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.

Actually my brother has Asperger's too and he always ate absolutely everything, no food issues whatsoever.

I don't believe you are "genuinely intrigued" at all 😆 You're being judgemental! How other people eat or what they feed their kids has absolutely no impact on you so why bother wasting you time and energy thinking about it. Do what works for you. During the week we often eat separately and eat different things because we have different schedules. Sometimes I do three meals! It doesn't bother me so why would it bother you?

If you really are "genuinely intrigued", here are some of my reasons...

There is a day that my son gets backs from school and has a quick turnaround time before needing to be out the door again for a hobby so he might have a pizza so he can sort himself out and eat at the same time. My DDs don't have an activity so I'll do a proper sit-down dinner for them.

My DH and I rarely eat with the kids during the week as he gets back quite late and my 5yo can't wait that late otherwise it means she'll be up too late with a full stomach. This is a good excuse to not have to eat the same as the kids.

Growing kids have different nutritional needs to adults...they need carbs and I try to eat low-carb so I don't want to eat the same as them.

One of my DC is dairy intolerant and another DC loves nothing more than macaroni cheese or chicken mornay. I like to find ways of making sure everyone gets their favourite food sometimes.

Sometimes I get back from hobbies with the DC quite late (for them) so I might have to do a 5min hob to table thing to keep on track for bedtime. That doesn't mean that I have to have it when I'm eating later though.

I enjoy cooking - especially once the kids are in bed as I find it relaxing.

I do a lot of batch cooking for the very reason that we don't all have to eat the same thing.

We always eat together at weekends and those family mealtimes are lovely but not because of the food. Generally I never eat my favourite foods when we all eat together/the same thing.

When I was a kid I refused to eat anything other than pasta with cheese. I was very underweight. My parents gave me pasta and cheese – obviously parents cook separate meals because their kids won't eat otherwise. They'd all prefer to just cook one meal, but some kids will genuinely not eat/get so skinny they're basically starving, so you've got to be a bit realistic if you have a kid like that – you can't just let them not eat for weeks.

Blessing in disguise! Mine would happily bankrupt me with plantain 🤣

My DH is on a gym diet to stay healthy and fuel his gym workouts. He batch cooks for the week and has the same meals day in day out. I don’t like that and I’m impulsive with food so I have to eat what I fancy when I fancy it. We can’t plan meals as I don’t like knowing what I’m going to eat and when I’m going to eat it. Takes the enjoyment out of food for me and I am a nightmare at times. My youngest DS is going through a fussy stage and doesn’t like a lot of what he loved last month and my eldest DS will eat anything and vast amounts. My eldest usually eats something his dad has batched cooked like curries, soups etc and me and the youngest will either have something we bought from the butchers with veg, potatoes or pasta. Jacket potatoes, frittatas and salads, dippy eggs with home made bread etc are also in the line up. We stay as healthy and balanced as possible and it isn’t a chore to actually make different things. The batch cooked food is a simple reheat job and jackets and dippy eggs can be air fried in 10 minutes. Both DC were brought up eating what we ate but our eating habits changed over time. The most important thing for us is that we all eat together at the table which we do every night.

This thread is a treasure trove of superiority and hubris. Parenting other peoples children is an easy spectator sport.
Of course there are shit parents out there who are lazy and don’t provide good food but the vast majority are not cooking two teas because they think children are supposed to eat bland food. Some kids are extremely fussy. It’s often pot luck if your kid is one who will eat anything or live on bread/plain pasta etc.

I always gave my children the same meals as us. We all sat at the table together for meals. My daughter has always done the same and her children also eat most things. In fact the youngest (age 8) loves a really spicy dish. They love a roast with all the veg etc. I agree with OP about the restaurant menus. My grandkids usually look at it and say ‘there’s nothing there that i like’ so we have to order from the adult menu. Luckily their father will usually eat anything that they can’t manage 😂

Take or leave this advice:
Keep offering the healthy option you’d prefer them to have.I must have offered it an eleventy billion times before she ate ONE PEA.
Toddlers are almost certainly getting the calories they need although it seems they’re existing on air.
Never batch cook the meal they wolfed down cos they’ll react like it’s poison the following day.
As toddlers have such tiny tummies it’s really not great to fill it with rubbish.
Ditto avoid sugar and ready made children snacks and meals.
If your meals are becoming fraught (i
so remember that) remove tension while they eat/refuse to eat - wash up or radio on and dance, anything.
I always insisted my daughter had 3 spoonfuls. Sometimes she continued eating the rest and sometimes not. But she knows she always has to try something.
Eat around the table. It’s sometimes a pain when they’re little but good to have it as a habit.
Give them their own job. Putting napkins on, carrying salt and pepper to table. Anything that has autonomy.
Don’t cook anything different. Just add spice or anything inappropriate for them to your own dish.

