To say "eat it or be hungry"

[cheeseyeasy]

My 11 year old son is incredibly fussy eater. His younger sibling eats anything. Both treated the same with food growing up.

I'm at my wits end. All he eats is about 3 different meals, I'm so fed up of cooking multiple meals each night.

Aibu to say eat it or lump
It, knowing full well he will indeed lump it.

The most important thing is not to make a big deal of it. I always say you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to, but there isn’t anything else. Going to bed hungry for one night won’t do him any harm, obviously if it goes on and if he does prefer to starve than eat what you’ve made then you know it’s a problem that needs further investigation.

My kids usually decide about half an hour later that they will eat it after all.

That's lovely to read, well done! I think your approach was perfect. I do the same with mine but they are still little so I expect bumps in the road as they grow up but I am quite passionate about this.

As long as there is no ND at play, cooking different meals is bonkers and only makes kids fussier as proven by this post. It's more expensive, creates more work and means kids only eat unhealthy food. There is no benefit to it.

Mine were both like this and yes I cooked them the things they liked. They slowly and naturally came out of it by themselves, dd2 age 13 is just starting to want to try new things, and dd19 will eat or at least try pretty much everything now. I think they get to the age where they start to become a bit self conscious about their weird food habits, or maybe they finally get bored of those few meals! Either way they do seem to grow out of it. They both have ASD. I’m glad I just went along with it now because trying to fight them on it would have been a whole world of stress none of us needed.

I don’t think this is a modern thing. My sister had sensory issues with food and was very picky and she’s nearly 40. My parents just made her food she would eat. She’d vomit if she tried to eat foods she didn’t like so it was pointless.

one of my children will eat anything, one is picky. The picky one will eat veg, just only specific ones. So that’s what he gets. I only cook and make him food he will eat, sometimes I’ll make myself something different and he will try a bit, often he won’t. His diet is limited in some ways but broad in others, ie he doesn’t just eat beige food, so I don’t worry from a nutrition perspective.

I never can understand what sort of parent does this.

Why try and starve your child into submission and make food into a battle?

There are certain foods I'd rather starve than eat, and I'm an NT adult.

In my house we have a vegetarian, three meat eaters, allergies to nuts and eggs. I often make two or three different meals, but I do it at the same time so it's not really a massive deal. I obviously don't make a lot of elaborate dishes, but we all eat healthy food and no one is faced with a meal that they find unpleasant.

He does have ADD (attention deficit, away with the fairies) but I wouldn't have thought that was relevant.
He's always been a gagger. He had school dinners til age 7 and known to vomit if something gross went in occasionally.
As a baby/toddler he ate most things. It was downhill from about 5 I think.

He has a decent breakfast, usually cheese on toast or bagel with peanut butter and banana, with a smoothie.
He takes a packed lunch but not a great one as he won't eat any fruit or veg that has been in a lunch box- he says they taste weird- so I've stopped packing them as they end up in the bin. He will have a sandwich (ham/cheese), bag crisps, cheese string, maybe a yogurt, sweet thing like a rocky bar or a mini cake bar.

Dinners he will always eat a cottage pie (I bulk make these with two veg in and freeze), burgers (home made or Mac Donald's), sometimes pizza if homemade, sometimes he will eat a roast chicken baguette. Does tend towards bland. Won't touch anything that has gone darker brown in cooking "it's burnt". He will eat peas and sweetcorn and raw carrots, fruit like strawberries, mango, grapes, apple.

So it's not totally dire but I worry that he won't be able to eat out and go on dates and stuff. What's ok as a child is much less ok as a grown man.

He's lean but not too skinny.

My dad made me eat food I didn’t like, sensory wise too not just taste, in the end I used to snack and not eat proper meals.
my son is 12 and autistic eats a small handful of beige foods and as long as he eats I don’t care, I cook 2/3 different meals most days

What do you do when you are presented with food you don't like ?

If he will in fact lump it and he's got ADD then you know YABU.

Have you looked into ARFID

kidshealth.org/en/parents/arfid.html

You won't solve anything by forcing it.

At 11, I’d have a conversation about how some nights you’re too tired / busy / late to make two meals. Those nights will be one meal. If he doesn’t like it, that’s fine, he can make himself something else. Two rules, the something else has to contain carb, protein and fruit or veg (no eating plain toast, but toast with peanut butter and fruit would be ok) and he has to make it in time to sit and eat with the family.

