Is anyone up for a parents of fussy eaters support thread?

[DevonFolk]

My three year old is very picky. I've made a promise to myself not to get too worried about it just yet because I was exactly the same and now I'll eat pretty much anything.

But it just gets so boring! If I do a roast I'm lucky if she picks at the chicken and I have to make sure I do brocolli or cauliflower (the only cooked vegetables she'll eat) and keep out raw carrots for her. There's pretty much no meal that I would want to cook for myself that I know she will eat too.

I'm not going to push it with her because I just don't see the point. She's encouraged to try new things and we talk about it a lot. If she tries something I praise her but if she doesn't like it, fine. To me it's the willingness to try at this stage that's important.

I'm sure I can't be the only one who experiences this. Like I say, I'm not going to get hung up on it or try to find an instant magic solution, it would just be nice to know I'm not alone!

Signing in. DS just turned 3 is starting to be a food refuser. He will quite happily munch on fruit and breadsticks all day, but put a meal down to him and it's all, "No like" and pushing the plate away.
I took some comfort that he was eating well at nursery but he has now started to refuse there too. What's different from nursery chicken casserole to mine - nowt. We sit at the table together but I'm worried.
Will be watching this thread with interest.

Feel all your pain. DD1 aged 4 will basically only eat plain pasta with butter and fishfingers smeared liberally with mayo. The fuss last night when I put 5 peas in with her pasta was unbelievable.

I have been thinking she's getting a bit better recently, she seems to eat well at nursery but maybe she's just better at hidign what she is not eating there. I do think they eat better in groups and she did clear her - admittedly small - plate at a couple of lunches over Christmas.

Like others, she'll happily fill up on bread, breadsticks and crackers but won't eat much "real" food. But we are having conversations about what she likes. She has said she likes carrots & broccoli so am doing a bit of that with each meal to make sure she gets at least soemthing green.

She loves garlic bread too so it is not a strong flavour thing, just waywardnedss.

DD2 aged 20mths is a great eater (at least for now!)

toffeewhirl love that plate - I think it has nearly sold out since your recommendation. .

What is about beige carbs stokey that our DC like so much?

Everyone on thread DS's school have intimated that he needs ed psyche involved for possible diagnosis of ASD and may be a contributing factor to his almost phobia of trying new foods. I would be interested to know if any of your children have any SEN issues?

which may be

NotAsTired - did you suspect this already? I hope it isn't too much of a shock for you. Yes, my eldest son has SNs. He has 'autistic tendencies', but doesn't reach the diagnostic threshold. However, he is diagnosed with Tourettes Syndrome and OCD. The latter has a huge impact on his eating, as he is terrified of food contamination, although CBT has helped him with this.

Have you been over to the Special Needs boards? Lots of support and knowledge over there.

My younger DS doesn't have any SN issues. He's just stubborn!

I ordered an organic fruit box today and made a big fuss about how exciting it was. DS2 opened it up, but as soon as he saw that it was fruit, he grimaced and said, "I know what you're doing!" (oops). However, the one fruit that he can't resist is pineapple and we were lucky enough to have a whole pineapple in the box, so he ended up coming back . The pineapple wasn't ripe enough to eat, unfortunately, but DS2 happily ate some tinned pineapple and we looked up how to cut it when it's ripe. Softly, softly...

I put broccoli and carrots on the boys' plates this evening. DS1 ate most of his broccoli; DS2 didn't touch any. Oh well, it's early days.

Toffeewhirl No, it was not a surprise at all, tbh but there was a little part of my heart that sank too. He is who is he is, of course and he would not be him, without all his quirks. I lurk a lot on the SN chat and have even asked a question once.

The book you have recommended - I am interested to know which specialist paediatric dietician she collaborated with. Would you be able to tell me?

at your DS2 working out what you were up to.

I find it really hard with DS and his eating. I know I should relax more about his eating but equally, I find his hunger meltdowns hard to take and he inevitably has these meltdowns if he does not eat enough. Its devastating for him and for me. I know I am probably going about it the wrong way but he has to eat a certain amount on his plate (he does negotiate!).

Today we were round at mum's and she had cooked chapatti for him, which he had with ketchup. She put some dahl next to his plate and he got so angry.