I don't have kids and I come from abroad but i must admit I have made this question before! Im not sure if it's cultural/british?

Ive always seen kids eating what their parents eat. Of course kids prefer chips and nuggets and will say they dont like brocoli or whatever. But overall they just eat what everyone else is eating with little adjustments.
Also there is usually soup (homemade) to start with, so if they eat little from the main it doesn't matter.

Only when i moved here i started realising that parents will be cooking for their kids and then something for themselves. On top of that what they cook is fish fingers, nuggets and 'pasta with sauce'

Obviously not everyone as my partner is british but she says they all ate the same.

She laughed and said she couldn't wait until they were old enough to eat curry (8 year old twins).

GrandBaby Viper (aged 15 months) has been eating spicy food since just over a year old, and you want to see him demolish a plate of chilli!

DS had asked me if he would like curry, and I told him that the only way to find out was to try it. I pointed out that babies in Asian countries are weaned onto curries, and just not to make it soo hot/ spicy and see how he went. He loves it!

Mind - I've never seen a child with such an appetite - kid has hollow legs.

Because, despite being weaned on hummous and lentil bake, my DC refuse point blank to eat pulses more than once in a blue moon. They are never happier than they are with a plate of roast meat and minimal veg.

Because of DH's allergies, and his and ds's inability to tolerate much spice.

I generally do a spicy veggie dish and an inert meaty dish.

There are some meals which we'll all eat - Macaroni cheese, spinach tortellini, jacket spuds + fillings, and some where I can just as easily do a veggie version and meat version (sausage and mash; quiches). But yeh, I mostly cook 2 meals. And complain a lot.

My DC have always eaten what we have except my third child who had severe allergies as a young child. It was truly horrendous, he had so many allergies that feeding him required a lot of planning. So whilst my other three would eat what we eat it isnt the same for all. Also with the increase in AFRID and autistic children who find eating difficult you should never judge

I thought that was old fashioned thinking.
mine are now 25, 21 and 17 and it had changed from the eldest to the youngest. Eldest we gave plainer food to but soon decided he could eat what we ate and while yes some of that was plainer meat and veg also fed him curry and spicy foods as well as things like Italian pasta style dishes.
by the time the youngest was born it was more baby led weaning and giving them a small bit of what was on your plate.

Well, it's true... Sometimes I really give my child different food. But that is when I crave for pizza, fries, burger and sweets. I love junk food and I'm hiding it from my child as I want him to be healthy. Otherwise he eats the same as we do, which is normally healthy with lots of varieties. And he is olives lover (just as you mentioned it 😉) My husband is an Indian, cooks Indian with spices, but not 'hot' as nor me or our toddler can take that.

I fed my first son everything we ate and he ate it all and has always been very adventurous with food - so I was that mum who silently judged others who said their children wouldn’t eat properly, genuinely believing it was down to the way they were brought up and that somehow I’d done a better job. Fast forward to my second son, who was brought up in the exact same way, exposed to the same family dinners yet refused pretty much everything. Still believing we were going to win the battle, we went through tears at mealtimes for months. Finally we relented and began cooking separate meals but still put a spoon of what we were eating on the side of his plate and made him eat it - until we finally gave up. He’s now 18 and only just in the last 2 years began to eat anything other than his very limited diet - he will now have gravy in his roast dinner (still no cooked veg, only raw!!) and amazingly he’ll actually eat curry in a sauce. He cooks his own food - seasons his chicken and makes his own burgers etc - and I genuinely believe we did more harm than good in the early days when we tried to force him to eat our food.

I also learned a very valuable lesson about judging others and totally agree with the above post that people whose children eat everything are lucky rather than a sign of them being superior parents.

Final point - I only cook foods I actually like and would be really annoyed if my husband cooked something he knew I didn’t like and forced me to eat it. Often I will fully intend to cook a particular meal and then change my mind. Why then, would I force my children to eat things they didn’t want/like?

My 2.5 year old DD practically eats what we eat. DS (7) is ASD so he has a very bland diet but the bulk of his meal will be what we have because he will eat all forms of potato, plain pasta, rice or noddles so I just take his portion out before I add a sauce for the rest of us. He doesn’t eat meat that isn’t breaded or battered, despite many ‘it’s just a naked chicken nugget’ talks. He eats limited veg so we make sure we do at least one of those with each meal (carrots, peas, green beans). He will eat a roast dinner minus the meat but with lots of Yorkies!