My 12yo would generally rather eat a bit of what I make than have the hassle of making her own, but for meals she really dislikes she'll make an alternative.

The 'pandering' comments and just give them toast always come people who've no actual experience of this

My parents said eat it or go hungry and I ended up with an eating disorder by age 7. I was so underweight I used to have to get weighed at the hospital every month for years. I now have one fussy child and one good eater. I work with fussy DS to make sure he is having a good diet even if it means he has separate food. He is getting better now he is a teenager. Some kids cannot be pushed.

Agree with involving him with cooking. Ours was the same at that age. 20 now, he cooks a wide variety of meals for us now, has done for some time (very well too).

Sit two adults and four kids down at the table and they all get fed the same food. If they're hungry they'll eat. ......back in the day when there were no fridge freezers and shopping was generally done every other day there wasn't a choice really.

In your experience of parenting a child with food issues did you find this worked?

Because some children actually won't eat.

My youngest would starve himself if he was offered/ forced to have food outside what he recognises as safe. My oldest was a fussy eater through primary school but had grown out of it now as I gradually introduced more range for him over the years but this approach does not work with the youngest. I absolutely refuse to turn mealtimes (a lovely part of our day with us all at the table together) into a battleground.

So youngest gets what he will eat. DH is vegetarian so we usually serve 3 meals but they are variations on each other. I don’t find it particularly onerous as it’s just what we do now.

@ccheeseyeasy - if he's diagnosed with ADD, he's more likely to have sensory issues - so the diagnosis is highly relevant. And his strong aversion to certain foods backs that up.

My younger son has ARFID. He also has coeliac, which means he has to be gluten-free for life. So I sympathise with you about having to make separate meals. It's a pain in the arse. However, the priority for your son right now is ensuring he's putting on enough weight and having enough nutrients. Get his weight and height checked by your GP (it's so easy to miss weight loss in children - I speak from experience) and make sure he's on daily vitamins. Batch cook some of his favourite meals, so you only have to defrost/reheat them. Try to keep mealtimes relaxed.

My brother’s got ADD and he has always been a fussy eater, I think it is linked, he was always really easily put off food too, if I said I didn’t like something he wouldn’t like it either.

Focus on the day to day. The bigger picture like relationships can be part of the solution. I had no idea that when my new BF cooked me "his speciality" it was more or less the only thing he ate. When I first went out with him there was only one thing he ate in restaurants too - but I didn't know that, I just thought he had a favourite.

He's less fussy than most adults now and it's been very handy to have his insight when dealing with our own children's eating.

@GintyMcGinty has given quite a few examples of what he will eating has said its not die but she's worried about him not being able to eat out as an adult. Cottage pie, roast chicken baguette, pizza. So that includes mince, potatoes, veg, chicken, bread, pizza, burgers. You can do a lot of meal planning there. Replace the pizza with fish and add in pork and that's pretty much the childhood staple diet of everyone over 50.

If only life was this simple.

This may be true for the majority, but it isn't true of children with eating disorders. A lot of neurodiverse children (like the OP's) have issues with eating.

'Back in the day', children with ARFID and other eating disorders didn't magically start eating. Instead, they quietly wasted away.

I have children with AFRID. Given the option, they would live on beige safe foods. It is a difficult area.

Things that work for us;

• leave out crudités with every meal so if they refuse the cooked veg, they have some that they are guaranteed to eat
• break meals down into separates and in dishes and let them decide on the quantity themselves but I really encourage them to take a small spoon if everything
• do their favourite at least once a week (mac and cheese / plain pasta)

We look ahead at menus if we're eating out, ask the chef for minor adjustments where needed but actually they surprise us more and more by trying things in restaurants as they are getting older.

It's churned out a lot but really try hard to take the emotional aspect out of eating and try to keep smiling...

A child recently died from ARFID. Back in the day it would have been failure to thrive or something.

Now that I've read what he will eat, I'd say he's absolutely fine. Of course try to broaden his palate, but he's got a good range there.

I'm impressed he's eating cottage pie. I'd have thought he'd find it too saucy.