Are your children fussier about food than YOU were as a child?

[MrsMerryHenry]

My DS (aged 3) will eat everything that we eat. With two exceptions: mushrooms and aubergines. Compared to his peers this is small potatoes, so we let him off and pick those bits of veg out of his bowl. I have it on good authority (i.e. from parents of more than one child) that his broad food tastes are not down to my skill as a mother and cook, but purely a stroke of good fortune. So I bow to their greater wisdom and await the food tastes of DC no 2 with bated breath.

But then I think back to when I was a child - I hated some of the food I was given - spinach (love it now), liver (still think it's vile), just about every school dinner (just the thought is enough to make me retch today) - yet my siblings and I still managed to force it down under strict orders from our no-messing parents - and lived to tell the tale. I'm curious about other families - were your households the same when you were growing up?

If as children we (and our parents, and their parents, etc) did manage to eat a broader range of food than our children, why do we regard it as normal and acceptable for our children to be much fussier about food? Our children are not human in a fundamentally different way from us that makes their taste buds more sensitive than our own, so why don't we just start them off from day 1 by insisting that they 'eat what you're given and nothing more'? Perhaps in part the demands of life for working mothers make us more likely to cave in where our own mothers wouldn't have (though to be fair, my own mother worked all her life and brought up four kids - making me feel very inadequate with my p/t job and one child!). And I've never understood why some women will cook more than one meal - that, IMO is well and truly crossing the line of acceptability (I know someone who cooks 3-4 meals a go!).

I've heard that there's something about the breadth of the mother's palate during pregnancy, that babies who taste a wide range of foods through amniotic fluid will be more likely to have broad tastes outside the womb - anyone know anything about that?

So is it just down to us as parents allowing a level of fussiness that our parents wouldn't have permitted? I can't help but think that we must somehow be shooting ourselves in the foot but until I have another child I suppose I can't fully understand how this works. To come back to my unborn DC2, I plan to treat him/her the same as DS1 when it comes to food, so I'll soon find out for myself!

I was the unfussiest child ever, even drank dog shampoo as a 2 year old (it was green apparently )

my dp was and still is very fussy about texture, hates anything like mashed potato, pasta, dd exactly the same

VERY interesting about the mother's diet throughout pregnancy as I had severe hyperemesis for the whole of my pregnancy and had quite a limited diet

Dog shampoo!!!!! ROFL ROFL

Poor you with hyperemesis. I'm one of the lucky ones who only feels a bit nauseous in preg, so I always manage to eat normally. Maybe there is some truth in that theory...

I can't remember what my diet was like when I was the age of my children - 6 and 4.
I do remember what I would/n't eat when I was 9 and I think they are a lot less fussy.

I think the big mistake my mum made were to more or less only offer us the dishes all three of us liked which obviously made the menus really limited. She also never gave us food she didn't like even when she was eating later with my Dad.

Eg I don't remember eating tinned sweetcorn until I was a teenager and had it at a friends but we did have corn on the cob. I didn't have beetroot until I was an adult.

My children are a good deal less fussy about food than I was as a child (they are 6 and 3). This I think is because I simply don't give a shit whether they eat or not. They aren't underweight. They aren't overweight. I trust them to regulate their own appetites to eat as much as they need of the food I provide.

My mother was convinced that if she didn't practically force feed me, I would die. So I went from being a healthy but skinny little girl to being a rake who wouldn't put anything solid in her mouth for 6 months. I was on SMA until I was 3. The took me to some specialist when my mother kept taking me to the doctor every week, and the specialist told her to set up a tent in the back garden for me to eat in, and provide whatever food I asked for, and never ever ask whether I had eaten it. I had free rein to chuck it in the outside bin.

AFter a year or so of eating ketchup and dry bread in a tent with nobody looking at me, commenting, or trying to emotionally blackmail me into eating more than I wanted, I got bored, and started joining the family for meals.

Now, that's long and dull, but it explains why I don't give a crap what and how much my children eat. I provide a healthy diet, I couldn't honestly tell you if they have any major dislikes because I don't care. They are provided with a varied diet, they are healthy and growing, ergo they must be eating.

I wasn't fussy with food as a child. We ate what was given at home or school or went hungry. Money or lack of meant fussiness was not allowed. However food was more simple and less fancy anyway.

7yo dd isn't fussy, she loves her food. She'll try anything and knows we should always try stuff several times before you know if yiu don't like it properly.

Good god, colditz, I have never heard a food story like that before! Top marks to your specialist, though!

I know! Looking back, it's hilarious.

I'm now a well fed porker, BTW. With no food issues at all!

Ate everything except fish, made me physically sick. I remember dreading eg. corned beef hash, liver and bacon, ham in a tin, but genuinely cannot remember considering not actually eating them. This is very confusing

Colditz

I was ridiculously fussy, as was my sister. Oddly enough I hated what she liked and she hated what I liked (have to wonder how psychologicaly that all was), so mum could never win. We had to eat what was in front of us and I remember many tearfilled evenings when I had sat there choking down food for hours with everyone else glaring at me.

As a consequence sitting down to eat with the family is something I have to make myself do I do have an underlying stress about it, and it's only since having children that I make sure I do. I also had a lot of control issues to do with food as a teen.

Conversely my DCs are the most un-fussy children ever. I remember DS1 announcing when he was 3 that his favourite foods were squid and olives (pretentious much?). I've never put pressure on them, and jumped on my otherwise lovely dad the first time he tried to "encourage" DS to finish a meal.

I do think you can grow out of likes and dislikes, but putting pressure on at meal times can do more harm than good.

