To give DS2 the foods I know he will eat???

[TheLadyEvenstar]

For example,

any given meal could be any of the following...

egg, ham, wotsits and cubes of cheese

beans, bread, mash and cheese

Mash, Gravy,and sweetcorn

chicken, sweetcorn, mash and gravy

Jacket potato, cheese and beans

spaghetti, cheese

bread, ham, cheese and beans

Curry and jacket potato

stew and mash

casserole and mash

(you get the idea he likes mash and cheese yet??)

HE does have some Veg but not a huge amount, he eats some fruit but he is a fussy eater to a certain extent, basically he likes what he likes.

I have had 5 people tell me in the last 3 weeks that i should not be giving him the food listed above, but I would prefer he ate a meal that i know he will like and enjoy rather than battle with him over meal times.

so AIBU??

never ever tell anyone what you feed your child. if they are round your house and notice fair enough if they are rude u can boot them out.

btw - i recently discovered a potato ricer they are wonderful no more lumpy mash. and if he loves mash and cheese did u see the first hairy bikers mums prog they had a yum looking cheese pie recipe which was essentially cheese and mash.

i stressed with my DS used to "hide" broccoli in the petit filous i know i know whole florets who do i think I'm kidding. they like what they like.

i remember being force fed broad beans when little not nice little ones but huge old leathery ones with all their skins on. it makes me gag just the memory.

YANBU thats not a bad diet my son at 9 would eat Gregg's chicken pasties ,apples and oranges that was it.

YANBU - My understanding is that it's completely normal for children of this age to reject a fairly large proportion of foods. It's nature's way of stopping them poisoning themselves while they're too little to differentiate between food which is good to eat, and food which might harm them!

Apparently they tend to reject a set 'proportion' of food - say (randomly)50%. They will sometimes reject a particular food up to 17 times before (sometimes) deciding to try it.

My answer to this is to offer as wide a range of foods as possible, coaxing them gently to just try a taste. They'll still reject a proportion - but 50% of 30 different foods is still greater than 50% of a much narrower and 'safer' range of 12 or 15 different foods.

I have taken this approach with my three DC's and it's been very successful. I wouldn't ask them (ever) to eat something that made them feel sick or they found repellent, but I have encouraged them to try foods that they say 'yuck' to (like cabbage, sprouts etc). I also give them what DH and I eat, unless we're having a hot curry!

I admit that I've had meals where it's been very demoralising - that I've ended up binning a plate load of food, and had them whining they're hungry an hour later, but it doesn't happen that often now. I do think that if you're going to take this approach you have to be quite determined about it, and not worry about your children going hungry every now and again. I think also there are some children it would be very difficult to do this with.

However, for us this has been a success as my DC's (4, 6 and 10) are now all very adventurous eaters. They eat all veg, including cabbage, artichokes, avocados, asparagus, also are happy to eat raw fish and sushi. They love all cheese, including the very smelly varieties and blue cheese. They like curry if it's not too hot, and will eat all types of fish, including squid. It's made life a whole lot easier for us - but we did have to invest a lot of effort to get to this point.

Would want to add, what motivated me to take this approach was seeing how the 'only give them the foods you know they'll eat' strategy has had on my nephews and nieces, now in their 20's and VERY fussy. They only eat peas and sweetcorn, chicken breast, burgers, white bread, cheese, pizza - kiddie food basically. I worry about their cancer risk as adults, that they've failed to develop a taste for a wide range of fruit and vegetables and that their diet is very high in saturated fats and refined carbohydrates, something that doesn't matter much for toddlers, who need high energy food, but is a bit of a disaster for adults.

I know that some people are very fussy as children and then happy to eat anything as adults. Maybe this is the case for most people, not sure. I just wanted to increase the chance of my kids enjoying a very varied diet in adulthood.

Whoops - sorry for the essay!

Sounds like a good diet to me. My DS, 23 months, is currently going through a fussy stage and he will only eat the same evening meals but I don't think they are that bad, but according to certain family members, ok 1 family member, I should be trying to wean him off these. Btw it is jacket potato cheese and beans, chicken curry with rice, chilli con carne with rice, spag bol or pasta and sauce, beans on toast (if i'm in a hurry) and cheese in general, had just started to eat fish fingers and trying bits of fish in batter, likes baby corn too. He used to eat all veg but now hardly touches it. I keep offering, if he doesn't eat it, I don't make a fuss. I have started grating, cutting it up very small into his sauces.

I posted it on the food forum and apparently I shouldn't be 'giving in' to what he wants. They give their children what they have and it they don't eat it, they go without. I can't do that. If he doesn't eat his food when we occasionally try him on a different meal, he will always be offered fruit and yoghurt after, which he sees as a treat anyway, particularly strawberries.

