To give my daughter meals she probably won’t like?

[jey91]

My 4 year old DD is probably what’s labeled an extreme picky eater (but I don’t think arfid). She has always been a very picky eater despite my best efforts to do everything by the book. I tried my best not to pressure her, introduced a wide variety of food, always ate with her etc.

I have been generally feeding her meals I know she likes but encouraging her to try new foods which she very rarely does. There are some foods she will eat with no pressure (eg pasta where I can hide some veggies) and some foods she would only eat with the tv on and if I feed her. I know this isn’t good but I figured it’s better she has exposure to the food. Now that she’s turned 4 I’m getting really worried and fed up of it so I’m making her meals that o know she may not like and telling her she won’t be getting anything different until the next mealtime.

my issue is that it’s leading to huge meltdowns when she is hungry and doesn’t want what I’ve cooked. I stand my ground but it’s extremely difficult and stressful. For example, yesterday I gave her favourite pasta but I mixed in some meatballs. She refused to eat it and kept asking for snacks then after about an hour it turned into a total meltdown before eventually she agreed to have a few bites but she was hysterically crying for a long time before this. Before bed she was very hungry so I gave her a banana. Today was a similar situation where she kept asking for something else before having a total meltdown.

sorry this post is long but I want to know if anyone else has had similar experiences and if my approach is causing unnecessary distress for us all? I hired a feeding therapist about 18 months ago and it was no help at all. None of the standard tricks work with her as I feel there’s a strong sensory element. She gets very upset at new foods. I know all parents want their kids to eat healthy but I absolutely love cooking and baking, I’m a SAHM and spend my days making her and my 18mo meals and snacks that I think are healthy and it’s making life really difficult having to make 2/3 meals

Your turning food into a battleground don’t do that your just setting her up for life long food issues. Just give her the food that you know she will eat along side something new but never mix them all together because then you have just ruined a safe food for her and she won’t want to eat it again. You need to stop putting pressure on her and just leave her to it saying it’s this or nothing means that she will just choose to have nothing over something that she won’t eat.

I will adapt my meals to my children's preferences. That could involve serving things separately so they can help themselves to what they want, having sides they will definitely eat, offering toast if they don't want anything, and having fruit and yoghurt for pudding. Mealtimes shouldn't be a time of upset and feeding during tv watching will store up problems for later. I found the division of responsibility guidelines helpful but the Facebook group mealtime hostage was really really helpful at how to actually use the division of responsibility in my house. Offer a variety of nutritious foods including those you know she will eat and don't try to make her eat anything if she doesn't want to. Over time with food as a low stress social activity her palate should expand.

The other thing I would say is that in my experience both my kids' palates reset from about the age of two where they suddenly massively reduced the amount of foods they were happy to eat. My first loved jacket potatoes and pretty much anything else I put in front of her and then one week stopped eating them and I think it was literally because we hadn't had one in the previous week and the reset had happened. I think from then it's been a very gradual process of offering different foods including some new ones and taking their preferences seriously while also trying to incorporate some variety for the adults. So adults might have a tastier sauce and the kids have baked beans for example. So at four their palates were still very limited. School made a massive difference because they were encouraged to try new things and now jacket potatoes is the meal both children have several times a week at school, only because they were offered at school. And we can now have them at home again. What I'm saying is it is a gradual trajectory towards adulthood and I can see my kids on that trajectory now as they are several years in to it. Your DD is at the very early stages of that transition.They are still a little bit picky but progress has been made and their palates are gradually expanding. I am confident that they will develop into adults with a wide palate in adulthood just as I did. I was very picky as a child and teenager which I think is quite normal tbh and my parents never pressured me around food they just let me experience new foods in my own time.

Agreed. I have vivid memories of my Mum making me sit at the table for hours on end and finish my plate of freezing cold food. I used to hide it in the potted plants, in my pockets, sneak off to the toilet and spit it out, anything to clear my plate. I still rarely to eat at her house, thirty years later. Horrible memories. I won't spend Christmas Day there either because the one year we did she angrily berated my youngest for not clearing her (huge) plate and sulked for the rest of the day about it.

