Fusy children who is responsible?

[Lonnie]

the wedding with the curry menu made me write this so I gues its not so much a am "I" being unresonable as it is a is it resonable to expect others to cather for your fussy child/your own fussyness

I have a fussy child she is 6 she regularly gets served a bowl of plain rice or a slice of bread for dinner when she refuses to try stuff she hasnt. I dont make a big deal out of it but neither will I pamper to it. If we have been invited out for meals I ensure I have a small amount of snacks in my bag for her (less so now at age 6 as ther is always something but definetly when she was younger) I accept it is "my" child that is fussy and I do not expect the world to revolve around this.

No do I make 2-3-4 different meals I will expect genuine dislikes (dd1 doesnt like mash potatoes - she has a few boiled put aside - ds doesnt like rice he gets a slice of bread dd2 isnt keen on green grapes I dont expect her to eat them) I do not accept today i will eat tomatoes but tomorrow I wont however on Wednesday I will throw a tantrum when you dont have any.. I was shocked to discover recently that many of my childrens friends come from homes where the parents regularly cook 2-4 different meals. To me that is unresonable and it also in my opinion have us raising a bunch of induviduals whom belives everything can be changed their way and there for doesnt teach tolerance and a certain willingness to work together.

I am not advocating we start serving vindaloo to small children not am I suggesting we force feed them however in my book there is nothing wrong with a slice of bread and butter if you decide today you do not like the meal you last week had 3 portions off.

What is everyones opinion? if you have a fussy child do you expect others to cater for that or do you see it as your own issue to deal with if you do not have a fussy child how do you view fussy children? what about adults (I know 1 grown up man whom wont eat vegetables at home - he ate a vegetarian meal at my house when it was served and even said it was nice - for the record I didnt know about the veggie refusal at home until after they had been for dinner lol)

what do you think what is resonable in this what is unresonable?

Smallorange, I agree with you to some degree...So why do parents find it so easy to blame parents for fussiness with food?

It really pisses me of. We know that we do certain things and pick certain battles that result in certain behaviours. Some kids are naturally bositerous and have a tendency to misbehave and some aren't ever told no. It's sometimes a combination of factors. Temperatment and treatment; environment and conditioning.

But I get heartily sick of the food lectures I get. 'You should involve her in food preparation. You should let her buy and choose your menus. You should starve her til she eats whatever you're serving.' Like we haven't tried all these things many times over. Always this implication that you've done something wrong and always the overt criticism that you wouldn't dream of giving to a child with bad behaviour or poor manners.

It's destructive and I'm getting a bit sick of it to be honest. Why should I be lumbered with someone elses childs eating problems? If you don't fucking want them, don't ask them to tea! Just stop taking your fucking smuggery out on me and parents like me cos we're absolutely sick of it.

Fluffy donkey, you sound like my dd and I'm heartened that you can function as an adult with your dietary likes and dislikes. I think my biggest fear, which makes me a bit bloody minded at times, is that when my dd grows up, goes to uni, etc, she'll struggle.

If you've been there as a child and got through it, I can almost feel myself relax a wee bit about it all.

I hate the battleground of meal times and have tried to step back from it a bit, but I definitely feel the pressure of the 'eat it or starve' brigade. Like we haven't tried that too!

My heat goes out to all the parents of fussy eaters out there.. it really does. Because for some reason, other parents seem to think it's o.k to openly criticise our kids issues, which is really crappy.

I am one of those mums who makes 3 different dinners.... (unless its chicken nuggets and chips, oh yeah, they will all eat that).

Some fights are not worth having, what does it matter if you have to make mash for one and pasta for the other. Its only another one pot.

Squilly - I think people underestimate how worrying it can be gor the parents and think the solution is easy.

I've done laid back, no fuss, with DD2 and been rewarded with her eating a few pieces of chicken some veg and a bowl of ice cream. But then she will gave a bad few days and this morning I told yer she woukd not be watching milkshake until she had eaten her boiled egg and soldiers. And she did. Thank god. It's so hard to know what to do. People just don't appreciate it.

Food and its consumption is an absolute obsession in this country and has become a barometer of good parenting it seems.

Sorry anout spelling, am on phone.

I like how my parents treated me. Sometimes they insisted harder than other times (had to try a little bit of a different vegetable), but generally I liked the food I was given at home - fortunately (or unfortunately) my favourite food was home-made food, made by my mum. I also ate as many peas, carrots and bananas as I was given - just don't ask me to eat brocolli or apples!