He eats fish pies...he would do they have mash and sweetcorn and cheese lol, he eats corned beef hash, again all his favs in there.

I too can't force him to eat foods he doesn't like. Carrots are a definate no no, he is just like me in that sense. He eats most veg, in fact more than his 11 yr old brother. Its just the fact that when i give him something different i will always put a couple of things on the plate that i know he will eat, for some reason this makes him try the other foods....and as long as it is something i eat he will as well. He loves liver with mash and onions, Kidneys, liver and bacon casseroles etc as long as there is mash on the plate lol.

Butternut squash, swede, parsnips etc are enjoyed by him as well.

I didn't tell people what i feed him,it was people who saw by being in my home and they felt the need to comment this coming from a persons whose son is over weight and only eats chips!!!!

TLE I think you're doing about the same as me with my DS (2.1)! ALthough he does eat fruit, thank goodness, and has decided now that peas are acceptable so long as I stick them all on a fork as a pea lollipop (he also eats beans and broccoli but that's it for veg)

At this age they should still be eating a fair bit of fat anyway so I wouldn't fret too much about that.
Salt is one thing that bothers me because DS's out and out favourite lunch is rice crackers (not ceiling tiles) with salmon and avocado dip as a spread - he'd have it every meal if I let him, but he's restricted to no more than 2x a week because of the salt content of the crackers. And boy does he love crisps! (he has some of mine, not a whole packet to himself)

DS is apparently very healthy and although I do worry about the relative lack of vegetables and vegetable fibre in his diet, it doesn't seem to affect him obviously at this point. As you say, getting him to eat is the important bit!

If it makes you feel any better, one of my friends had a DS who would ONLY eat spaghetti hoops - for every meal. Nothing else. He would have a face-down-on-the-floor tantrum if anything else was offered.

TW, lets not go there with tinned spaghetti pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeee lol i have to hide it because if i put it in a cupboard he can reach he wants to eat a tin in one go lol

ha ha ha at the person who saw fit to comment having a child who was overweight and only eats chips! Bloody hypocrite.

God I wish DS would eat mash - or any form of potato other than crisps - he only eats chips if they are covered in tartare sauce, and then only the first few - after that they are just vehicles for the tartare sauce. He does love olives and capers and coleslaw though...
He will eat homegrown raw baby carrots but not cooked ones and not shop-bought big ones.
I've tried to chop veggies up really small and hide them in things - it works with onions and garlic but not mushrooms, beans (other than green ones) or peppers. They get picked out and handed to me with an "urrr!" noise.

yanbu, your kids, your choices.

Still, it doesn´t seem balanced.I would say every meal needs protein (fish, meat, pulses or egg), carbs (potatoes, rice, pasta)and fresh veg (even if it´s just a few slices of raw carrot or cucumber).

Stick with your plan, by all means, but try to introduce something new every now and then.

The meal of ham, egg, wotsits and cheese sounds like a recipe for obesity (all salty and fatty, not a vitamin in sight)

Gosh, I am judgy today....

Would also say, that if you keep bribing asking them to try just a little taste of new foods, keep asking even if they keep saying no, well eventually they usually eat it and accept it. I have done this with my kids and it's worked in almost every instance. You do have to keep offering though, and accept that it might take a lot of offers. Do think it's important to make it not stressy though at meal times, and not to get exasperated with them.

I am amazed at the range of food your DS is eating compared to mine at the same age so I wouldn't worry at all.

My DS was worse at that age and I have wept many tears over his lack of eating. The thing is he's just not that interested in food. I got lots of 'helpful' advice from other mothers such as 'don't give him dessert' if he hasn't eaten his main meal but what they never seemed to grasp was that he wasn't bothered about dessert. In fact he wasn't bothered about food generally. If I said 'no dessert' (and we were talking about a yoghurt or an apple here) he'd just shrug his shoulders and that was that. He wasn't bothered.

Eventually I realised that in fact he would eat something out of all the major food groups so I just made sure that he had a 'balanced' diet by his standards even if it didn't really consitute a conventional meal ifyswim. For the past couple of years his main meal each day was various combinations of cumberland sausage, sweetcorn and pasta and fruit (there isn't a fruit he doesn't eat oddly enough!). However now he is 9 I think he's realised eating the same thing every day is really boring and is starting to branch out more.In the past 12 months he has started eating grilled chicken and actually ate a whole slice of pepperoni pizza the other day after asking if he could try some off his brother's plate (DS2 is 4 years younger and eats everything under the sun!!). I should also say he is a really healthy child who has only had one day off school through illness since he started despite the fact some days he hardly eats enough to keep a mouse going!!!

Sorry that's a bit of a ramble but all I would say is that as long as you ensure he has a balanced diet it doesn't matter that he is only eating a small range of things!