fussy eaters or weak parents

[Alegra8176]

I was wondering to what extend people allow their kids to be spoiled when it comes to food. I keep seeing friends with "fussy eaters " who preparing special meals for them or keep cooking just one or 2 things but my favourite is when you ask the little brat what they want and they say I don't want that 10 min later. I can't understand why adults have no power over a toddler....what are they thinking- thr kid won't eat for 3 weeks I till they die or what. Just put the meal away and serve it later ...
In my head this is an issue only in the western world. If you look at kids in developing countries where you don't know when your next meal will be there is no such things as fussy eaters
Obviously here I'm not including small babies who try food for the first time and have no knowledge of any flavours apart from milk...

Same! Exactly the same here.

Just a tip, Quorn was a brilliant & unexpected introduction for my daughter. It’s really high protein, no unexpected nasty bits like there often is in meat so they’re always the same and dead easy to chew (& quick to cook!)
Quorn southern bites & Quorn burgers are now my DD’s safe foods. The burgers especially are amazing as they’ve such a low saturated fat content. Good luck!

It really isn't the brag that some people seem to think it is 'they can eat it or starve'. Children are people too they know what they do and don't like.
Anyway as pp said when your little brat is older please do come back and tell us how it went at around 2yo when they ate everything then 2 weeks later would only lick an apple and eat 3 crumbs of toast before refusing anything else.

Children with ARFID are the minority though. Most fussy eaters don’t have ARFID and will widen their range of foods in time or with a little bit of support.

I do think though that Mumsnet forgets that there are parents out there who are genuinely have poor parenting skills and/or can’t be bothered, and who will chuck their kids crisps as the easy option instead of lovingly preparing an organic feast.

My DH and I are generally healthy eaters and it’s extremely rare we have any processed meals, they’re 95% homemade (and both good cooks if I do say so myself!). My DS are everything up until 2.5years. We eat together as a family- or at least DS and I when DH works late. Even so, he suddenly developed a fussiness to the majority of meals we have. Luckily he still loves fruits and salad, and is okay with most veg, breakfasts and lunch stuff, but actual meals he’ll sometimes not even touch, or only eat a little of. He doesn’t get alternatives or lots of snacks beforehand. On the odd occasion we have something spicy I know he won’t like and give him a beige type meal, he’ll scoff it up.

I lived in a fairly poor area of Nicaragua for 4 months and spent time with local families. Some of the children were still very fussy with meals too. Would only eat rice and not the veg or meat from their meals, and would often be given junk food instead. The (albeit very rich) Greek children I nannied for were also quite fussy and what they liked changed constantly.

Surely you give your children what you eat. Sometimes they will wolf it up sometimes they won't like it. However, adults don't like things, so this is the opportunity to find out your tastes.
That said, if you only give your children beige "crap" they are never going to experience real and delicious food.
When my elder niece was about 9 months old and was staying for Christmas (with her parents) at my parents, my sister apologised to me (not quite sure why) about the garlic breath because she had given my niece leftover boeuf bourguignon for lunch the day after she had had a dinner party. Please clutch your pearls here!
A little boy, I looked after for some years, was very keen on salami (called lami) from age 2. His mother was a health visitor.
Growing up my sister hated sprouts, but was invited to eat one every time we had them. She ended up loving them. I never liked turkey, but my mother only stopped insisting that I had a slice of breast (dry and yucky, although the leg meat was ok-ish) until I was 26.
Horses for courses.

Which part is nonsense? I think maybe I could have been clearer. Obviously with a lot of kids, they're going to resist eating new things regardless. I can empathise with parents who are at their wits end trying to encourage their children to try something new. I'm not even saying it's mostly parental.

I'm just saying that the food environment has an impact on average, right? While I agree some amount of extreme picky eating is prevalent everywhere, average levels of resistance to new foods vary between and within cultures. See for example... Cross-national differences in child food neophobia: A comparison of five European countries - ScienceDirect

The number of children with autism has increased & so the number of children with associated disorders such as AFRID. Eating disorders & sensory disorders are strongly associated with autism.

The child mortality rate in third world countries is many, many times higher than this country so I guess the autistic, AFRID kids just die.

One child (eldest) eats almost anything, except mushrooms. Youngest is a fussy eater. I manage to get her to eat enough of the healthy things, but she's much harder to take out for dinner than my ds. Stepdaughter was a fussy eater and, as an adult, pretty much gives most things a try and eats a good variety. So I have hope that dd may outgrow it at some point. Although she's ND, so I can't guarantee it.

I don’t need to read you silly little links I’m living through this right now! I know through my own experience that what you’re saying is nonsense!

I agree with what you’re saying but just to clarify, is not that there’s more autistic kids necessarily it’s that it’s being recognised more than it was. Plus the population has increased dramatically over the previous 50 years

Oh bore off.

I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT ARFID SO STOP SHOUTING AT ME.

Don't come on threads talking about ignorance if you can’t be bothered to read posts properly and comprehend them.

My post was about the children who aren’t the exception, not those who are.

Power? Go and read about body autonomy and how to nurture positive relationships with food.

There is evidence that it's not just increase in diagnosis - there is a genuine increase in autism.

I am absolutely sick to the back teeth of these threads

I really wish it was that easy to not be 'fussy'

Yes. In my case the power of the parent to make me sit at the table until I'd eaten what they wanted. No matter how much I cried or heaved.
And hiding hated foods in liked foods doesn't work either

I think some parents presume what their DC don’t like, even though their DC has never tried the foods in question. Then makes the children think they don’t like it. I heard it most days when working in food retail “I don’t think you will like it” said by parents to DC, when they took something off the shelf.

That behaviour is making the DC into fussy eaters

As a kid, I had a friend who didn’t like apple pie. She said she didn’t like apple pie. My DM asked her has she tried it. No was the answer. We gave her a tiny bit to eat and she loved it.

My parents gave me loads of food to try as a kid and I loved it. A few foods such as lambs liver and olives, I didn’t like as a small child. Tried later on and love them

I love Brussel Sprouts. But don’t like them if they are overcooked, grey and mushy. I bet some may only had sprouts if they were the above. They should be bright green. Also frozen sprouts are awful.

Fussy eating in young children is biologically normal. They’re ‘programmed’ to be suspicious of new foods to help stop them from poisoning themselves.

Obviously it’s a spectrum with differences from person to person, and there are things parents can do to help the issue or to make it worse - but fundamentally, it’s not abnormal behaviour.

I realise that this is totally anecdotal but the 2 extreme fussy eaters I know as dc of friends that I have known from when they were born both turned out to have nut allergies.

I am fussy in some ways and have ibs.

I do suspect that in many cases if you get severe pain and discomfort after eating it can result in a fussy eater - even if the fussiness seems illogical.

Try having a child with multiple confirmed food allergies, then come back to me about picky eaters. My youngest looks like a picky eater as there is only a limited number of things she can have, eswhen we go out.

My son is autistic and will have an uncontrollable gag reflux. Before diagnosis several professional mother types, including my own, did their level best. Paediatricians advice was not to force it. He's a man now, well older teen, trying things under his own terms. Try being less judgey. I'm assuming your child will read, study, excel at all subjects, be interested in travel and politics, I'll see you then.

But you have no way if knowing if a child that is "fussy" might have Autism or ARFID or some other perfectly reasonable explanation as to why they don't eat many foods.

I'm not sure what the purpose behind judgmental threads like this is. However, if you are the parent of a fussy eater, you probably really wish you weren't. If you aren't, then why care so much about what other people's kids eat?

What a silly comment.