A strategy for fussy eaters that has really worked for us

[macherie]

DS2 is 9, and an very fussy eater, the kind who will have a tantrum if the chicken is touching the potatoes, or the toast is too brown, so fairly hardcore fussy.

Until recently is was living on a diet of (lightly) toasted bagels, pasta, chorizo (!) and apple juice.

I'm pretty well informed about nutrition, the rest of the family eats very well, very little processed food, meals cooked from scratch, etc.

I have read all the books and tried all the tricks. Nothing worked and it was making life a misery - he wasn't eating enough, it was affecting his behaviour and impacting on his brother and sister.

So I took him to a psychologist, she gave me a strategy, and it has worked. He is trying new foods, and eating better than he has for years, his behaviour has improved imesurably, and our lives have been changed for the better.

I know we are not the only one's experiencing this so I'm going to post it here in the hope this might help someone else

Firstly you, the parent needs to be in the right frame of mind, as the first few days might be tough (although it was MUCH easier than I anticipated) so don't try this the week before your period

Choose a time when the child is hungriest, probably before dinner.

Choose the food you want the child to try, say, carrot.

Before dinner put a bowl of carrots on the table.

Everyone (we choose to do it as a family, for democratic purposes and not to single out the fussy eater) has to have ONE BITE.
That's all just one bite, of course if they like a bit of encouragement might lead them to try more, but go easy, no pushing.

After the bite, you have dinner, but if you don't take the bite, then no dinner.

The parent must stay CALM, if the child doesn't want to try the carrot "ok, if you don't want to try it, that's your choice, but you can't have dinner if you don't take one bite of carrott"

You must be resolute - no carrot, no dinner. BUT it has only come to this once with us. We had a bit of a stand off over banana, but it was pasta for dinner so he gave in eventually (3 hours later)!

So no taste of carrot, no dinner AND no other food until you have had the bite of carrot, so no supper, no bedtime snack, NOTHING until you have had the bite of carrot. YOU MUST NOT GIVE IN. This is hard but IT WORKS!

Say you are trying carrot for Sunday lunch and he won't eat the carrot, so no lunch, well bring the carrot with you if you're going out later, and no ice cream or treats unless he has ONE BITE of carrot.

The psychologist recommended using one food only for a 10 day period, based on the idea that children may need to try a new food 10 times before they accept it. We found that if he liked something, we would then include it as part of his normal diet, and then moved on to try something else.

3 weeks on he is now eating lots of veggies, a little fruit, dishes like risotto and casserole which he would never have tried before.

Because he is 9, I felt it was better to sit down and explain what we were going to do and why, and perhaps that is why it has worked so well.

I know this is long, but I hope it helps someone

Thanks, this is interesting and worth trying with my rather fussy ds1 (5). He likes things very plain and also 'separate'. He will eat some raw veg but not cooked (apart from peas and sweetcorn), and he is reluctant to try anything new. We already sometimes say to him he has to have a try (one bite) of something new with his main meal before he can move onto desert, but we don't do it before he has eaten anything or in an organised/regular way so we might try that now. I have a couple of questions.....

After trying the one bite, did your ds start to happily eat some of the things - my ds has had the odd bite of something new recently(progress) but even if he says it is ok he is really reluctant to eat any more of it. Also, how did you progress from the odd bite to something like risotto... did he have to have a mouthful one day and decided he liked it. I would LOVE my ds to eat something like that, he has a healthy diet but it seems so boring to me and although it isn't too much extra work to give him some raw veg and everything separately - I'd just rather he ate 'proper' meals with us. It would also make it much easier when we eat out.

Well done to you and your son! Fingers crossed we might have the same results...

dessert even

Blimey, why on earth would one need a psychologist to state the bleeding obvious?

Here's what you do

1. Put out food
2. They eat it or they don't. Either way, make no comments or bargains

3.Remove (whether eaten or uneaten) at end of meal

1. Repeat at next meal (different food of course.)

If they are hungry they will eat.If not they won't.

It's grotesque that western society has come to this.Sure as hell are no picky eaters in Bangladesh where my dh works.I've seen 6 or 7 people fighting over an apple.

