what is the best way of handling extreme fussy eating in older children (6 year old)?

[F0xyLady]

I have a 6 year old who is becoming increasingly fussy with food, bordering on food phobia with unfamilar things. She gets so worked up and she coughs until she's sick

Her diet is fairly healthy, she'll eat fruit and veg no problems. She refuses most dairy, eggs, lots of cooked meals that look unfamiliar (but she likes the ingredients individually).

Most of the advice I've found is for toddlers - she was fine as a toddler, but is getting worse as she gets older and now won't eat lots of stuff she would eat 2 years ago.

There seems to be 2 schools of thought:

1. serve food, ignore protests, if they don't eat it take it away and let them go hungry

2. try to encourage new food but if they won't eat it give them what they WILL eat ( for DD mainly sandwiches and fruit, and very bland meals like meat and 2 veg with no sauces)

What I'm worried about is lack of calcium because she won't eat dairy, ongoing fussiness into adolescence or adulthood, and awkwardness when eating out or at other people's houses.

Does anyone with experience of fussy older children have any advice?

I vividly remember living on yellow food for ages. Late primary into secondary school. Mash potato with cheese, Shredded wheat and toast. I drank cold tea and sometimes ate oranges if Dad pealed it.
I think serve up a dinner you all eat (mum used to) with a side of a favorite - cheesy mash. I would always have what the rest of the family had on my plate.
Re trying anything new maybe put it in front of her and say 'I am just going to peg out the washing etc' and dissappear for 2 mins so you are not waiting for a reaction and she knows you are not in earshot. Have you tried ice cream re the dairy or cheese triangles straight from the foil squirted through a hole. If you'd given me an unwrapped cheese when younger I would've barfed but could handle it wrapped.
Dont say she is fussy to people just tell them she loves.......... can she have that.
I still have issues with sauce 'contaminating' things, (I call it piss issues as the sauce will drain through the pasta and become really runny at the bottom of the bowl) but I will happily try anything now and eat lots of things.
Good luck. I am sure she will get better when she is left to decide rather than being nagged by well meaning folks what she shou;ld be eating.
(Santa's message was me to a tee)

I do, or did, all those things for the first 5 years of DD's life zavi. And until she was about 4, apart from a milk and egg aversion, she was like your DS and would eat pretty much anything else, and meal times were enjoyable.

About 2 years ago DD ate some coleslaw, heaved and then projectile vomited all over her plate. She did the same thing at school last year when the dinner lady insisted she ate her pasta in cheese sauce, and she was sick all over herself and her plate and the school rang me up to take her home. She was fine just very upset and embarrassed. I put her on packed lunches after that and her fussiness got a lot worse around this time.

I think she fears being sick again so has limited her diet and won't try new or unfamiliar things. She has a very strong gag reflux and so if something makes her gag she is often sick. But I also think she works herself up which makes it worse - so there's definitely a little bit of hysteria adding to the problem.

merlypuss she would eat ice-cream for breastfast, lunch and dinner if I'd let her. But she usually only has it for a treat eg. on holiday or on a trip out. I forgot ice-cream was dairy. So I guess she could have it more often (ooo she will be pleased ).

She absolutely will not go near dairylea or any other processed cheese, she won't even try it.

I have a 12yo who was the perfect child to wean, ate everything and anything until she had pneumonia at age 8yo and since then has been increasingly getting faddier.
She won't eat most "quick" foods-one particular brand of chicken nuggets, and that's it. The problem is that if I go for foods she likes she very quickly goes off them because she's having them too often.

I'd say I go for a mixture of 1 and 2 from your list. I try to generally provide one thing she'll eat, and she can always choose bread (unfortunately she now won't eat most breads), or fruit.

But if there is a simple way of getting her to eat what everyone else is having, then I'll do it. For example tonight we're having sausages as a treat. So I've wrapped bacon round them because she'll eat that-just about!

I've discovered recently she'll eat garlic bread when she won't have other bread, so she has that with cheese when we're having pizza.

When we have roast chicken she has the vegetables without the meat, and when we have fish bake she has the underneath, not the top.

But when she goes to people's houses I tell her she has to eat or not eat, but not moan. I'll tell people she's fussy, if they ask then I'll give them a few things she'll eat, but also tell them not to worry if she eats nothing.

Oh and I have two other children who eat anything-including one who was fussy as a baby/toddler, so I don't think it's anything to do with parenting, or anything you've done.

Be careful to get proper dairy ice cream if you are concerned about calcium. Normal ice cream can be as little as 2% milk or something. But at least it will be getting some fat into her. Does she eat cereal. I used to have cornflakes and ice cream (they're both yellow).

foxylady come over to the resistant eating support thread as there are a few of us on the same boat. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/behaviour_development/1607441-resistant-eater-support-thread-come-and-join-me

funny really that before you are a parent you just assume your child will eat what he/she is given. We love food and cook a lot and it really taught us a lesson when DS1 just would NOT try certain foods. He would rather go hungry than eat something he didn't like the idea of. So while I am sure good family habits help they are certainly not the be all and end all of getting a child to eat a good diet.

