Why don't parents feed children what they eat?

[Gruffallowhydidntyouknow]

Twice this week I have had conversations with people that make me wonder why in the UK we are obsessed with children's food and feeing children bland foods.

One friend told me that they were furious at their mother in law, as they had been for Sunday lunch at the weekend and had had to go to Tesco to get food in for their children (5,7, 10) because it was ridiculous that they were being offered the roast beef dinner.

Another friend was bemoaning cooking two different meals as she had to cook something the children would eat and something separate for her and her wife. She laughed and said she couldn't wait until they were old enough to eat curry (8 year old twins).

I despair at the sight of pub menus as it's always beige and chips for the children or a token tomato pasta unless you are in a really nice place. Is that really how people feed children?

I have literally never made separate foods with the exception of not giving my children steak pre teeth.

I'm genuinely intrigued what makes people feed their children separately. Is it that people really believe that children won't eat normal foods? Do people think you "shouldn't" give children spicey foods, or Game/ an olive / duck / stir fry?

Is it that they were weaned on plain things and are now fussy?

I'm not talking about the tiny portion of additional needs selective eaters.

Totally agree.

Why would anyone do anything other than this? I was raised eating the family dinner. No way on earth was my mum cooking separate food for a child.

I despair at the restaurant menus for kids. Just give me the option of a children sized portion of the adult meal. (And yes I am sympathetic to the whole margins portions etc issues restaurants have - have paid full price many a time!).

I remember being somewhere really nice that didn't have a kids menu and he had something from the adult menu. Completely polished it off even the people on another table were fascinated (he was about 1.5yrs old at the time) watching him as it seemed to be a surprise to them.

My daughter learnt very early on that I’m not running a restaurant, so only one meal is being served. A variety of meals is for when she visits my parents and my dad is going to spoil her. I have neither the time nor inclination.

I try to have everyone having the same meal but probably have given in to cooking things I know he’ll eat which probably is a bad habit. I wonder if I’d been stricter if he would eat more variety. I get that fussy eaters exist but for some it must be somewhat cultural that you get less in other countries. In Japanese schools everyone gets the same meal each day.

I despair at the sight of pub menus

You “despair”? Really?

YABU. We do feed our child the same as us, and we largely all eat together. Don’t assume everyone is giving their kids junk food.

@mitogoshi I wish I could do that. My daughter is starving when she gets home at 16.00 from preschool so she has a big dinner then. My partner gets home about five. And by 18.30 she is up in bed having stories (lights out at seven) otherwise she gets too tired for preschool the next day. I hope things will change as she gets older.
I do wonder if a lot of the separate eating is due to things like this rather than the actual food itself, for example, parents finishing work late and children being tired.

Why don’t parents feed children what they eat?

Because I didn’t want my child to starve.

Weaning started fine. Then before dd was 12 months old she refused everything apart from Greek yoghurt. Then it was the toast phase. At maybe 18 months she would eat 3 sorts of meals, one was eggs, the other two I batch cooked and rotated. This level of selective eating took years and years to crack. She started eating roast dinners at the start of secondary, not before and now at 15 likes olives. She turned veggie a few months ago so that’s a new level of hell.

I cried when she ate a chicken nugget at 2.5 as it meant we could sometimes go out for food.

These type of judgmental threads pop up from time to time.

My eldest was fussy, middle one has adhd and afrid (as do I) and youngest is autistic and can be funny about texture plus he has allergies.

Very normal to make three variations of a meal in our house. We do eat together though.

My children were the definition of faddy. Briefly, everybody could eat spaghetti Bolognaise. It went all downhill from then on. As adults, one adores French cooking. The other is a vegetarian. Both eat a wide range of foods now and I credit the fact that we did cook separately for them and didn't push them into eating stuff they didn't like.

My own mother, who was in every other respect a great mother, turned every meal into a battleground and she was a dreadful cook with a particular emphasis on fatty meat. I spent most of the meal time slicing off every speck of fat as it cooled and congealed. I clearly recall an incident where my father tried to force feed me with overcooked silver beet. Just for the principle of it, I haven't eaten silver beet since. I only eat cabbage in coleslaw too because overboiled it had even less appeal than the silver beet.

And you know, I escaped the family curse of high cholesterol. I have the kind of cholesterol ratios that cardiologists fantasise about. All without overcooked cabbage and silver beet. My children still blame me though for exhorting them to eat half a baby Tom Thumb tomato.

I have a child who is not interested in eating. They'll eat if encouraged to, but only a limited but ok range of "safe" foods. Luckily that range includes most fish, pasta, rice and a good selection of fruit and vegetables. But practically no meat or sauces.

