To not understand adult food vs kids food?

[SofandaCox]

I meet up occasionally with my old baby group. Our babies are 3 now. We met up yesterday for lunch and there’s a few in the group that are firmly in the adult foods are separate to kids food camp and I find it so bizarre. They make really weird comments like “why would you give that to a child” “my child would never eat that” “I wouldn’t waste that on a child” etc. my child has a long list of allergies and I’ve had gastric surgery so can’t much so we usually share a meal. The offending meal? Calamari. Basically chicken nuggets but wish squid. They acted like I had just purchased my toddler a fillet mignon with champagne and lobster tail. Which, again, don’t see the issue if that’s what he wanted! Has anyone experienced this? And also just to be so rude as to sit there and actually make comments about it. I’ve had judgey thoughts about them feeding their 3 year old jarred baby food but I’ve kept that to myself. It’s making me not want to meet up with them anymore but it would be a shame for my son as he enjoys spending time with the others toddlers.

Tbf, my child is a little weirdo, and I tried bloody every bland food going when weaning and he wasn't having any of it.

What he would eat, I found, was spice, and lots of it, and he's a total protein fiend. He's only just now eating well though, whilst his peers are moving into their fussy phase.

Some might find it a stealth boast that he'll sit down and eat chilli, sushi, curry etc. My friends are just pleased for me because they know we went through hell with allergy weaning and food refusal.

I've not been to the US, but away from tourist areas serving English speaking tourists I've not come across the children's beige menu anywhere elsewhere in Europe.

One of my EU niblings, they could be a bit of a fussy eater at home (they went at least two years on little more than toast and Nutella) but always ate normal adult meals when eating out - even during the fussy-at-home phase.

I feel like that style of parenting when it comes to food, is what creates fussy eaters (excluding those with sensory issues)

The whole “oh you WONT like that darling”‘is just setting them up for failure 😂

Mine have been eating prawns, salmon, sushi, muscles ect since weaning. Salmon and prawns are my 4 year old all time favourite food.

I tell you what she isn’t very keen on.. beige. We’ve never eaten a lot of beige food, rarely have nuggets unless a maccies treat or chip shop, dont tend to eat fish fingers, any frozen breaded/battered stuff we just don’t tends to eat.

Recently I’ve had quite poor mental health and just haven’t been up to scratch for cooking full meals from scratch so did do a freezer stock up for quick things I could air fry. They don’t like hardly any of it (which has just made life a bit harder because then I’m scraping around trying to find an alternative 👀)

I think kids like what they’ve been exposed to is my point🤣

Can I ask if there was a reason? That sounds incredibly hard to deal with. My son is 3 and autistic, and miraculously generally non-fussy, but I’m not complacent and realise it could all change one day. I hope not though.

I was first to have a kid in my group and having an allotment meant I attracted the foodies who liked to cook 😂so to have a social life I took my baby and then toddler with me to dinners in Central and my friends (from 6m) would share food with her. I remember her being given seafood and watching her wondering does she have a shellfish allergy 😂I was very scared with new foods but my friends from all backgrounds fed everything. I just watched and hoped for the best. Which meant it was normalised to feed from our plates. She inhaled everything. Even when DM accidentally gave her rum baba at an Italian bakery!
Then the mums I hung out with were majority foodies and cooked from scratch and did baby led weaning and then our kids just ate the food we made. So I think the norms are different for other people and I wouldn't judge them feeding jarred meals, some people don't have skill or are tired or are busy.
I wouldn't buy my kid anything she ordered these days as her eyes are bigger than her stomach (shes now 8 and learnt that the expensive way when she wanted starter and main in a nice place my parents took us to 😳) but I never have nor would not feed her regular food off my plate nor have I ever gone for the children's menu apart from the one time we went to pizza hut.

Although I do think adult vs child food is sad and odd, if I didn't like seeing it, I'd just give up those friends. The whole point of friends is to like them. I cooked with alcohol a lot (wine/port European meals) and fed my kid without issue and we all ate the same. I'd mention this to parents and no one seemed bothered. Obviously no one got wasted on some ragu. But I'm sure some would judge for that and they can leave.
Like, you don't have to be their friends there's other calamari like minded people out there.

