel slightly less bad about it. Veggie meatballs and quorn nuggets seem to pass.
Don't make my own pizza but do only buy cheese ones and put additional random stuff from the fridge on it.

I recognise quite a lot of my mum in how you're coming across so you might not think this is at all relevant, but I'm sure my mum would have said the same when i was a child. She had issues around us eating what what were given. I now think my sister had sensory issues and just couldn't eat some of the stuff she tried to coerce us to eat. She would have served it up for lunch the next day too. If we didn't eat our dinner, we would go to bed hungry. (fish cooked in butter was a favourite of my mum's so we all had to eat it. If i tried to eat it now i think id vomit).

I've come to realise that I've struggled with an eating disorder all my life as a result of the pressure around what my mum wanted me to eat vs what i was happy and able to eat. If my mum had just backed the fuck off with us, i think we would have been a lot more relaxed around food and therefore been willing to try a lot more because any new food, or food we knew we didn't like caused us genuine anxiety because we knew the attitude and disapproval we would get if we didn't like it and one way or another, we had to eat it. Whether it was dinner time or for lunch the next day.

Feed your kids what they enjoy eating, and offer small amounts of the stuff you want them to eat. Let them come to it in their own time. If you've got time to make the food you like, you've got time to make food they like.

I note you say “child” - singular.

If I had stopped at one then I would be smugly talking about all my rules and how brilliantly they worked. Dd eats everything and did even as a toddler.

Unfortunately (fortunately really as he’s adorable!) we then had ds. He eats 5 things. We did everything the same. Everything!

I think you’ve had a Name change fail there OP

Oops sorry no, just a quote fail!

Cant you keep it simple and do meat and three veg? And let them put tomato sauce on?

I do feel as if kids need some protein / veg even if its a basic meal.

U need some meal ideas:
roast veg
baked potato
plain veg (eg boiled carrots, broccoli) with grilled fish or chicken
spanish omelette with some chopped green beans
roast chicken
tinned herring in tomato sauce poured over couscous
veggie burger (just buy from supermarket
chicken burger
pasta with veggie sausage
paella

You don't have to give them turkey twizzlers just because they won't eat tofu and lentils I don't blame them - just make what they like. Pasta, jacket potatoes etc. Do they eat rice?

You should look at Cook, they have ‘homemade’ ready meals. They make them in the same way you’d make them at home, then freeze them. All you have to do is put them in the oven. Not too expensive either, you could get a couple a week for the weekends

There is nothing more annoying than the "this is what happened when I was kid. We had to lick coal for breakfast and if you didn't like it you went without".

What happened to kids born in the 60s and 70s and even 80s is some not some brilliant example of child rearing. It's not like all those generations grew up to be happy flourishing well balanced individuals.

Just because kids tolerated it back then doesn't mean we have to do the same now. Of course kids need boundaries and tough love but they also don't need to be forced to eat stuff they hate just because that's what happend to us.

Stews in slow cooker - veg or chicken.
I also like to look on BBC iplayer my world kitchen for ideas (kids cooking program).
maybe they can pick some meals from there and cook them?

The only ‘proper dinner’ we ever seemed able to eat together was a Sunday roast lunch (sometimes at teatime).

The fussy buggers would deign to eat some roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings, with tiny bits of chicken and gravy. Muggins however was usually left with the whole dish of whatever vegetables they had ‘chosen’ to (not) eat.

It’s demoralising arguing over a mange tout. You think, ‘How is this my life now?’

I’m prepared to compromise a little on food, but would not allow my kids to eat multiple unhealthy meals a week.

If they want something they like, I say they have to try something that is reasonable but healthy. Eg - eat some cucumber and Houmous and you can have some fish fingers. If they don’t eat cucumber, I can give option of red pepper but if not then no fish fingers. They can have banana and other fruit if hungry

Do you force yourself to eat food you hate before you allow yourself to eat something you like?