Incidentally DS1's school has a fruit only policy for snack. This means for the last 3 years every day he has had carrot sticks. That is the closest he will get to fruit. Bloody carrot sticks

@ cornflakes and ice cream

She only eats cereal with milk if the milk isn't visible - so mainly thick porridge, but she will also eat weetabix with a bit of milk soaked in so it goes mushy. But to be honest she prefers marmite on toast for breakfast. She does eat butter on the toast, so that's dairy as well.

Thanks for the link pop I'll have a look now :)

DD loves carrot sticks too funnys she has them in her packed lunch nearly every day.

They have a fruit only policy for snack at DDs school too, but the school provide the fruit themselves so if it's something she doesn't like she just goes without. She's been going without a lot recently because there seems to be a lot of tangerines and satsumas with them being in season.

We also opted out of school milk so she just gets water.

but if i could advise my parents what would have helped me when i was 6 i would tell them to please stop pointing it out, to me, to family, to visitors, to teachers. stop taking me to the doctor and making me feel like a freak. stop making it into such a big issue that even though the food on your plate looks and smells really good, i cant now tell you i want some because you will make such a big celebration about it and i just cant take the attention. please just make dinner and set it in front of me and make no comment or sidewards glances when you see me looking at the chicken out of the corner of my eye. please dont faint (mum) if i touch it with my fork and dont ring the newspaper if i taste it. now none of these things actually happened but when all your life you have been told you are a fussy eater and that it causes your mother so much worry, you really dont know what the reaction will be when you do try something you haven't previously eaten. and please please dont label me as fussy. i know that's what i am but the label makes it harder for me not to be even though it's what i want. if i could ask anything of my parents i would ask that they forget everything they know about what i will and wont eat. just treat me like a normal member of the family. make dinner for me the same as everyone else and if i dont eat it all please dont get frustrated and angry, just let me thank you for the dinner and clear my plate away at the end. if the dinner consists entirely of food i dont like then i will be hungry but please allow me to have toast or fruit before bed.

Santa, thank you so much for this advice, I will be following it to the letter with my fussy four year old.

My 6yo is beginning to be more fussy which is really annoying as she was always very good with her food.

I try not to give it too much attention.

I take her likes and dislikes into consideration but am not dictated by them.

When we are eating I try and keep the conversation light and off the food.

As long as she tries everything if she really doesn't like something I don't push it.

I encourage her to be involved in food prep where possible.

I was a very fussy eater as a child and I think the mistake my parents made was to make a really big deal out of it which just increased my anxiety and made the situation worse!!!

Cornflakes and icecream is lush. I only got it as a pudding if custard (again yellow) wasn't on the menu. It introduced a new texture too - crunchy - which I hadn't been a fan of. From that I moved on to Fish fingers but they had to be dried out to the point of no return as I had graduated to crunchy. From there it went to rich tea biscuits with butter on. This was my dad's guilty pleasure and he asked if I wanted to try one of his (not really being clued up that my mum had been stuggling to get me to eat as he worked away).
From yellow, then crunchy I progressed through different textures/colours. Knowing I ate cheesy mash mum did shepherds pie (beef mince) with lots of grilled cheese on the top. I had the top bit with some gravy contaminated mash. Surprisingly I didn't freak I just got on with it. I stayed with yellow for a long time an dat the time of no pasta shapes being readily available this must've been hard.
Tomatoes were my nemesis. Now they are my absolute favorite veg/fruit. Don't know whether it was colour or texture or both.....?
Good luck.

My 8 year old is extremely fussy, it drives me mad but he likes fairly "grownup" food so I am hoping that as he grows up it will be less of an issue anyway. For example he likes pasta with tomato sauce (ragu not ketchup) or pesto, curries, noodle stir fries and pizza. He won't eat any "plain" meals, ie the meat and two veg type, therefore no roast dinners, no shepherds pie, no burgers, fish fingers, chips, ham, eggs or any sort of potato, sausages. We can take him to eat out as most places will have a pasta or pizza option, but cafes are a problem as he doesn't like sandwiches, jacket potatoes, omelettes, however we just get him a scone or something instead. Luckily family are fine with it and cater to him without a fuss.

I try and not make a big deal of it but freely admit I made far too much of a big deal of it when he was younger, so I'm trying to reverse the damage. I do put a little of what we are having on his plate even if he doesn't like it and he can fill up on toast later if needed. I try and just let him taste things away from meal times too, ie when I am preparing food or putting away shopping, it is less pressure if you can hand him something and let him wander away with it and taste it without feeling under the spotlight at the table. I do get a bit bored of the amount of pasta and curry we end up eating though.

Some really interesting posts on this thread, thank you.

I would like to know if anybody knows of any professional help available for extreme fussy eaters. My DS has been fussy since we started weaning. I persevered with variety using the Annabel Carmel books but he never changed. He is now 11 and has a very limited, mostly beige, carb based diet. We can never eat out unless there is very plain margarita pizza, go to other people's houses or even on holiday unless we are prepared to cook all our meals in an apartment and even then the slightly different food abroad gets rejected. I am at my wits end and am very sad that we will never be able to enjoy family meals together. He is small for his age (parents are both tall) and doesn't have much energy compared to other kids so I think it is affecting his health. I once took him to a dietician at a hospital when he was a toddler who confirmed he was lacking in some vitamins and minerals and prescribed supplements over 6 months which helped deal with the symptoms but did nothing to address the cause.