I dislike bland food and there's no way I'm sitting down to a plate of boiled fish, plain rice and green beans. I always offer my DC what I'm having (and the baby eats it), but I don't see it as my role as a parent to force-feed or starve my child, just to fuel them and offer a selection of healthy food. My DC is very active and on the thin side so it's most important to me that they're fed.

It's totally cultural and there is no reason to feed children different food. But people are free to do so if they prefer this and this is their norm.

I'm non-white British and no child I knew within our community growing up had separate food from the adults. I mean adult food is delicious and seasoned, plus we were just expected to eat what was in front of us.

I married into a white family and have always been very perplexed when my SIL cooks a lovely meal for hours but then sticks a frozen pizza in the oven for her kids.

DH already knows that our kids won't be having separate meals unless their is a medical reason. They'll eat what we eat.

Maybe her child won't eat the "lovely meal"?

Mine is autistic so will only eat a limited amount of foods although strangely it’s not the typical beige foods and he doesn’t even like nuggets. His diet is fairly balanced just boring so I’m not worried. Not eating has a major effect on my sons behaviour and he doesn’t always recognise when he is hungry/ needs to eat either. it’s ok for people with easy kids saying they wouldn’t do them anything else or the child would have to go hungry but I can assure you anyone in my situation would be making something else that they’d eat

Yes, again this is cultural and does not happen in my family or wider community. Children will eat some variation of what is cooked. For a time I didn't eat red meat as a child but would eat whatever side, ie spinach or lentils, along with rice and maybe some salad. Still the same food my parents were eating and still nutritious.

Mine always ate the same as us but lots of people had an opinion on that because we are vegetarian and apparently it’s abusive to feed your dc the same as you unless you eat meat. Not even joking!

Personally I couldn’t care less if you feed your child beige food, red food, blue food. I don’t care.

But it sounds like they were making side dishes that they knew you would eat and just having some of that themselves so they were catering to you.

Well arent you just lucky to have never experienced a truly fussy child. I’m sure 99% of parents start out thinking they’ll never cook two meals. Then they’re faced with a child that really won’t eat anything you give them. Some people put just getting their children nourished first before inconvenience of making multiple
meals.

There would always be side dishes, regardless.

I'm not saying children should only eat what the adults fancy. Children's preferences should also be taken into account when cooking, same way an adult partner's preferences are taken into account. It's a family meal afterall.

This just doesn't require separate foods to be cooked for each group.

My sister does this and always has. I've always fed my children what we eat. It's only now on my third child, who use to eat everything that we have issues. Hes 11 and maybe for the last couple of years he has decided he doesn't (and literally won't eat it) like much of what we have. I don't want him going hungry because he will not eat it and he will go hungry.

Therefore, if wer having something I know he won't eat, its easier to just make something he will. Which these days, is in the shape of pizza, chicken nuggets, baked potato etc. All very beige and crap but luckily hel also eat salad and veg as a side. I'm sure hel grow out it soon but in the meantime I'd rather keep him fed.

I had a ‘cousin’ in Lebanon in the late 80s / early 90s - including during the civil war, no less! - who was an insanely picky eater and would basically only eat rice with vermicelli noodles broken into it and aubergine in tomato sauce for years, so while I’ve no doubt palates are largely cultural and some countries (very much including Lebanon) exert far greater social pressure on children to eat a wide variety of food, I’ll take some convincing truly picky eaters are a unique defect of the UK.

edit: he’s not autistic etc, and now eats fairly normally, although still not particularly adventurous - his position is that all this stuff just genuinely tasted worse as a child.

I do! I have two ND children and can't stand daily arguing, so they eat good combinations of things they like and I throw in a new thing every now and then.
I blitz in veg and fruit usually in sauces) where possible to add more variety to their f&v
DD has picky meals most days, so baked potato with something like salmon, tuna, with grapes, banana. She will eat meatballs, cottage pie, roasts, sausages and mash so just add the veg she does enjoy
DS is more bland in his food so add those sneaky veg to passata with chicken, meatballs, he'll eat beans, rice, pasta, mash and some veggies - for us it works but I'm usually cooking 2/3 different meals, though often based around the same or mostly the same ingredients

You don’t have to be a “superior parent” to not feed your kid poison nuggets. No wonder there’s an obesity crisis.

The pandering to your child’s whims about what they will and won’t eat is cultural. I’ve never understood it. Most (neurotypical) children will not starve themselves to death. Parents create fussy eaters, largely I think.