I have got the fussiest 5 yr old ever so just wanted to mark this .

Thank you and I am really pleased that it has worked so well for you .

good on you Moondog..

I'm pleased you have nothing to do with my DD.

posted to fast.

My DD would probably be dead if she lived in Bangladesh. The kids with ASD (and other issues) in Bangladesh are probably dead or in awful institutions living on a liquid diet.

Your comments are very narrow minded, and particularly worrying for someone, who I think is a SALT? Next time you are in Bangladesh do some proper research.

MD I find your comments rather insulting, there are children who have real food issues and will not eat, ill literally starve themselves, and when you are going through this having people say things like you have is awful.

glad it worked for you. wouldn't work with DD2 who is quite capable of not eating anythig at all for days and days.

I think this article on fussy eating has some good advice

You have been blessed with children who respond to that,moondog. Mine didn't. If he could get away with it he wouldn't eat at all, it bores him, there are far more interesting things to be done apparently. One bite to take away the hunger and he's off if I let him.

And yes, we tried your method. He didn't eat for nearly a fortnight (paed said to continue, he'll eat when he's hungry ). And guess what - his appetite shrank so much it took months to get it back up to a decent level again. So no, it isn't that simple and it's quite insulting when people suggest that it is, as if we haven't tried everything in the book already or have been to thick or "lenient" to give it a go.

Very happy for you Monndog, you obviously know it all already.

Bananabrain, From what you say about your ds, I think if you repaet the same food for the 10 day period, by then he'll be so used to the new food he'll probably accept it as a 'normal' part of his diet. Just take things slowly and be patient.

Also, I started off with foods he used to like, but had given up on, so carrots and peas, not avocado and mango, IYSWIM!

He loves tenderstem brocolli, but not regular brocolli, and whole baby corn, but not sweetcorn. I bring him to the shops so he can see things he night like to try.

Last week I sat him down and said that I was really bored cooking the same dinners all the time, and I would love to be able to cook something different. I said 'you like chicken, rice, and the soup we have when we make noodle soup(just chicken stock). So why don't we try putting them all together to make risotto, because you used to love that when you were little'

I was so nervous when I gave it to him, at first he only took a tiny spoonful, and then he said 'hey, this is really nice' I was thrilled!

Same approach with the casserole, just break it down into the foods he like, and be really low key about it, as if you couldn't care less!

Maybe you could let him help you cook, he might be more inclined try something new if he's helped you and knows exactly what's in there!

It's worth a try at least, let me know how you are getting on.

PVJ and Kitbit, I don't mean to suggest that this will work for every family, sorry you still have this problem and I really hope you find a solution because I know how awful it can be.

macherie don't worry, you don't come across as saying "don't be so stupid, just do THIS" in any way whatsoever!! How old is your ds out of interest? My ds is 4.6, he has JUST started to accept that unfamiliar foods won't kill him and I'm absolutely delighted if I ever come across anyone's advice with ideas we haven't tried yet! (I just took issue with being told "oh FFS it's simple, this works every time" ).
You're right though, low key is working better now he's older. When he was smaller, a big fanfare used to do it, but not any more. Little by little...

dur, sorry just seen he's 9

brilliant advice macherie thanks for posting this (I was directed here from another thread) I'll be printing it off to show friends in RL who have similar problems

Moondog, you clearly have no experience of this sort of situation.

Thanks for posting. I am also glad that you saw the psychologist who was able to help you to help your son and you were kind enough to post so that other parents with children with food issues (my ds has sensory issues as part of being on the autism spectrum)could also try the method.

Not sure I trust myself to post my views on Moondog's post.

macherie - a stupid question from me...

After the bite of e.g carrot, did you then give him a meal that you knew he would eat (chorizo!)?

Am assuming you didn't then present him with a completely new, mixed up, family meal?

Sounds like an interesting tactic - and one that would probably help to accelerate DS's new found experimental urges. He is almost 4 and has been really fussy since about 18 months. In recent months he has started to eat brocolli, tuna, jacket pots, green beans - but all has to be separate and is still on a very limited menu to be honest.