Hello - I haven't read all the thread, but I've 3 kids - one DD and 2 SC's. DSS is a great eater, always has been. DSD is a carb queen, very wary of new foods and fussy with texture - but the good news is she has vastly improved over the years, whilst still not really embracing fruit and veg, she is aware of the need to eat healthily and does try for 5 a day, albeit with juice, hoops (yes, read the tin) small amounts of peas and the odd token apple. Having endured all the trauma of mealtimes of stress, I thought to myself, 'when I have my own children, this will be different'.
Ah, then along came DD (hollow laugh) well, she's good with fruit and veg, but that's not the whole story. The list of won't eat's is long and complex!! No sauces, no gravy, no meat, no mixed up food, no melted cheese, no ketchup, no pizza, eating out with her is painful unless it's fish and chips or Italian (where she will have plain pasta with olive oil).
I'm quite gentle with food issues though and won't serve up meals likely to be rejected, I tend to offer food within the boundaries of what I know will be accepted and offer new foods in small amounts 'on the side' in a non-conditional way. DD has incorporated several new items into her diet this way, she also goes to a club once a week that includes dinner which is a good way to try new foods without me on her back too.
When all the kids are home for meals we tend to have a pick and mix approach and will do several complimentary dishes and everyone gets something they like.

I would love to know what goes on in my Ds's 2yo head sometimes...

First up, breakfast. Always used to be a good meal for him as its basically bland carbs, fruit and shed loads of tv while I sort stuff out. Has been getting fussier and resistant recently, so i negotiated him to eat som Rice krispies in return for Peppa Pig everything I said I would never do but not that much was eaten.

Out to a toddler group this morning, then we come back and i start making their packed lunch for the afternoon session at nursery - cheesy rolls with philidelphia and ham. Dd adores ham, DS is a bit hit and miss wih it but I can usually smuggle some of the thin stuff into things. Last week exactly the same thing happened - he mithered me for it while I was making sandwiche, literally shouting "more ham!" And eating it neat, then refused to eat it in sandwiches at nursery an hour later. So today I thought sod it, he can have his lunch at 1045 if he wnats it, with ham. He ate the first roll, shouted for more, then picked the ham out of the second roll, saying 'don't like it...'

Home after nursery and he was screaming with hunger at 4 having had such an early lunch, so they had a snack and then I thought I'd get them to help me make pizza (straight after the since weekly cleaner left, I need my head examining!). Chopped mushrooms, doused half the kitchen in tomato sauce, threw cheese everywhere, all good fun.

Huge great pizza comes out the oven and they set on it like wolves. Three quarters of the way through both wave a mushroom at me 'what's that?'
'Don't like it..."

Aaaarrrgggghhhh

Thank you for this thread. Thank you, thank you, thank you Just knowing that there are lots of you going through the same thing has really made me feel better.

I basically agree with everything that everyone has said . DD1 (age3) helped prepare dinner today, watched the cheese bubble under the grill, set the table choosing where everyone would sit.....and ate nothing, aaaargh.

Smug 'friends'....ODFOD. I am now actively avoiding one some of them because your non fussy eater does not make you a superior parent. Why is that held up as the benchmark of perfection? My DD does lots of things well but because she's a fussy eater I'm a crap mum?

I don't know how DD1 gets through the day on the amount she eats but she is thriving. Her baby sister eats more than her and she only has one tooth!

I don't get riled easily but could happily poke in the eye the smug parents who say they just cook one meal and put it down, the kids eat it or leave it.
Maybe I am a soft touch, but I have things I like and don't like and why would I force the kids to eat food they really don't like.
With my DSD especially, because when the kids were younger they spent 2 days with us then 2 days with their Mum, she would literally not eat if the food was something she didn't want because she would just wait until she went back to her Mums. Mum was living nearby too and if we walked past, DSD would nip in and come out with handfuls of biscuits.....

Ooh, can I join? Very fussy 2.1 yo boy here.
Bit late for me now so will post in the morning. If I add to 'threads to watch'list, I won't!!
Hasta mañana.