Some days my mum did cook 2 meals - one for me and one for the rest of the family. Once I got older (11ish) I was offered the choice : eat the family rissoto or cook my own food - so I cooked.

I'm grateful my parents never made a big deal out of it - my mum was even fussier than I was when she was a child and now she will eat anything, so she figured I would do the same.

It's horrible, even now as an adult, having people watching your plate and commenting on what you don't finish. So I don't like like brocolli, big deal! How on earth does that affect you?

When people are very critical of what I eat my stomach clenches and I then can't eat anyway! Can't imagine how children must feel to be continually criticised for something that often (not always I agree) they can't control.

It depends on what you call fussy I guess.
Fussy to me who is someone who doesn´t eat anything & everything.

My husband is fussy-he doesn´t like cucumber or celery.

My son is fussy-doesn´t like fish, chips, tomatoes.

Daughter like me is unfussy-there´s nothing she doesn´t like!

I think there are many adults who were fussy as children who now eat a healthy diet. Patterns in childhood are not set for life.

Agreed smallorange
I eat a well-balanced diet and very little junk food (still don't like sweets and fizzy pop or desserts). It's fairly varied, although I do tend to recycle menus every 2 weeks...

In fact, I ate a well-balanced diet (fruit, meat, carbohydrates) when I was a child, but it wasn't very varied. However I was very healthy and active.

LeQueen - what would you do with a child like I was? I was happy not to eat. I mean it. If I missed a meal it didn't bother me in the slightest.

I can't ever remember feeling hungry as a child either. Yet I sometimes ate very little.

I wasn't offered a variety of meals. But my mum knew what I liked and disliked and adapted accordingly. For example, I liked vegetable soup and stew. But not pizza. So she would do pizza for the family when I was out swimming, and I'd have something different later on whan I got back.

leQueen "happy for other parents to roll their eyes..."

Lovely is that what you do? Clearly you are the beacon of great parenting to which we should all aspire.

Issues surrounding food can be very complex not made easier by the current food obsessive climate we all live in. Until you have been in the situation some of the parents of fussy eaters have been in I suggest you roll your eyes back into place and try a little empathy.

Lequeen - you are a fantastic parent. Well done.

I pureed for my DS and BLW for my second and I honestly don't think it has made a difference although I suppose it is early days. My DS (puree fed) IS more fussy at the moment but I think it's coincided with going to school and eating school dinners and realising that maybe he's allowed to have preferences and to refuse things, however much he loves hot dogs, pizzas and chips (wonderfully supplied on a weekly basis by the school he'll come home and have a whole raw red pepper and a bowl of spinach leaves (as long as they're doused in - ponce alert - balsamic vinegar) He loves his sweets too and nothing will ever convert him back to the plain, natural yoghurt he consumed as a baby!

My DD is nearly 3 she's just lately started to get a wee bit obsessed with yoghurt and pasta - but she also has a nut allergy (she was BLW). The flag that I wave a bit for BLW is that if you embrace it fully it CAN be less stressful for that first year. So from 6 months, they can take and leave the food - I swear my DD only started eating anything resembling a meal from about 10 months (it was just bananas, bits of toast, tomatoey pasta, a bit of broccoli etc. before this and sometimes NO food just breastmilk) I did have moments of doubt when I sat at the dinner table with us all tucking in to a meal and she was just chewing on a bit of pear or ANOTHER banana. I also had doubts when I sat in cafes and other mums popped open bowls of broccoli, spinach and potato purees or Ella's pouches and very quickly fed their seemingly appreciative babies whilst mine was sucking on a dry scone

But if you just go with it (and fend off the health visitors) I did find it made my life easier in that first 6 months and it kind of made sense to me.

BUT beyond this, when the child is definitely refusing food it's a different ballgame. So, Trinity, don't beat yourself up about getting it "wrong" with your first 2 - as this thread proves, it is often entirely down to WHO your child is and not what you've done as a parent.

Trinity - don't blame yourself, please. I weaned all three of mine on pureed food (BLW hadn't been invented back then) and all three of them are happy to try new things and like a wide variety of foods, so I am inclined to think that, to a large extent, it is luck as to whether you get a fussy eater or not.

That said, I don't think I would cook 3, 4 or 5 different meals on one day to tempt a child to eat - nor would I let a child get away with it having to be a particular sort of pizza with certain sauce and no bits etc etc. Offering bread and butter instead of rice, or not mashing a couple of potatoes for a child that doesn't like mash, doesn't sound like extreme pandering to me, though - more like sensible compromise.