Mine are both fairly picky - they won't eat anything in sauce. So I make meatballs/chicken/pasta plain (and add the sauce for DH and I) and just pop a bit of the sauce on the side for them to try every time. They never do, but I feel like I've done my part in offering. The only rule in our house is that all vegetables have to be eaten. They're both very healthy, happy girls, and very sporty, so clearly getting enough calories.

As I said previously I never force her to eat anything, she’s free to go and come but I say I’m not making anything different but she can have a snack later. But I don’t see how “they have to eat their veggies” is different? That’s forcing them to eat something they may hate? I never force her to eat anything she doesn’t want to

Why force her to eat something she doesn’t like. That’s the way eating disorders start. Would you eat something you wouldn’t like?

Respectfully, the OP is not force-feeding her child. I get this is an emotive subject, and not everyone would approach it in the same way, but this is a parent clearly struggling, and seeking advice. As is clear from the thread, there isn't one perfect solution and what works for some people won't work for everyone.

Not sure if this is helpful!
My DD has been very fussy since the moment I weaned her. I found it so stressful and would sometimes be close to tears myself (i used to have an ED so i dont know if thats related) When she was 2 she seemed to exist on porridge, breadsticks and petite filous.

when she was primary age had quite a small rotation of meals and we tried one new meal a week. She had to try a new thing, but could have eg toast if she really didnt like it. And She honestly had the same packed lunch every day for about 10 years!

When she was about 11 or 12 we got to the stage that if we were cooking something eg chilli that we knew she wouldn't like she could cook herself something else. If we have an Indian take away (a few times a year) she has to make something else.

Shes 19 and at uni now, and in the last few years has started eating avocado, salads, sweet potatoes, omlettes etc and cooks a decent variety for herself.
(DS has always eaten just about everything - apart from salad- from the get go)

My DS had 6 safe foods until he was about 7 years old. There was no real advice or understanding back then but we just went with our instincts and allowed him his safe foods while gently introducing new ones on a separate plate. No pressure to eat the new food, lots of praise if he did. He’s now a strapping 22 year old who eats anything and everything and loves nothing better than experiencing new foods and flavours. A spicy curry being a favourite. We do occasionally tease him about the days when he would run out of the room if we put a piece of chicken on a side plate near his safe foods.

If the option is eat or go hungry, then yes, you are forcing her.

Adults don't have to eat food they don't like - so why should children?

Your daughter sounds very similar to how mine was at your age, I really feel your pain and went through many similar debates about the best way to approach it and pretty sure I posted on here a few times desperate for advice! We ended up doing a food therapy course when she was 5, which had a lot of advice like food chaining, having a tasting plate, serving meals family style etc all of which we tried to implement with limited success. On the course she seemed to be willing to do everything the therapists asked of her but we could never replicate that success at home.

On ND - I remember most of the other children on the course were a few years older and a lot of them were being diagnosed as autistic. I thought it was interesting, fast forward a year or so later and we started putting the pieces together that my daughter is autistic (age around 6, she's now 7) and looking back of course her eating was the first big clue that we missed! So not saying that's the case for your daughter but it can be a big part of an ND profile if there are sensory challenges. Looking back, I'm really glad we ended up falling on the side of not making food a battleground and forcing her to eat things she didn't like. Sadly she's still very limited in what she eats, and underweight and we're struggling to get it taken seriously by her paediatrician because she isn't actually losing weight. But I have hope that things will gradually improve as she gets older. Best of luck,

She likes porridge and/or yogurt for breakfast, i.e. sloppy food.
How about soup for dinner, with all the things she won't eat liquidised ?

I made my eldest seperate meals for years. Well pretty much his whole life. He ate really well until about 18 months when he had a really bad stomach bug, then refused saucey foods, then he turned into a beige food only guy, at one point it was breadsticks and milk! Very gradually it got better in secondary school but to this day, aged 18 he will not eat rice or mince meat, but has developed a taste for a chicken madras. Looking back i think a lot of it was sensory / texture, as he's possibly on the autism spectrum. At times there were tears from him and me but I decided it was better he ate something then nothing and I couldn't face every meal being a battle ground. Over time there will be some meals everyone can eat together.

