to think it's not child abuse to make the DC's....

[BigMomma3]

eat spanish style chickpea stew with wilted spinach . DD has made herself choke to get out of eating it and DS1 has been in tears at the table. I cannot believe the fuss they made! DS2 ate it all after a slap bit of gentle encouragement!!

DD screamed 'why can't we eat normal food like normal families?' When asked to elaborate she said we should eat mashed potatoes, chips, fishfingers and sausages etc (which we do eat as well as my veggie concoctions ).

I have also refused to buy their usual Cocopops and Cheerios and am making organic porridge with dessicated coconut and golden syrup for their breakfast and we were late for school this morning due to the amount of time it took for DS1 to take one spoonful . I am sick of them always wanting to eat crap (although even if I give them pizza or chips they usually don't eat much because they are constantly raiding the fridge). AIBU to take a stand or am I wasting my time??? They are aged between 7 & 12 BTW

dorset cereals BOAK
HOW much sugar ????

well, my mild curry would probably contain either chick peas or spinach, and yes we eat all the things listed on a regular basis, we also eat weird lentil-weavery stuff therefore they recognise all the green bits.

i have never forced anything down anyone

My mild curry contains chick peas, cashew nuts, potatoes, mustard seeds, creamed coconut and spinach. All my kids eat it. Mmmmm. Tis one of my favourite meals with a squeeze of lime.

I'd better go to bed before I'm tempted to wander down an snack.

That's terrible Kerry.
I remember a nasty incident with a tin of Rusian salad and my sister circa 1973. My parents were in the middle of a hige domestic and had failed to notice it had already been down and come back up.....

Groooossssss!

My mum made me eat broad beans. Because they were good for me. I told her that if I had to eat them, I would be sick. She told me to eat them. I was sick on my plate. She was horrified. My brother and sister got off awfully lightly on the fussiness thing as a result

My mum is lovely BTW. Not in any way sadisitic. But she does like broad beans...

Can't believe that people on this thread think that you should only be serving bland food to your kids - how are they supposed to broaden their palate? And does that mean the whole family's supposed to eat nursery food?

DS (5.5) will try most things - always has done - but can't do spicy yet, so am gradually building up the spice levels in chillis and curries. I'm a vegetarian and only cook vegetarian, but DH will sometimes cook meat, so he gets a reasonably broad range.

And if he can't or won't eat what I've cooked, he can have a cheese sandwich (without ham and honey - mwahahaha).

Kids are sensation junkies - why deliberately narrow their choices?

And I will never not ever eat a raw tomato - everyone's got a sticking point

well said crack whore
i like your 'junkies' link

Good morning!

Just off to make porridge for brekkie!

Oats and milk!
No added extras!!

I can't say that I'd eat spinach and chick peas in combination, and if any one tried to put coconut on my porridge I'd be sick as I can't stand coconut especially the dessicated stuff (hang over fron my Gran's angel delight with d.coconut on top in the 70s).

I sneak spinach into sauces which is the only way ds will eat it; but he is fairly good with veg. Porridge is best with maple syrup drizzled over, or with cream as well for a treat.

I put extra veg into chicken casseroles, pasta sauces and shepherd's pies, which means it gets eaten, and then do extra with the meal.

Mine would have to eat the spinach and chickpea- or just fill up with the rice or whatever is on the side.

Don't go in for force feeding, but otoh I don't go in for multiple choice menus either. What you see is what you get. And we do have a limited budget.

Mine love porridge though. And certainly have no preference for bland nursery food. Also, they spend their holidays in another country, catered for mainly by my parents, so have to cope with a totally different range of tastes if they want to survive at all.

They did both go through a fussy stage, between 4 and 7, but have now (at 9 and 12) mercifully come out at the other end. We just carried on cooking a varied diet as we had planned and tried not to get too upset or hurt.

