I've posted before about DS and our general struggles with food, and got lots of helpful replies. We're somewhat out of the woods in that he will actually eat now, but certainly 3 years of food struggles have led to some bad habits that I'd like to (try and) correct.
His diet is exceptionally limited, and I know one of the recommendations is to eat with your child. We've had some success with this (mainly picnic food where he still mainly eats bread but will sometimes try falafel) but are faced with absolute refusal when it's a meal that we'd actually normally eat. Which to be honest just makes the meal horrible for everyone involved, and we tend to eat separately during the week.
I'd like to change this, and I'm looking for some half way house between joining him for scampi and chips and him refusing to even lift a fork as it's not something he immediately knows he likes.
At home he will eat: pasta and pesto, pasta and bolognese (if the bolognese is puréed down so that there is nothing recognisably a vegetable), some breaded things with chips, pizza, cucumber, sometimes sausages. He eats more at nursery, and mainly tells us how much he dislikes it, but whatever peer pressure is working there we can't replicate.
What do you actually eat with your child? For us we tend to do traybakes, pies, chilli, curries. I thought katsu curry might be a success in that he could just have the breaded chicken, hopefully try some rice and if he was crazy adventurous dip some chicken in the sauce, but he saw the rice and wouldn't approach.
And what do you do when they don't eat? Bribery? Let them go hungry? Toast?