Super fussy four year old - advice please

[notsureatall]

DS2 has just turned four and has been an incredibly fussy eater since he was about 18 months. Before then he'd eat anything.

He'll eat -

Breakfast - cereal (cheerios, weetabix, cornflakes etc), bread, toast (with butter)

Lunch - Dairyles, cheese or marmite sandwich, yoghurt, fruit purees, Babybell cheese

Dinner - pasta with smooth tomato sauce (either bought or home made with hidden veg and qhizzed in the liquidiser). Sausages. Baked beans. Chilli con carne or spag bol (with kidney beans).

Snacks - crackers, cheese, Humzingers (dried fruit bars, chocolate, bread sticks, rice cakes, apples

I have two questions, wise mumsnetters.

1. Is this a terrible diet? He seems fit and healthy and full of beans but he's small and I worry (of course)

2. Any tips of how to get him out of it? If I put anything else on his plate he simply refuses to eat it. I am desperat for him to eat chicken or even fish fingers but he won't

My current tactic is to give him what he wants to eat (usually pasta with tomato sauce) because it's not unhealthy, while we eat a roast dinner or whatever. It makes meal times less stressful but I worry I'm giving in.

Sorry for long post

Sounds like a normal childs diet to me. My dd1 is 3.9 and probably doesn't eat as much as that. But she does go through fads and phases and I just try to go with the flow and not strangle her when she denies even asking for what I've just cooked her.

Looks like he's getting a fairly balanced diet so to be honest I wouldn't worry about it too much. They (someone) say try to look at what they eat over a week rather than day by day, which is what I try and do, and it does balance out a bit more that way.

Good luck and if you do find some miracle cure please send it my way.

I wouldn't worry too much, that sounds okay to me. What I would maybe do though is give him something he does like with something not too disimilar on the plate aswell. For example, our daughter loves mashed potato so I give it to her with a variation of food I know she likes so she likes cottage pie (beef) so I know she is being faddy not eating stew or roast beef with it. Then I'll give her a few veggies and if she wants pudding she has to eat one spoonful of the food I know she's been faddy with and even just licking the new food. Then we'll maybe have it the following week and she has to eat 2 spoonfulls of the stew to get pudding and so on. It's really worked.

I also have been putting things like cucumber and tomato on her plate for about a year with her sandwich for lunch and she passes it straight to me but I just go for perserverance and would you know it, the other day she bit a tomato and sucked out the middle. I also try the just lick the cucumber and give her lots of praise to try and make stuff more familiar.

Hope it helps but children are faddy - I was terrible and love most stuff now!

DS is super fussy as well, a lot of is is probably genetic, but a lot of it is also laziness on my behalf, as I work 4 days a week it's easier to give him something he likes rather than try to keep pushing the boundaries.

Over the past few months we have been making areal effort to eat family meals and have made some progress, he has now decided he likes peas, woo hoo, also he is old enough to bribe so have got him to try minute pieces of spinach, brocoli and sweetcorn. I also realised that he hadn't seen chicken and hamburgers and so forth for a long time as I went for the easier option of giving him teddy chicken shapes from M&S .

Can't say it is easy, but I can see that the more he sees a "normal" meal then he becomes desensitised to it. Sometimes he decides not to eat anything so he doesn't get dessert. DH finds it hard to be hardcore so we do crack and give him bread and milk before bed time.

It's hard going but I can see progress and am trying to be realistic about goals.

I love the licking tip - going to try that one!

Yeah it works because she does it and that's one step towards trying it. Good luck

hello littlemad is a bit particular about food.

I've had a proper struggle with myself over not letting it become a battle.

I let him get on with it, there is a pretty even balance of food groups over a week and he likes fruit a lot.

I've found that by doing this, recently he's been more prepared to experiment and widened his choices a fair bit.

He's very strange though, the other morning he wanted mackerel for breakfast, nothing else, just mackerel....

We are in a simlar boat with 4yo DS. He likes afew things but just won't eat any veg. Apparently he eats them at school although I have no film evidence .

I had given up putting them on his plate as he freaks out so much but I have decided to be strong and try again to get him to eat veg. I have been talking to him about veg and how good they are for him. I let him help me cut the carrots up tonight and he actually ate about 1cm of cooked carrot at tea time.

Yesterday he tried and spat out a pea. The promise of Father Christmas watching seems to help.

I am hoping to get him to eat a tiny bit of broccoli tomorrow.

Hopefully we will build up to him being able to have them on his plate and eventually eating them all up.

DS1 is v similar to this (although with differing likes - he loves fish fingers and chicken dippers but won't touch sausages or baked beans!). I have stopped fretting as it is a healthy enough diet although limited in variety.

I would say though that he has been getting a little more adventurous recently and trying stuff like (in the past month) cucumber, pizza and cous cous (not at the same time). So I think it is always worth putting something new on their plate (or on a separate plate if he gets stressed), I also bribe with chocolate custard for pudding if he tries a bit of everything on his plate and this seems to be a great incentive :)