Can I join please my dd and dgs live with us and dgs fussiness drives me mad, dd however handles it very well never letting him no it bothers her never shouts at him etc.
He weaned brilliantly then suddenly started refusing to eat I think it started the same time he began feeding himself. Dgs eats the same food everyday
breakfast rice krispie bar or occasionally bowl of weetos no milk
lunch sour cream snack a jacks, chocolate brioche, petit filous yoghurt (fruit layer)
dinner chicken nuggets no chips or potatoes no veg. will eat pizza but only if from pizza hut. Will eat garlic bread.
My dd has sort advice from health visitor and more recently school doctor who basically said don't know what to say let's monitor.
Dgs is healthy height and weight perfect as a precaution recently tested for anaemia because of diet but again he is Ok.
My dd is confident that he will grow out of it and I'm sure she is right but it's so frustrating.

kin

NotAsTired - the specialist paediatric dietician who collaborated on the book is called Anna Groom (google her). Here's a quote about her from a blog post about children's eating:

'Anna Groom is a lead NHS paediatric dietitian. She works with children who are "selective eaters" (fussy buggers to you and me) on a daily basis. "It's really important to let children explore the sensory side of food as a whole – not just what it tastes like," she says. "It makes it more familiar to them. It makes them feel 'safe' with it." The idea is that they are more likely to try it, and less likely to become fussy.' (rest of the post is here).

It must be very difficult for you to keep mealtimes relaxed when your child is having such angry outbursts over food, Not. At least my DC don't have meltdowns over it - they just quietly refuse to eat.

Beamur - your 'pick-and-mix' approach at mealtimes sounds a great idea.

Twelve - I feel your pain on the pizza-making mess, but that has been my most successful strategy for getting DS2 to try new veg, so don't give up!

Jimmy - hopefully the annoying 'perfect parent' with the non-fussy child will go on to have a very, very fussy second child.

elQuinto - welcome .

birthday - that sounds really tough, but it's encouraging that your DGS is a healthy weight in spite of his diet.

My DS2 ate all his sausages and a slice of buttered seeded bread for his dinner, but wouldn't touch the potatoes, broccoli or carrots (and I offered raw and cooked). When he started eating, I used one of the phrases from the book and said, "Just eat as much, or as little, as you like." He thanked me and I sensed a release of tension immediately. I did find it hard not to protest at him leaving so much of his meal, I must admit.

DS1 was even worse. He ate a piece of broccoli and a few potatoes, but left everything else.

Sorry, my tablet did something weird last night! I'm in - DS is not quite as fussy as some described on this thread but it just gets so bloody boring. I used to love cooking and now I hate it because all he's going to do is push it round his plate and say he's had enough. It's another bit of colour and pleasure that's been sucked out of life.

Oh, Dance, I empathise with that loss of pleasure in cooking and I'm sure most, if not all, on this thread do too. Sometimes I had DH and both DC complaining about different aspects of the meal I'd cooked (DH would say it was too high in fat for him or not spicy enough) and I ended up feeling so discouraged that I stopped bothering for a long time and just let DH cook for himself and made chicken nuggets/pasta/sausages for the boys.

With regards to your DS saying he's had enough - I think it's easy to expect children to eat more than they can because their stomachs are so tiny in comparison with ours and we forget that. I have halved my DC's portions to cut down on food waste and so as not to overwhelm them. That sounds silly considering they are underweight, but they weren't eating it anyway. Better for them to eat what they have and ask for seconds if they want it (that's not going to happen anytime soon in my house, though).

Can I join please - DS is 4 next month and a nightmare when it comes to food. I'm trying the no drama, put in front of him and don't comment on what he eats, approach but no improvements so far. What has actually helped keep me sane is that DD (8mo) has taken to baby led weaning in a big way, so at least someone is eating my offerings enthusiastically!

Dance I completely sympathise re: loss of pleasure in cooking. I am right there with you. Its got to a point where even the food I cook for myself has got really limited because I just cant be bothered because of fussy DS and fussy DP. At the moment, I cook for me and most days something different for DS. DP can choose to have either what I am eating or what DS is eating - he mostly ends up eating what DS has! I try not to take it personally. (Everybody else who eats my food thinks it's great.)

I've got one too. DS is nearly 7 and food's a drag.

He won't eat potatoes other than (skinny) chips and his only veg are tomatoes, cucumber, carrot sticks. He won't eat sauce or gravy. Won't eat eggs. So while I can get a balanced meal in him, it's boring boring boring to cook. We generally eat meals that he will eat with a slight variation - home made fish, chips and a veg with carrot sticks for him instead. Roast chicken, he'll have the chicken, yorkshire puds and yes, carrot sticks. Home made pizza always goes down well. Thankfully he'll eat any fruit offered to him so I try not to worry about his health.

