picky eaters

[Soulfly]

My two kids dd5 and ds4 are really bad eaters always have been, they just eat the rubbish you get from the freezer, i think you know what sort i mean, lol. My dd is getting better because she had school dinners yesturday and today and she'd eaten rice with sweatcorn and pasta and today she'd eaten macaroni cheese. Well at home she wouldn't even try it. My ds is even worse he just won't try anything, so he doesn't actually know what tastes nice or not. Has anyone else got fussy eaters like this, and what do you do to try to make them try new things?

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Ds has always been a fussy eater and nothing ever persuaded him to try anything (not influenced by friends, school dinnner, party food etc) it became a family joke that when ever i said you don't know you haven't tried it he always claimed to have had it at x house (untrue). Not worth anything i know but he does like tuna, cheese, yogurt, pasta, chicken, banana, parma ham, mussels but not any red food, no vegetables or fruit. he is 16, 6ft tall plus and slim. hopefully someone will come up with something useful, but don't get unduly worried.

DD is 3 and has only recently started to try things. Wouldn't dream of eating pasta or rice, or anything "mucky", but does eat most fruit and veg.
Have to say, it was only when we stopped offering "freezer food", as you put it, that she even considered anything else - if they're hubgry, they'll eat it kind of thing!!

thanks all. we did try that no more freezer food, but i don't think it lasted long and i think that was my fault. But thanks all

I do the same as dinosaur. My son eats no meat, fish, fruit or vegetables. I often give him something on his plate that ds2 is having (and then ignore it completely). In this way we got him eating scrambled eggs and cheese on toast. I'm also not averse to disgusting concoctions if it means he'll eat it. So to get him eating gluten free pizza (when Sainsbury's started doing them) we put jam on top. He no longer has the jam and will eat the pizza alone.

ewww jam on pizza???? lol. Suprising what lengths you go to to make them try to eat something. Glad it worked.

Mine won't eat proper meat so if you cooked aroast dinner they'd probably only eat the potatoes.

The key is to be as laidback about it as possible. We're lucky in that ds1 is a great eater, with very cosmopolitan tastes. DS2 is pretty good, but does go through phases of being rather picky and generally not eating a lot. I just prepare the food anyway (or dh does ). If he doesn't eat it, or have a good attempt, he doesn't get dessert, and they don't have any snacks at all. He does pretty well on this regime ... but I'm sure I'd be a lot more stressed about it if he was my eldest.