Thanks for the info.

very interesting reading my ds is 11 next week and doesnt est fruit and veg
very fussy with most foods really has to be just so iyswim
i know that he would rather go without than try something.
i once asked him to try a carrot he gagged and gagged so much he was sick in the bin
same with lamb
so going by your rules would he then get no tea or would he because even though he was sick he did try it ?

I've been meaning to post for a while on the strategy that we tried with our fussy 4 year old, who ate anything until she was 15 months before rapidly shrinking her diet.

Like some other children, she didn't eat when she was hungry, and the memory of a refusal, even though we were calm, made her even more nervous when the next meal came along.

We wanted to help her to lose her fear of trying new foods, and to get her back onto ones that she had previously loved.

When we started this system, she drank apple juice, and would only eat sugar snap peas and parsley - her two veg, which we had managed to add to her diet the previous summer when they were in the garden. Sadly they hadn't opened the floodgates to other fruit and veg that we had hoped...

We bought a large Playmobil set off Ebay. Playmobil is ideal, because each individual bit can be played with on its own while being part of a desirable larger set. I photopopied a picture of each of the parts and stuck them on a chart. Under each item (the swimming pool, shower, cool box, figure 1, wine bottle, etc) I stuck a picture of the fruit or vegetable item that we wanted her to try, and space for her star under that. She could "read" very clearly the "price" of each item. We used a mixture of new items and old ones that had been abandoned by her, to give her an achievable one to start her off.

We stuck the chart on the fridge and waited.

She was initially very cross, and said that she didn't want "that chart" but within a couple of hours was eagerly "shopping" for items. She managed to try seven in the first week, and eight in the second. Around half have become part of her diet, while those that brought what we felt was a genuinely negative reaction will be tried again soon.

Now she eats a reasonable range of vegetables, but still isn't sure about fruit. We have ascertained now that she has got a genuine "thing" when different textures merge in her mouth and she doesn't like "slime" (sigh!) BUT! the experience has given her the impetus and incentive that she needed to break her fear of trying new things, and the reward chart for us gave her the carrot (literally) that she needed to break the stalemate at an age when she wasn't always open to reason.

My nightmares about eating disorders have gone, and for the first time she talks about food being "yummy" whereas she always seemed just to tolerate it.

Since then we have moved on to the "five a day" reward chart and are progressively shrinking the scale of the rewards. She loves to count her five. The real bonus is that trying a lot of things in a short space of time through her own choice took away a lot of the fear surrounding food and new situations by focusing her mind on the Playmobil piece and not stressing over a carrot. She has since become less scared in other people's houses and makes less of a fuss about trying things. She has even asked to try things on occasion.

Moondog's approach doesn't always work. It didn't for us, and her diet just became progressively less varied and she became, in our view, an eating disorder waiting to happen with multiple fears. A simple reward chart that felt like a last resort at the time became the catalyst for a change in her entire attitude to food.

Brilliant ideas here - my picky little eater (2;6) already loves her shopping (thanks to DP) so this would work a treat with her I reckon. I have been less imaginative to date, using threats of turning off cbeebies if said food is not eaten (yes I am admitting I allow her to watch cbeebies if she eats her dinner: desperate times, desperate measures). It's never really worked with new foods unless she has wanted to try them. TBH the best method I've found for trying new foods with my LO is watching Big Cook, Little Cook. So I;m a cretin, at least she has now tried cous cous.

(With regard to the deeply unpopular moondog comment, isn't it all relative?)

Thanks for this advice Macherie and Annner - very useful.

For the most part moondog is probably right about developing countries though, in that in places like Bangladesh, practically everyone eats just rice all the time. There's no chance of fear about new foods as there are never any new foods. Toddler heaven! Put them in a refugee camp where there's only canned peanut butter for high calorie concentration and they might well be revolted.

Some great tips particularly like your approach Annner and may well try it with out fussy 3 year old.

He has recently started accepting sauce on his pasta so I have been using the opportunity to slip all sorts of vegetables in there, covering it with tomato passata and then whizzing it all to obscurity. For some reason I feel compelled to snigger Dr Evil style in the background whilst DS unwittingly but happily shovels in sweetcorn, mushrooms, spinach and leeks.