I haven't read the whole thread but I was interested in the idea someone raised earlier on about how much variety we have these days and how perhaps too much variety is the problem. Back in the 70s when I grew up we would have the same handful of meals and we never went out to eat. So while my parents seem to think DS is fussy, I bet he eats as many different things as I did. So perhaps I should just sit down and work out 7 meals that we will all eat and then just cook them on rotation. I know for a fact that I'll be the only one bored!

My own childhood diet was so varied, though - Mum was Indian, Dad British, we had food from both traditions depending who was cooking, and my grandmother was a great cook too (though we never went out to eat as no spare money).

I was a very greedy child! It's dispiriting that DS is so different from me - I did BLW and he ate everything for the first year, but the range gets narrower and narrower. He's apparently better at nursery, so I'm hopeful that if he has school lunches next year he'll widen the range again.

haven't read the whole thread but just wanted to say that we have been through 20 years of this with DS2 (now nearly 22 happy, healthy and at uni). However he STILL has an extremely limited diet - basically bread, bacon, chicken, crisps and the odd bit of fruit. No vegetables, pizza, pasta, rice .... You get the picture. Christmas lunch was turkey in a sandwich. Now, having been through those years of trauma/visits to doctors/pschologists/rows at the dinner table/rows in restaurants; I would just say stop stressing. If you have a supertaster/freaky eater (whatever you want to call them) there is NOTHING you can do to make them eat. DS2 was so bad he would vomit if he could smell "bad" food on other people's plates. At least he can sit and eat with us now. We were told for years that he would change - when he started school/when he started senior school/when he went to uni etc but he didn't and he is fine. It is his problem, not ours. It doesn't seem to have affected his social life in any way - his friends accept he might just want to eat a plain chicken burger. I keep hoping things will change but I think this is more for our sake than his. One thing you must learn to ignore is when people tell you that you must have somehow "caused" this by offering a bad diet or leading by example. This is such rubbish. We are great foodies and love cooking and DS1 has an amazingly healthy and varied diet. It is nature not nurture.

Thank you, motherof. I really do believe that all I can do is put good, varied, healthy food on the table - but I can't make my children eat and it's not my fault if they don't. It's interesting to hear that your DS1, unlike DS2, has such a healthy and varied diet. As you say, nature, not nurture.

That is not to say, I won't continue doing fun stuff with food to help the DC overcome their anxiety over food.

Incidentally, I made up a platter of different fruit for pudding last night: kiwis, clementines, mango. All sliced up, ready to eat. Neither of my children would touch the bloody thing and I know I completely failed in not showing any emotion over it. So discouraging. At least I'm eating more fruit and veg at the moment, though, as I keep eating their rejects .

So nice to hear we're not the only ones going through this. DS is 5 and its not just the narrow range of foods that really gets to me but the fact that he has an epic meltdown if there is something he doesn't like on his plate (even a miniscule spec of veg that got there by accident when dishing up). I've tried putting stuff on his plate and telling him that he doesn't have to eat it, but he just gets completely worked up until it is removed.
Also the "rules" which can change from day to day. For example will usually eat a smoothie out of a carton, but won't have it out of a glass - even if it's the exact same smoothie that he watches me empty out of the carton. He knows what smoothies are made of but won't try an actual piece of the same fruit.
I dream of a day when he might sniff or even lick something new. (Did have a breakthrough with sweet potato as he ate some off my plate thinking it was carrot
I hate making the same packed lunch every day for school. He's getting bored of the same foods but won't try anything else and prefers to go hungry which really bothers me.
I try not to let it grate but inside my head I am shouting FFS just TRY IT!

Served carrots and kale with Sunday lunch. DS1 ate four slices of carrot, but refused the kale; DS2 refused to eat any veg. Then produced fruit platter with clementines, kiwi fruit and pineapple (trying not to let previous negative experience stop me offering it). DS1 refused all of them and DS2 reluctantly ate a couple of slices of pineapple.

It's hard not to get discouraged, isn't it?

On a happier note, have discovered that DS2 absolutely loves this recipe for bolognese sauce, which is crammed full of sneaky vegetables.