I don't think serving non-child friendly food, or refusing to provide alternatives, causes food hang-ups in itself. I think the trouble starts when they children see you getting dreadfully upset over food issues: rushing out and cooking something else or force feeding them can have equally bad results imo: it's the stress that is bad for them.

I own an egg slicer. for real.

My DD, aged 5, suggested herself the other day, after a biz strop about eating something weird I had cooked, that we all (DH, her, myself) take it in turns to choose two meals per week.
We've been doing this for about a month now, and it's working great. She eats my chicken, lentil and sweet potato curry, and I eat her yorkshire puddings filled with sausages and gravy . I really can't recommend this enough as it has totally changed the way she eats.

However, one of her choices for next week is ambiguously titled 'buffet'...

Well, having a Spanish mother, me and my sisters grew up eating chickpea stew and wilted spinach with chickpeas pretty much every week. For me, that's real comfort food! In fact, I actually see spinach and chickpeas as being quintessentially toddler food. Yum yum.

I might cook spinach and chickpeas for supper, actually.

My ds (5) would love it! But we always eat varied food anyway.

Coconut in porridge is nice. We put anything in porridge, peanut butter, chopped apple and cinnamon, raisins and mixed spice, maple syrup, golden syrup, pumpkin butter, apple butter and on and on. Porridge is wonderful wonderful food!

FallenMadonna. I was the same with the Broad Beans and Liver as well!!!!

Yuck sounds nasty!

I try and give my kids healthy stuff - they both eat a lot of fruit. But the fact that they only want pasta every evening (macaroni cheese mainly) does not worry me too much. My mum used to feed us all kinds of crap; burgers, chips, crispy pancakes, mini kievs etc. When I started cooking for myself in my teens I was making salmon with rice and veg and I eat very healthily now. The kids whose mums fed them on lentils and beans were always round at our house begging for crisps and chocolate .

I think you can just give them as balanced a diet as possible and then hopefully when they are older they will have figured things out for themselves.

The idea of porridge and chickpeas with spinach just makes me want to eat cheeseburgers. Its like going on a diet. If you go from eating crap to eating just salads you are going to fail. Try to introduce things gradually and maybe use things they do like and do healthy versions.

coconut is just sooooo nasty-it sort of squeaks between your teeth!!

Porridge is very versatile but I'm afraid you have ruined it with golden syrup which is gack and dessicated coconut which tastes like chewy sand. How about blueberries (add a bit of honey to sweeten)? Banana? I have honey and currants in mine, DS just has honey, or we cometimes have it 'out' at a place that does it with raspberries cream brown sugar and toasted oats. Now THAT's yummy.

Re. mad veggie recipes, I try new things on DS occasionally, he is a hearty eater but only actually likes about 5 meals I cook , if I make something he's not keen on I tell him to eat it this once, since it's there and it's good for him, and I won't make it for him again. Keep things chilled. If he manages more than a few mouthfuls sometimes the taste grows on him so I can cook it again. But sometimes what I make really does taste shite. And it's good to accept that kids don't necessarily like the same taste sensations we do. I wouldn't cook alternative meals for DS but I appreciate that we don't necessarily like the same things, and that his tastes will change over time anyway so it's not worth getting freaked about. Cream used to make me retch but now I LOVE it.

And have you forgotten to bargain them down? Half a bowl of chickpeas and spinach in exchange for a kinder egg and half an hr on the Wii. (Sorry that's just a guess not sure that the going rate is for kids to eat mega veg)

My children will eat absolutely anything, including chicken's feet (in a chinese restaurant) lentils, chickpeas, rhubarb etc etc. It is my only triumph as a parent.

I achieved it by being a lazy bitch who refused to cook two meals - one for them, one for us - and having a golden rule "you re not allowed to say you don t like it until you ve tasted it". Mostly they liked it.

spinach is teh devil's work IMO. That and broadbeans. I would never ever feed it to my kids unless it was in something to hide the disgusting taste.