feeding my kids is a nightmare!

[loobs2]

Please can anyone tell me what to do with 2 kids (8 and 4.7) who are both faddy eaters and mostly don't like the same things? 8 yr-old's diet pretty boring but more varied than 4-yr-old's, who was fine as a toddler but now hardly likes anything! Planning meals is a real headache - fed up with cooking stuff at least one of them won't eat and of often serving up different things for them. Also bored of cooking same old things week in, week out. p.s. I've got al the Annabel Karmel books and all her recipes do is depress me more!

Have tried cooking with my 2 and sometimes it has worked, sometimes failed dismally, and now they seem to have lost interest! Have tried giving them recipe books (including 2 Annabel Karmels) and asking them to choose things but they always manage to find the things that are all but identical to things they eat already and won't consider anything else! About once a month I ask if they have any new ideas, always same response: 'no'. I am really trying, girls!! But your ideas have helped - thanks. And now I know I'm not alone! If any of you with fussy kids at the mo have breakthroughs please let me know! Off to the kitchen now - fingers crossed!

Re. the fussy eating and growing out of it - sorry to say this, but my brother wouldn't eat fruit or veg as a child. My mum, worried, asked the GP about it and was told not to stress about it, he would come around, it was only a phase.

He is now 45 and has never knowingly eaten a vegetable except for potato. He will pick veg out of anything you give him, won't even countenance them in his mouth, has spat food halfway across a room before now because he thought it had a pea somewhere in it!

And, as you might imagine, his skin is appalling, he is vastly overweight and suffers from depression, all of which I am convinced relates to his horrible diet of meat, pasta, potatoes and rice. (needless to say, the rest of us weren't pandered to and we all had to eat what was put in front of us!)

Having said all that, I'm not sure how mum could have made him eat fruit/veg, but she didn't even offer it to him, which might have been a mistake...?