To resign myself to cooking different meals?

[countingdownforseptember]

I’m not even convinced this is the solution! But I do need some help as my children are driving me bananas.

I have a four and a half year old, who starts school in September. Behaviour has been a bit tricky of late and after four years of eating most things he’s suddenly and inexplicably become very fussy, refusing foods he’s eaten for years with odd claims. Previous favourites like bolognaise and chilli are rejected because of onions (!) the chilli is apparently too spicy ,.. it’s always too hot (even when it’s stone cold!) you get the idea.

In fairness to him he does eat veg but he’ll often only eat the veg. For example, the other day he had salmon, half a baked potato, corn on the cob and broccoli and he ate the broccoli and corn but I had to bag him to eat the potato and salmon and most didn’t get eaten. Then he’s hungry later because of course the veg isn’t filling!

My DD is two in August and is much more fussy. She won’t really eat much fruit or veg at all but will eat it when mixed into casseroles or bolognaise but now DS is refusing those!

I’m finding it a bit stressful as their diet is important to me. They both go to nursery three days a week and eat well there, though DD is hit and miss, but this week I have them five days a week out of seven and I need some ideas and help.

So onions are out (!) both will eat peas … any suggestions?

DD was picky about spag bol, casseroles, chilli, even pizza. It took a long time to realise she doesn't like cooked tomato and still doesn't aged 27!

She went off gravy and stews/casseroles after a dinner lady put gravy on her cucumber! This lasted for about 12 years.

I didn't exactly cook two different meals. If we had spag bol, dd had pasta and cheese. If we had cottage pie, I kept a bit of mince aside and made it into a burger. Similarly chicken or beef casserole - dd had plain chicken or a chop/piece of steak (small).

Creamy/white sauces became acceptable from about age 10. By 20ish she ate anything, except cooked tomato.

They have likes and dislikes. DD doesn't like beans/pulses/houmous, mushrooms either. DS doesn't much like mashed potato, chocolate mousse, anything fruited (buns, scones, etc).

Fortunately mine were good with fruit and veg and dd would always eat plain things like a plaice fillet or lamb chop.

I never went down the beige route. They always had proper food and there was always a fruit bowl. No snacky stuff.

Funny enough, when the kids were small and kicking up stinks about veg, they loved vegetable broth ( Its an Irish thing ) they would eat bowls of it one after the other . Irish veg broth with made with dried veg - pearl barley, split peas and peas, along with the fresh veg - carrots, leeks , soup celery and parsley so I always had a pot of that made and stashed in the fridge for those when all else fails days

I stopped eating onion and garlic after realizing they were the cause of my bloating. I make the same meals but miss them out and don’t notice they are missing tbh.

i cook separate meals, as have a child undergoing AFRID diagnosis. He will starve instead of eating and has poor growth. It’s a pain in the arse but it’s better than the alternative for us.

I think it’s because it’s come on very suddenly and it’s coincided with some other difficult behaviour, it’s hard to know how much is a genuine dislike and how much is a general sort of obtuseness which unfortunately is a trend at the moment! There’s a lot of dicking around, refusing to eat until the food is taken away then a meltdown, then refuses to eat again.

Meanwhile I can only get DD to eat peas sometimes.

At that age my son wouldn’t eat anything with onions in. My husband (chef) insisted he could dice them so small that they wouldn’t be noticed, but we just had a very painful meal while DS picked out every minuscule bit. Instead I started leaving the onion in large pieces so that the flavour was there but when dishing up I could extract all of it from his & I ate it.

if you can get him to eat things like bolognese again could you just mix DD’s veg into hers?

All I can say is, they can grow out of it. I still remember DS painstakingly picking onion out of his bolognese, and dd refusing to eat sandwiches (which was a nightmare for packed lunches) and they are both total foodies as adults.
I think it’s a case of trying to find the balance between pandering and making sure they get a balanced diet. I remember making pasta sauce with loads of veg in and blending it, putting it in the freezer portioned up so some nights when I was doing pasta they’d still get pasta but with the “tomato” sauce and we would have the bolognese. So I wouldn’t cook separate meals but I’d adapt things.
It’s all very well saying “eat it or go hungry” but I’d find that more stressful.