I distinctly remember gnawing on a pork rib that my mum had cooked in the pea soup, was about 4 or 5

couldn't imagine my dd ever doing that

"psychological"

God I jump on my parents too, when they start loading my 6 year old's fork for him

I actually shouted at my dad in a cafe once, for trying to make ds1 eat more than the large portion of chips, eggs, ham and beans he had already eaten, and I remember shouting "If you make one more comment about or movement toward that child's plate we will leave this cafe and you will sit on your own to finish your meal!"

Which is a complete over reaction.

But I truly believe my parent's controllingness about food nearly gave me an eating disorder!

I have one fussy one and one who will eat anything. In my family growing up there was me (who would eat anything) and one brother who would eat hardly anything and another who simply didn't notice what he ate.

I remember having a small appetite as a child, and always being the last to finish - but now I wonder whether that was because I was fussy or just because I was slow.

Colditz - it's a wonder that your parents haven't learned from their experience through you. Are they always that stubborn?

I have a brother and a sister and none of us were ever fussy. It just wasn't an option. There was only one dinner and you ate that or went hungry. I never remember being coerced into eating, but I was expected to eat what was served e.g. if we had sprouts (which I hated) I didn't have to take many but I was expected to eat some. And I did. Used to mash them up with potato and gravy.

There was however, lots of praise for being adventurous with food which I think encouraged us all to try new things.

Junk food was rarely in the house so if you were hungry between meals you ate bread and butter or fruit.

I think our range of foods is wider now. I never ate pasta as a child, or ketchup, much fruit (unless tinned). I ate a lot of bread and butter and traditional meat'n'3 veg meals. So there is more food about for our DCs to be fussy about, IYSWIM. Also I remember being told I HAD to eat something and my brother being practically force-fed rhubarb, after which he was sick everywhere. It didn't make him like rhubarb, but it did make him suspicious of adults who told him to eat things.

We give our children more opportunities now in different locations. For example at the toddler group I help out with, the children are offered a new fruit every week, such as papaya, pomegranate, kiwi, Sharon fruit. We eat out more, we have wonderful foods fromother other cultures. We take more notice of our children and allow them a bit more leeway perhaps than we were permitted. Also we are for the most part better off. Food is pretty cheap and widely available.

I am the mother of a 3 year old who hates to eat. Every mealtime is a battle because I am so anxious over it. It is silly of me and counter-productive. But he's not fussy, he just isn't bothered about food.

BornToFolk - sounds like we had very similar experiences of food as children! I like this approach - colditz's parents were clearly excessive in putting on the pressure, but at the same time I think it's unhealthy to let your children's pickiness dictate the menu.

lanky - we had a wide range of foods when I was growing up, being both African and British. But OMG you've reminded me of the horrors of rhubarb

It's an approach I'm trying to take. DS is only 2 but so far, he's not too fussy. He has his likes or dislikes of course, but he eats a wide range of stuff.

I try and introduce him to new things and try not to make any fuss if he doesn't want much of something (though this is hard!) I give him some choice in what to eat too. He likes to choose a piece of fruit from the bowl.

I have a ds who will eat and try anything willingly he's great and nothing like me as a child. Ds2 is another story and will flatly refuse food saying its yuk. I try to avoid the mealtime battles with him and let him eat his favpurite pasta.

As a child I would mainly eat spagetti hoops - from a tin and diarylea triangles. I would also sit there and make myself sick. But I now eat almost anything with the exception of mushrooms - so Im sure he will grow out of it eventually.I m just carrying offering him what I have made and trying to not take offence

My dd has a worryingly narrow range of foods which are tolerable, I can't say she enjoys eating at all. Reading that bit about the amniotic fluid makes me wonder if my diet has any bearing on what she eats. I found myself pregnant in the middle east, had extreme vomiting and virtually existed on punjabi samosas and skittles. she is happy to eat very plain food in small quantities. When she was weaned she would eat anything, gradually this tailed off and her diet is atrocious. She can and will go for days without eating, she is on the 5th centile weight wise but her doctor said she is healthy. When I grew u[, you ate what you were given, no messing about.

My Mum was a good cook and pretty adventurous, apart from peanuts I liked everything. I was the one who ate everyone elses school dinners when they didn't like them. (Goodness knows how I ended up skinny)

dd is incredibly adventurous. Asked for and ate snails in France, wanted to try Eel (but it was too expensive) neither of us were very keen on the giant wobbly calf foot though. If it sounds different she wants to try it.

I don't think it is anything we have done though, just luck. She has the same food on her plate as we do. If she eats it, she eats it. If she doesn't there's no comment. (and when she was a toddler she lived on the tiniest portions, was hard to bite tongue then!)

My DCs eat everything we've ever offered them- including in dd's case pretty 'adult' tastes (chicken feet, seaweed, octopus). The difference I think is

1. we as parents aren't finickity
2. we can actually cook
3. the range of foods available now is of much higher quality and greater variety than when DH and I were children (70s fuel crises, winter of discontent etc)
4. we never make them finish everything, just what they want.

The only things DD isn't keen on are eggs and salmon, and lets face it plenty of people aren't keen on those as adults. DS seems to like everything so far, but is only 10mo.

I did have a very wide range of food when pg and bf (esp with dd) and I do think this exposes them to flavours early on. (IMO)

I wasn't fussy and they aren't fussy.

The main difference with our eating habits is that they have far more variety that we had as kids, and fewer puddings.

I have one fussy child who eats a narrow range of plain food and one child who will give most things a try.

We cook a huge variety of food, from scratch. I ate just about anything and everything in pregnancy as I never suffered from nausea.