You are where I was 30 years ago with DS. I used to beat myself up about it no end and I do understand how stressful it is. Somehow we got through it - peer pressure helped when he started school - and he is now a healthy six footer who loves food and eats anything!
One thing that really helped was buying a set of divided plates. Although he was never really bothered about foods touching each other, he likes the idea of having them separated if that makes sense. Good luck!

You keep saying you give her a snack later so she doesn't go to bed hungry. A snack is not a meal. Hunger arrives pretty quickly after a snack. She would be starving by breakfast time.

Just have some serves of her favourite pasta in the freezer and heat them up to give them to her if she doesn't like what is on offer. Ease up on both of you.

This stage is not going to last forever.

Thank you for the kind comments and advice, I really appreciate it. I know I worded my original post quite badly but there’s nothing like the internet to make you feel like an awful parent! But I’m reminding myself it’s a misunderstanding as I know myself. I would never withhold food from my daughter and I would never serve her something I know she hates and say that’s all she’s getting. I tried this method for 2 days and hated it and that’s why I posted here, but even then I served her foods she sometimes eats and in the pasta example, the pasta she always eats, the meatballs she sometimes eats, so I mixed them knowing she may not like that. But this is a method I’d heard of and was even advised by the feeding therapist, similar to food chaining but obviously isn’t right for us. My thought was that if I never expose her to new foods or ways of eating it, she won’t ever want to try it. Like all parents I’m just doing my best and I can clearly see everyone does it differently

the most reassuring thing for me to hear is that she will grow out of it so thank you for all those comments and I will keep an eye out for any signs of ND.

If your daughter knows other foods are going to be on offer she will play the game to get what she wants. If the only food offered is simply that she will eat it. Look at 3rd world countries and historically. Children eat what is offered.
Children (and animals) WILL eat when they’re hungry. Stop pandering. Keep it simple, if she doesn’t want it…. Finish and leave it alone. Don’t offer food again.

..............the most reassuring thing for me to hear is that she will grow out of it so thank you for all those comments

She may never grow out of it though.
If it's ARFID it's there for life.

@jey91 you refer a lot to 'snacks' and your dc wanting not to eat their meal but asking for snacks. What kind of 'snacks' are you offering? Some slices of apple and batons of raw carrot with hummus? Oat cakes with cheese? Or are snacks all UPF easy to eat, made palatable with sugar and salt? What is the difference between the snacks she wants and the regular food you are offering.

If all the snacks were veg crudites with a variety of dips, or fruit and yogurt. Then why not serve that, alongside the blandest pasta and veg sauce, or the pizza.

If the snacks your dc likes are crisps, try making cheese crisps. If they are tangy try mini silverskin onions or olives. I have one dc who loved olives at 4, and one who hated them.

None of this is meant as a criticism. But I grew up in an era where snacks were not a thing. We had breakfast, lunch and tea. Maybe an apple mid morning or after school, and maybe a milky drink before bed.

Also my own experience growing up was that I hated 'wet' food. No gravy, no creamy sauce (fish in mushroom sauce was my nightmare). So paella was fine (all dry-ish ingredients) but risotto was terrible. And I still have a thing where I don't like my food groups touching each other... I like a neat pile of potato, a distinct portion of meat, a side dish of veg. And I've learnt to like gravy!

For our SEN DD, the plates with sections were really helpful as nothing touched each other. We just kept putting out different foods to try and the only rule was the food needed to stay on the plate (she wasn’t allowed to push it off the plate onto the table). But we didn’t ask her to try the food, it was just there on the plate if she wanted to.

We found just serving different foods a few times then lead to her trying it now and again.

We don’t do puddings in our household and the only evening snacks are plain oatcakes so there’s nothing appealing to eat other than dinner which I think helped us.

I've had this with both of my children at various stages (one ASD, one not)
My advice would be just let it go. Don't have the battle. I gave veggies and salad etc in a separate bowl and just gently encouraged them to have a little try. But the bulk of their meals, was what I knew they'd eat. They'd cook some things with me, that helped. And when they started to understand about healthy foods, they wanted to try more. By about aged 10 they both improved dramatically. My DS with ASD still prefers beige foods, but will also eat loads of vegetables and fruit (salad still has to be in a separate bowl though) Try not to stress over it.