OP, if you have a nutri bullet or something similar, onions and garlic can be pureed into a cream very easily.
Quarter the onions, add garlic, a little olive oil and whizz it up.

Then pour it into a zip lock, flatten and freeze. You can break off pieces to pop into dishes.
Incredibly handy, all the flavour, completely invisible.

I add lots of herbs to mine.
Speeds up cooking under pressure hugely, be it soup, pasta dishes, curries or stews.

You know you can freeze cooked rice OP and just use what you need for each meal? Make life easier by batch cooking and freezing portions. You don't need to cook from scratch every night if that's what you're doing.

I'm not op but I'm the one with the fried rice.

Fried rice is twice-cooked rice. This means it's already been cooked, cooled, and cooked again. You really mustn't batch cook fried rice and reheat it, it's a food poisoning risk. Believe me, I'm from a culture that eats rice everyday, it's a big no-no, you could make your children very ill.

Edit to say - I have discovered batch cooking I promise you, we batch cook all sorts of other things.

Dried onion granules are a good way to get the flavour without the texture issue, if that’s the main problem.

We had this around 4/5 too and annoyingly the younger sibling copied. I worked really hard trying all the suggestions above and in the end just decided that daily battles were stressful for all of us.

My children ate frequent beige food ( with roast dinners , pasta pesto and peas plenty of sandwiches) until they were 11 and 8 . I cooked a separate adult meal. It was a pick your battles attitude.

I’ve now been able to persuade them to try lots of different things and the older one loves Thai and Indian curries chilli spaghetti bol burgers ( all things that would have been refused) .

I think not making mealtimes a battle was right for us ( covid , stressful jobs etc) , they never starved !

It's summer. I'd make one cooked meal regardless of who likes what on that day.

Anyone who doesn't want that can have cheese or hummus, with bread, tomatoes, beetroot, cucumber etc.

No way would I cook two things. They won't starve.

Going through this atm with 7 year old DD. Has never liked pasta which is usually a winner for kids, says she likes rice but will pick at it. Hates bolognese, won't touch the mildest chilli. Used to eat pepper sticks and hummus, says she's gone off them. Her only saving grace is she eats peas and brocoli, but eff knows what we put with them apart from a roast because she won't do anything else!

Half the school menu she won't touch, so at least 2 days a week it was jacket potato with cheese and beans. Did beans on toast for us yesterday, and now she says she doesn't like beans, and went to the toilet to spit it out 🤦‍♀️ She scraped it all off the toast and just ate that.

I went through the school menu with her and she begrudgingly chose cheese sandwich because everything else was blergh. Then told DH she doesn't like sandwiches anymore.

No bloody problems with nuggets and pizza though!!!! (apart from when we went to zizzis and she refused to eat the plain kids pizza because she didn't like it 🙄) How DH and I haven't torn our hair out yet I'll never know!

I was really tired when I read this thread last night so must have mistakenly thought the OP was doing fried rice. I'm not suggesting freezing fried rice and didn't post that. A batch of cooked rice can be frozen then you can fry what you need for a meal leaving the rest in the freezer until required.

I found the most effective strategy - also the toughest - is not to react. Make healthy food that you like. Serve up. If they do not eat then clear all plates away at the end of the meal, without comment. We had a blanket rule: you don't need to eat but nothing will be available until the next scheduled meal. If there was pudding, everyone was offered pudding regardless of having eaten the main. In the same small portion everyone got. No punishment but no special meals.

The problem with special meals - for you - is that you will become quite upset when the meal is refused. It's very hard not to become emotional if relatively expensive food is turned down when it was purchased and prepared just for that one child.

We always cooked around stated dislikes if it wasn't a staple food and did not disrupt good nutrition. No olives? Fine. No aubergine? Tougher, but I can do that. No onion? Much tougher but we'll just try leeks or add garlic.

No eggs? That's a staple protein for us. Let's try a quiche rather than fried eggs and see how it goes (they ate it and still love dishes like that).

Mainly, children will eat when hungry and fussy phases will come and go.

Obviously if they are losing weight or refusing all meals, you absolutely need a deeper look at the issue and a different strategy. Arfid exists and some SN can make it near impossible to eat a 'typical' diet.

Anyway, all the best with it. It's not easy to detatch emotionally when it's about your dc eating, I know.