Diddl - for me, a fussy eater is someone who eats a restricted range of food - almost everyone has one or two foods they dislike, and that doesn't make them fussy - whereas eating no veg at all or only pasta, or only plain pizza that is thick crust is fussy in my opinion.

But I have to say that I haven't had to deal with a truly fussy eater, and if I had, I don't know what I would have done. It must be a very difficult thing to deal with, and parents of fussy eaters have a very difficult job on their hands.

I think the fact thatparents make such a big deal out of it or see mealtimes as a 'battle' has a lot to do with it. Maybe it is co-incidence, but out of all my friends, those who have fussy children do fret and worry or make a fuss and certainly that seems to be the case in this thread too.

It's just no big deal. If they are hungry, they eat, if they say they don't like something they can leave it, although sometimes I might ask that they eat a small amount of I or try it. No 'force feeding', no being forced to sit at the table until it is finished, so fuss at all. The only real rule we have is good table manners and that everyone stays at the table until everyone is finished.

Trinity, my 2 eldest are the opposite...the first I puree fed and stressed and worried, the second I BLW and thought it would be all different.
It was different, ds1 eats almost anything and in large amounts, ds2 is fussy, has intolerances and was at one point diagnosed as Failure to Thrive and massively underweight.

I'm going back to purees for ds3.

the thing is it's really hard when your child simply doesn't get that hungry. I once said to dd (8) oh, I'm starving can't wait for supper, and she said I never feel hungry. It really made me think.

She was born early and ill. I was a single mum and not at all confident and desperate to do the 'right thing', so she was puree weaned on the day she was 4 months. I used to cry while feeding her yoghurt it used to take her so long.

She eats fried eggs, cheese sarnies, grape nuts, salami, pesto pasta, bananas, apples, crips and some yoghurts. I have really really had to let it go. And accept that other people are going to judge me.

I used to think it was a generational thing.

That in the past you ate or went hungry.

I can´t remember what, but there are some things that my FIL doesn´t eat.

He´s in his 70´s & is the only person of that "era" who I know who actually dislikes certain foods.

I have a friend in her 30s who will only eat chips, White bread and possibly a bit of cheese. Maybe a slice of cheese and tomato pizza if pushed.

That's because she wouldn't eat veg as a child and was held down and frorce fed until she vomited by her gran. Horrible.

My parents and inlaws, all of whom grew up during rationing, between them will not eat egg whites, egg yolks, offal, cooked cheese, ham, spicy curries, lamb, pizza, pasta (two of them), any meal not containing potatoes....the list goes on.

DH, I, brother and SIL between us will not eat cooked cheese, offal, shellfish, reformed meat, kidney or broad beans, mushrooms (including quorn), meat, fish, bananas, lentils or baked potatoes.

I've worked with normal adults who will not eat anything in any kind of sauce.

It is not just a generational thing - it's just that children are less likely to get a choice about what they eat.

For my wedding we had a carnivore option and a vegetarian option, but my aunt told me that my 13 year old cousin had a list of only four things that he would eat, so we got the venue to make him a special order of chicken and chips - we moaned a bit, but I love my aunt and life's too short to get antsy about that stuff.

What I've never heard anyone say is "I hated courgettes as a child, but my parents made me sit at the table until I'd finished every last slimy morsel, and you know - they're not that bad." Force feeding is a terrible way to broaden people's tastes.

Lequeen, I'm sure your children are perfect and no-one would ever roll their eyes at you! What a shame I'm such a crap mom and can't say the same.

THIS is exactly the kind of reaction that pisses me off beyond reason.

Smuggery in all it's forms sucks.

Roll your eyes at me all you want you smug mums, cos your kids will all have their own problems and eyes will be rolled at you at some point. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do....

I remember be forced to eat a vanilla slice at school for pudding till I puked it onto my plate

I still remmeber it vividly
I still remember the name of the dinner lady

why the fuck she thought it was neccessary for me to eat a fucking vanilla slice I will never know

I agree with Smallorange about a lot of it being down to the luck of the draw.

My dd is one of those children who will at least try anything, even if it turns out that she doesn't actually like it. Is it because I'm a wonderful parent who did all the right things? Nope. Her two brothers (who grew up with exactly the same routines) have a very limited diet. For the first three years of his life ds2 ate only smooth yoghurt, bananas, and white bread.

Other posters have mentioned children who just don't seem to ever get hungry. My ds1 is one of those children. If he ever lived alone I suspect he would end up starving himself because it just doesn't occur to him to eat.