It always surprises me that there is a separate children's menu and that parents cook 2 meals at night, one for them and one for the children.

What a faff. If we went out, I would have a meal and my sons would share a second adult meal. The children's menus were shit food anyway!

Same here.

I think the 'Kids' menus' don't help because the list of food is usually limited.

I've complained many times on here how there is a concept of 'vegetarian food', where people in general are led to believe that all vegetarians love a narrow range of food (some combination of goats cheese, butternut squash, mushrooms, risotto, beetroot, caramelised onion, pastry)

Similarly, it gives the impression that all under 12s love a narrow selection of food (chips, chicken nuggets, pizza, fish fingers, beans, pasta ...)

I have my first Christmas meal next week: pumpkin soup followed by something butternut squash and beetroot, both vegan so no goat's cheese. Sorry to hijack thread

We've always few our children exactly what we eat. When we've gone out for meals, we'd ask for a side plate, and give them whatever we ate. As they got older, we would order 3 adult meals and do the same. Now they will just eat their own meal off the adult menu.

Yep, mine too. DD1, 10 months old, was happy with a well-chopped piece of my Frfiday fillet steak, buttered jacket potato, peas. Or any suitably mashed version of what we were having. One day, no idea when, zipped lip and cried at the same foods she used to love.

DD2 - I used to make a lovely spaghetti bolognese with mince and home-made sauce. Used to laugh with delight when she saw it coming. One day... yes, sat in front of it and zipped up, thrust bowl off table and refused it absolutely from then on.

I don't think I'm a 'shit parent' as someone smugly decreed from their lofty tower of smug; DDs are in their 30s and 40s now and eat a variety of foods, one is mostly plant-based, the other loves meat but still won't have it in sauce, both healthy adults with their own preferences, different from one another despite the same upbringing.

Absolutely agree with those who say there's an MN 'thing' where everything British is shit. You don't need to google far to see it's absolutely untrue that other countries never give their young children a 'child-friendly menu.' And yet the MN Smuggers maintain in countless threads that never happens, and that if I'd only not been such a shit parent, mine too would have eaten everything put before them.

Another MN 'thing' is, 'I do everything right and my friend's child could be like mine if she were more like ME and not so lazy/ignorant/uncaring.' Gah. I think I've finally outgrown MN, it's just so irritating and predictable.

I know a couple of people who are adults now who were AMAZINGLY picky kids....not related, they don't even know each other..... and I am talking stuff like plain pasta on its own or lettuce and cucumber only picky. Both lots of parents never made a fuss over it and would give the children stuff that they would eat while the rest of the family ate something else. Both grew up to be healthy normal omnivores. I get having to stick to a budget but surely what children will eat, provided its not fat and sugar and zero else, is not a hill that needs to be added to all the other parental hills to die on?

My 5 year old would be quite capable of putting a load of ingredients on a pizza and then not eating it. He doesn't like melted cheese - just doesn't like the texture of it. At a make your own pizza party, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he sprinkled grated cheese onto his pizza, had it cooked, and then refused to eat it because the cheese was melted.

He does love fish, seafood, lentils and pulses (including but not limited to baked beans), all kinds of pickles, mushrooms, rare beef, beetroot, etc, so it is honestly not that I only feed him beige food and tell him everything else is yucky he just has preferences.

Ok, cool. I’ve lived in a few countries in Asia, and have visited more. I have also lived in 3 different Eastern European countries with my children and I can assure you each of them has had beige children’s menus. Maybe not in every restaurant - but it is incredibly easy to find one even far off the beaten tourist track.

There seems to be a trend of bashing the UK for offering children’s menus but (unpopular opinion) - they’re everywhere.

Child of the 50's here from a very much not rich family. We were never told eat it or go without or made to eat anything. If we didn't want what was planned there was always an option we would eat. It might be a sandwich or just the potatoes and gravy but there was always something.