@ExpatAl *Never batch cook the meal they wolfed down cos they’ll react like it’s poison the following day.

Oh yes, this one is so true. I have lost count of the number of times I've been delighted to find a new meal to add to DS's diet only to have it rejected next time I make it which is very demoralising.

We BLWd so he ate what we did for ages, he just went through the pattern of becoming more fussy and at 9 is still not out of it. He now eats a good diet but from a restricted set of foods, not helped by being a pescatarian (his choice) while not liking tofu, cheese, butter or most meat substitutes - thankfully he's reasonably good with fish, veg and pulses even though he likes them quite plain. So while we have a reasonable routine of family meals (fish, falafel, selected mild curries, dahl, chilli, risotto), that everyone will eat, I do get a bit fed up of having the same thing again and again so keep trying to tempt him to be a bit more adventurous.

Batch cooking and freezing helps a lot - it means I can cook something new for us and give him a taste of it alongside a defrosted portion of something I know he likes. 95% of the time it's a no, but I keep trying. I'm hoping when he hits the teenage growth spurt years sheer hunger will get him to expand his repertoire.

We all eat the same maybe slight variations but still the same exact meal. Although I do tend to like quite basic meals so that probably helps. We all love a roast 😋

When I was young I was expected to eat everything that was put in front of me. There were things I genuinely didn't like (and still don't) such as mince and tatties and broth. I was told I could have fruit and cheese instead.
My kids were disappointed to go out for Sunday lunch and be offered the kids' menu (pizza, burgers, chicken nuggets etc) when they actually wanted a half portion of the roast dinner.

I've never made different dinners for them. I once knew a woman who had to make 3 different dinners every night - a normal meal for the adults, veggie stuff for the teenage daughters and kids' fare for the younger son - madness.

I have 3 children and sometimes I HAD to do them an early quick and easy meal because one of them would need to have dinner before I took her to Brownies , and I’d just fetched another from a dance class and the 2 younger in particular were hungry .
I so often did filled pasta and sauce or omelettes
Their dad would be home later so I’d have to do another meal later .
Plus each one of us has different likes and dislikes .
One hates mushrooms and aubergine for example, one doesn’t like fish or only likes it cooked a certain way .
Plus some meals don’t keep well so I couldn’t always cook one meal and re heat it

Seriously? Kids won't starve if they miss a meal?! Would you just miss a meal if you didn't like what was offered? Or would you go get yourself a sandwich or something else to eat so you weren't hungry. I wouldn't eat something I didn't like, I would get something else. I extend the same respect to my child.
Why on earth do you care what other people are doing with their kids? You clearly are winning at parenting. Stay in your own lane.

My DS wouldn’t eat vegetables as a toddler, apart from sweetcorn and baked beans. I did discover that he liked raw veggies, so would put grated carrot, strips of peppers, shredded cabbage on his plate. Gradually he experimented with the cooked versions and by the time he started school, he would eat anything except peas. He is now in his forties and his wife eventually managed to get him to try peas so now he’s finally no longer a fussy eater.
DD1 claimed she was a vegetarian, but managed to eat chicken nuggets, sausages and meatballs, so I told her she just had lazy teeth and carried on putting meat on her plate.
DD2 still won’t eat mushrooms; she says she has an inbuilt horror of eating something mouldy.

I'd eat the meal becuase I'm a grown up and I know wasting food is bad, I'm not made of money and I know I don't always have to have what I want. Why wouldn't I teach my kids the same? Allowances for specific dislikes or SEN, fine, turning your nose up at a perfectly fine meal becuase you know there's a sandwich instead? That's just instilling bad habits.

I have 3 kids. One who has been diagnosed with severe restricted eating disorder. He is under a paedtrician and dietician with twice monthly checks because he gets very underweight. The advice is feed him what he will eat because he would literally starve himself to death if not. He gets vitamins etc to.

The other two kids eat what we do with the exception of a couple of really spicy dinners we like. They eat just about anything on the school lunch menu. I don't ever have to give them packed lunches as they prefer the school hot meals. They have all been raised in the same home, with the same parents but one has a medical condition.

I agree with the bland kids menus though. My younger kids are normally disappointed as they prefer a roast chicken dinner or steak and veg pie if we ever eat out. The oldest doesn't like eating out so avoids it.