Hi OP,

I sympathise.

I have an 8 year old and we’ve had issues with his eating from when he was about 2 years old, all as a result of him having a lot of allergies from when he was a baby.

He’s been under a dietician since he was 6 months old.

He has a very restricted diet and I used to find it so challenging and I found mealtimes so stressful and I would end up in tears quite frequently because I was so desperate for him to eat.

The one thing the dietician said was that I must not make meal times a battle and that anytime I put any kind of pressure on him to eat something he doesn’t want then it just makes things worse.

Fast forward to now and he still probably only has about 10 ‘safe’ meals that he will happily eat and the dietician is happy with that.

At one point she said to me that she doesn’t care if he has toast for all three of his meals as long as he’s taking a multi-vitamin, he’s growing well, his bloods are fine (they’re checked 6 monthly), and that he enjoys eating.

She said that when it comes to children with this kind of eating issue she would expect them to achieve between 4-5 “new foods” each year and that as long as we aim for that, then she’s happy for him to continue with just his safe foods.

It does mean he tends to have different meals to the rest of us at times but that then gives us the opportunity to say to him, “Do you want to try a spoonful of what we are having?” - and sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t. If he doesn’t we don’t make an issue if jt, and if he doesn’t we praise him massively, even if he spits it out or says he doesn’t like it. We also wrote down a list of all the “new foods” he tries (even if he didn’t like it) which he enjoys adding to as he knows it will be passed on to his dietician and he feels proud about being able to show her that he tried something else. So we try to turn to turn the process into something exciting and rewarding for him as opposed to making him feel pressured.

Christmas Day was amusing as we all sat there with our lovely traditional turkey dinner whilst our son enjoyed his peanut butter sandwiches and a packet of crisps 🤣 He did try a honey glazed carrot though so that went on the list!!

So that’s how we currently manage it and it’s going fine. His latest blood results were fine (although he has required iron supplements in the past) and we keep an eye on his weight and height percentiles (which he loves) and the Dietician checks in with us every 6-9 months just to see how we are getting on.

She said that being realistic we are unlikely to see any noticeable changes in his eating until he goes to Secondary school where he will be more influenced by his peers and see them trying new foods in the cafeteria etc, and so until then just keep going with his safe foods, taking vitamins, monitoring his growth, offering new foods but expecting them to be refused, aim for achieving approximately 5 new safe foods a year, and just keep meal times as stress free and as enjoyable as possible.

We had what I think was a sensory issue with harder foods when younger. It meant most vegetables, some fruits, meat and other things wouldn’t be eaten. Whilst I could hide within dishes, I wanted to work on the core issue. I’d put a little bit of no-go food on the plate each meal and eventually her variety increase over time. It did take a good 1-2 years for the majority of foods. I also took her to the cheese counter at the supermarket for the samples and I’d say she’s probably eaten more varieties of cheese than quite a few adults.

We have food restriction issues when she travels. I just ensure we can obtain pasta (Hello Italy!!) and take lots of snacks

If you know she isn't going to like it, isn't going to eat it, then refuse to give her something different, you're restricting her food, because the 'choice' she has isn't really a choice, is it?

She isn't being wilfull. She has told you she doesn't like it. She wants snacks because they fill her tummy and she's hungry and they taste nice and have a texture she can tolerate.

All this is teaching her is that dinner time is a miserable experience where she'll be forced to eat things that make her feel uncomfortable, or be hungry.

Mine all have ASD. They like and dislike things that the others don't like. I compromise by saying 'this has mushrooms in it, DD3 - you can pick them out. This has kidney beans, DD2 - you can pick them out.' I wouldn't put, for example, Worcester sauce in something because it can't be picked out.

It is frustrating. But it doesn't get better by saying 'this or nothing'.

Keep trying in kind ways.
Ask her to just TRY the new food on her plate.
It is good enough to taste everything on the plate.
One day she will like something she did not like last time.

Water always available at meal times is important.
Do you all sit down together? Mirroring meal habits and seeing others enjoy new foods encourages confidence.

Does she like to drink plain milk?
If she is hungry, half a glass of milk or a square of cheese can fill her hunger.