I am British but also find the concept weird. Kids eat smaller plates of what the adults get.

I usually split a meal with my 3 year old as the kids menu is usually unhealthy and would upset her tummy (food intolerances). Most of the time it’s fine but she has gotten more fussy in recent times about certain vegetables (though will eat them at home if cut small). We’ve mainly had people warn us food is spicy but my daughter is a spice fiend! She loves her food and will often eat more than half so I’m always happy when there’s a healthy kids meal on the menu.

I actually stopped going to a toddler group as everyone brought snacks to share and some of the mums were handing out crisps and really processed stuff to the (then) 2 year olds.

It may come across as UK bashing, but it's not even the thing I hate most about the British attitude to food. It's the expectation that everywhere you go you can get the same predictable menu. And the over-dependence on bland restaurant chains reheating meals prepared in industrial kitchens.

They sound like a bunch of mum zillas. Perhaps it is just time to move on. My daughter went out with a group of mum zillas and when one of them went to the cloakroom, they all bitched profusely about her in her absence, and when she came back they were all smiles. My daughter never went again.

Ours ate what we ate. Herbs, spices, cooked out wine, they had it all.
One advantage of twins was that it was so much easier just getting one adult meal and two plates in a restaurant for them. Not so much now, they do like their food and it's not cheap!

Some aspects of parenting are luck.

In common with the people who congratulate their superior parenting for babies that sleep well, you get babies that don't follow the pattern and are shit at sleeping, and some are fussy even if you try to avoid beige food and offer them lots and lots of adult food

DD was my first child and I felt pretty shit about her not sleeping, and being really really fussy and not dry at night til she was about 7....but then I had DS and he was completely different despite having the same parents (he was also not dry at night til 7) and concluded that some things are just luck.

Calamari has pretty much no flavour. As long as it's not too rubbery and the batter is seasoned of course a child would love it. I used to love prawns with the shells on when I was a kid. Obviously never had them as it was the 80s and considered quite posh. But the alternative was scampi from the chip shop or a Safeway's prawn sandwich. I was in heaven!
Your kid likes crunchy, fried, fairly bland but fishy food. They'd probably crap themselves if they saw him eating an olive! How weird.
Whatever you eat, you should try and get your kids to eat. It's just food. Once a person can chew!

OMFG yes. My least favourite thing is the smug head tilt with "I think our baby was just so calm because we were calm".

No - you were calm because you had a calm, happy baby who slept well. If you'd landed a screamer who woke several times a night into toddlerhood, you wouldn't have been so calm, you would've been a frazzled wreck.

I was discussing restaurants with a friend and all her recommendations were 'they have a children's menu!'
Our respective children are 8 and up, not toddlers.

Nope, as a child of the 60s, born and bred in London, ate what adults did (even school dinners were adult orientated, great puds too), same through the generations in my family and never remember anyone making something different or allowing menu options and we had a brilliant varied diet. We also never ate at different times once you were of an age, so meals were part of the family activities.

It is true as kids we were not given any choice in the past. My mum did not make foods we really disliked, but she did not have enough money to cook more than one meal for us all. And if we did not like it, there was no money for something else instead. So I do pretty much eat anything.
But my mum and most parents then cooked from scratch. If you are going to have more than basic meals, cooking from scratch takes lots of time if you are going to cook more than one meal for dinner. It was during the late eighties with microwaves that I first came across parents offering different children different meals for dinner. And this was only possible because they were microwave meals.

I think they are being very rude to comment on what you feed your kid, it’s none of their business. But I also feel there’s a bit of stealth bragging in your post. “Oh I just don’t get this kids food thing, can’t understand why you would feed your kids chicken nuggets and fish fingers when mine loves calamari”. At home my kids eat a wide variety or foods, curry’s, partas, meats, veg, roasts, stews, etc but if I’m out for lunch they will probably get the beige option. The truth is it’s easy, they will eat it without complaint and I can’t be arsed with the mess that comes with a 1 year old and 3 year old eating something more exciting.