Childish or 'parenting'

[Kif]

My Dd (3.5) didn't touch her lunch - even though it had her current top food - corn on the cob.

3 on the dot she starts wailing she's hungry. I offer a snack of.... butternut squash or hazelnuts.

Then we had lentil soup for dinner - and I was still a bit cheesed off so I made it to my taste with garlic, cumin and coriander. She was not best impressed - ended up eating mainly cream crackers and an apple.

Was I childish? Or is providing no alternative to adult eating patterns just what you 'do'? If I let her choose she'd eat plain white starch every day (pasta/rice/bread)

She took it manfully - but I feel a bit mean.

I think you were cruel & mean to overseason the dinner knowing full well it wouldn't be to dd's taste.

LAst night we made chicken curry. My, dh & dd ate it. ds is only 2 & half & he has tried curry but doesn't like it... I made him pasta with no sauce as he doesn't like sauce either & some of the chicken we were putting in our curry... not hard to do.

If I were you I would have tried to tempt dd to eat the dinner, not made it inedible for her

I never make an issue with food.. their dinner is on their plate, they either eat it or leave it.

not controlling
I would say playing power games with the supply of food just to prove a point, and leaving a child deliberately hungry by supplying food you know she won't eat because you are cheesed off with her hours after she didn't eat her lunch???
I would call that very controlling. and massively counterproductive.
imo

Sweety - I've always given my DD spices from the very start and there's nothing she likes better than a curry. We love spicy food in our house and being veggie I tend to prepare a lot of Asian food, so I didn't think twice about adding spices when weaning. I did have a lot of curries when bfeeding (it seemed to increase my milk) and when pg, so DD was probably used to it.

One solution if you want to tone down a curry or other spicy food for a child is to stir some plain yogurt or cream into it. That way you don't have to make boring food for all the family. I do believe that if your cultural heritage includes spices and different flavours then you should include it in your children's diet as not only will it enrich their taste buds and get them used to a wider range of foods from when they're very young, it'll also help when they go abroad and meet the rellies who eat said spicy fare.

I'd be careful about going down the separate foods for kids route. Yoghurt is a great way of cooling down spicyness and if you let them add it then they feel in charge too,.

hurricane, if the only way to get my dd to eat anything at dinner time (she eats well at breakfast and lunch but if she doesnt eat dinner is up v.v.v. early) is because she knows she can have a yoghurt afterwards and sometimes even a few white choc buttons i couldnt give a damn. shes never been pandered to, she knows thats her dinner and shes got that or nothing but sometimes i just want a little bit of a break!

oh but my dd loves curry and shes 2.8!

Edam, everyone in England was eating boring, bland food until relatively recently (historically speaking).
I do understand that everyone has likes and dislikes, but really just wanted to know if there was any health and safety reason to assume that babies/children like/need bland foods.

my dd has always liked strong flavours as has ds, but i know some childre who cant stand them.

saying that i feed ds (8 months) curry too and he loves it! know medical reason i dont htink!

Well the baby liked my soup this morning (8 m.o.).

There is no medical reason for not giving spices etc, even chilli (though in small doses). In many parts of the world children eat what the adults eat, it's only in the Western world that we're obsessed with baby food and nursery/children's food.

Anyway, I've been to ASDA, stocked up. She can trail bananas through the house to her hearts content.

Also got sausage to tart up the ruddy soup. It wasn't overseasoned - and nothing that she disliked - but I do know her to like food to 'taste how it looks' iyswim.

I'm careful not to nag about food, but obviously frustration spilled out into being childish and erring on the side of 'more challenging' food even though I knew she was hungry and was really hoping for bland carbs.

Edam - I don;t really salt family food - my dh not fussed and kids obviously not supposed to have it. She gobbles anything salty though - parma ham, smoked salmon, olives. I wonder if by her age she needs it more and can tolerate it better. The last time we had lentil soup she loved it - but instead of the cumin and coriander, I was heavy handed with the marigold stock powder. She eats no cheese - I guess most kids will get a lot of salt from there.

what's wrong with hazlenuts as a snack?

and butternut squash is yum too.

we do not live in a chocolate buttons free house, but think that accusing kif of being mean for offering what she had to hand (both healthy nutritious options) is a bit insane.

think you should have put aside a plain bit of soup before you spiced the rest up though kif.

and also think you should try not to let it get to you if your child doesn't eat.....don't you not feel like eating sometimes? how would you feel if your dh/dp got really really pissed off with you and made something for your next meal that he knew you wouldn't like?

I know, I know. In general I'm trying to push her boundaries a bit (we're talking aromatic spicy, not hot spicy), but yesterday wasn't the day to do it.

The snack, I wrote it to sound absurd (because it is a bit), but I swear I wasn;t being inventively cruel. She was offered anything that I had on the table as I was feeding her brother (which was actually butternut squash, raw cabbage, tuna fish and apple puree and nuts that I was eating myself). She had a bit of apple puree but was pretty disappointed at the lack of yogurt/toast/boiled egg/her beloved cream crackers.

sigh

Poor monkey.

kif. Cheer up!

D'you know, we almost missed nursery today because I couldn't find her shoes? Or clean socks? She's gone in her 'ballet shoes' (not actual ballet shoes, just ballet style shoes iyswim).

I need a holiday!

MY take Ms suzywong - on this is first to ask a question.

i thought rice pasta and bread were "good" food

now i am confused. with a cupboard full of rice and pasta

kif I think you have been treated harshly really. You have let it get to you more than you should have but we all do sometimes. Your soup sounds delish. Just about every child I know loves garlic bread, but then when it comes to garlic in food . And as for the bizarre snacks, one of DS's fave snacks as a toddler was a bowl of peas. And I do still offer my two stewed apples sometimes as a snack.

Rice pasta bread are part of a healthy diet. Although for adults brown is better (not in excess for children, though, as too much fibre can be a problem). You need a balance of carbohydrates/protein/fat/sugar. There's a 'healthy eating plate' showing what proportions you should have of meat/fruit and veg/cereals at, I think, eatwell.gov.uk or try the British Nutrition Foundation.

my son didn't want the pasta bolognese thing for this evenings mmeal

so he made himself a ham sandwich.

so what else was on offer for lunch apart from cornon the cob?

tuna, (with or without mayo), tomatoes.

We were flat out of bread.

Thing is, she made no complaint about lunch - didn't eat cos she got distracted fetching toys. She also made no complaint about dinner - just asked for extra cream crackers twice. Isn't sweating about making the food more palatable barking up the wrong tree if she's not co-operating with 'lunch' and 'dinner' on principle?

I don't think she's been sleeping well - she seems to have been randomly but persistently obstructive on a couple of fronts recently.