"I don't like this" ... rant to follow ....

[Millie1]

I am so so sick of hearing those words from DS1 aged 3 and 3/4. Every blooming night, it seems like no matter what I put on the table, I hear those 4 words before he even tastes it. Then there's a full-blown row because he won't eat it. If it's a stage it's just getting worse by the day.

Meals refused/picked at in the last week inc ... where do I start? I'll work backwards from last night - sweet 'n sour chicken and rice (new recipe from Jeanette Orrey's bk); lamb shanks & potato and parsnip mash (another new recipe for us); sausage casserole and mash; pasta with jar of tomato & basil sauce (lazy night!); pasta bake; chicken wrapped in bacon with mash and veg ... I could go on but you get the picture.

He's getting plenty of variety but refuses just about anything. Yes he's probably getting enough through breakfast and lunch but he's a lean little chap anyway and I'd rather fatten him up than have his ribs stick out any further.

Any words of wisdom or ideas? I've tried the naughty step, taking his dinner away, telling him to leave the table and come back when he's hungry, withholding pudding (no more excting than a yogurt), not giving snacks between meals .... now I'm just pulling my hair out. Worse still, his brother is a great eater but is getting to the age where he's following his big brother's example.

Thanks!

pssst collision: if you can find one, an electronic dice seems to add to the allure - especially if you're mean and don't let them play with it outside of mealtimes

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I think I'm a slightly softer version on Frogs

Principle is the same though - here is your dinner and if you don't eat it you aren't hungry! All plates get the same food irrespective of likes or dislikes, then if there is something they don't like they are told to leave it on the side of the plate.

Where I am softer than Frogs is that I always offer pudding, only ever fruit or yoghurt anyway. I abhor the idea that pudding is a reward for eating mains, to my mind it is an intrinsic part of the meal and it is as important as the main course and should be eaten with the same gusto

But thats it - if no real effort has been made on dinner then only snacks for the rest of the time til next meal is fruit.

Mine are 5 and 7YO and they eat like horses. The variety of food that they eat is very good too - fish, meat, lots of veg, salsas, salads, olives, many different types of melon etc etc etc.
And anogther key point - even if they don't feel like eating they are not allowed down from the table until every one else is finished.

TBH Millie, it does sound like you have made meal time into a battle. We have never ever had any kind of punishment associated with meal times - we have promoted that they are sociable times to sit down and talk to each other, so the focus is not just on teh food.

It sounds to me as if you are making a lot of issues around food for your child - do you think it is possible to depersonalise it all??? Could you get to a point where you are quite calm over what he eats or doesn't eat????

Dunno, MLL. 'Contaminated' is quite a complicated one for a toddler, isn't it? Mine aren't as sophisticated as that.

My dd1 (10) actively dislikes courgettes, aubergines and peppers, mainly I think because she's persuaded herself that she does, IYSWIM. I certainly wouldn't make a point of giving her meals with those foods in, but if there's a pasta sauce which happens to have some peppers in then I do expect her to cope with it to an extent.

My ds (6) has morphed over the past year from being a chubby little thing to gulag boy, partly because I took him off school dinners, partly cos he's had a growth spurt, and partly because he can't be bothered to eat much. I don't give pudding if he hasn't eaten much of his main course simply because he'll just hold out for fruit or yoghurt otherwise. So I got wise to that.

The closest I've come to a real problem is with dd2, who was on the 98th centile at birth and is now below the 9th centile. She definitely had sensory issues with food from about 9 months, and still does on occasion, particularly things with skins like tomatoes. I have a vivid memory of her at about 12 months putting a single pea in and out of her mouth 15 times before finally rejecting it.

I did get quite anxious about it at one stage, particularly as I had medics breathing down our necks about her weight. But at some point I took an executive decision with the support of my GP that I wasn't prepared to let her subsist exclusively on Petit Filou yoghurts (which was the only thing she was sure to eat at the time), and put her on the same routine as the others. It did get better from there, slowly. Now she'll sometimes eat large quantities of something, sometimes nothing at all. Sometimes she'll reject something completely, and eat the same thing at the next meal. I've given up trying to fathom the workings of her mind. But I'm pretty sure that if I got too worked up about it she would spot that and play it to her own advantage.

uinless there is a medical basis for not eating - no kid will go hungry.
so they dont eat their tea ...yeah ..and? they will eat breakfast.

way too much is made of the issue i think.
no alarm clocks,, no shouting, no steps...but no leaving the table until everyone else is finished.

theres nothing else to eat and thats it.

i visited a friend in oldham the other week and sat there whilst she made her 4 year old son 3 different breakfasts - why? becuase hes spoiled and she's a mug.

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havent read the whole thread so apologies if i repeat. sometimes i will give ds a choice of meal (choice of three things maybe that im willing to cook) or if im making a proper meal, well he doesnt have a choice. if the meal includes something he doesnt like (ie mushrooms) then he can leave them on the side of his plate but they will still be cooked in with the meal.

when i had dd 18 months ago my ds was 6 and going through the stage of not eating, he was so thin his ribs stuck out. my hv (a very nice woman actually) told me "take him away from the television or any distractions" (i put him on the kitchen breakfast bar, he could still see us but not the tv). "give him half an hour and if the food is not eaten, throw it away" (at this time it was taking him an hour and a half to eat a meal). at the time i thought this was harsh...but it worked in a couple of weeks. he still doesnt eat a great deal but enough.

i dont purposely give him things i know he REALLY does not like. (my stepmother did this to me and made me vomit) but i will encourage him to try things. (he cant refuse it unless he has tried it) and as ive said, i will cook things in with the meal and he can leave them on the plate if he wants to.

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mll - my dd is almost 2. She eats a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast,sometimes picks at my breakfast (toast or porridge or something) as well. She'll have a snack mid-morning, a cereal bar or banana or a few crisps or a biscuit , same mid afternoon. At lunch or tea she will only eat a few mouthfuls of whatever it is.

Mealtimes here have gone a bit downhill (not the amount she eats, but organising them) recently because she's started insisting eating in the living room on her new child's "cat chair" and table. This means she keeps running around all the time. Have told myself we're back in the kitchen starting today! Although she still eats the same amount, it's driving me mad.
There's just me and her, I would love to be able to have "family meals" like soapbox, but it's not really like that though I do eat with her.

PS a problem i've always had is that dd is addicted to her milk, she drinks far too much of it. Since actively cutting back on her milk during the day, she has eaten more at mealtimes... but i haven't managed to stop her drinking milk during her meal like I'd like to, because I don't want to get into the "no milk till you've eaten your dinner" scenario. For the same reason, we don't have pudding. She has the odd petit filous but it appears out of the blue, not as standard. We sometimes have a "pudding" as a snack instead.

I was pondering this the other day - when ds1 (4) says he doesn;t like something he liked yesterday.

I was thinking that we say to him "would you like something" - meaning do you want some now.

So maybe he is using "not like" in the same context - ie rather than not liking something he just doesn't ^want" it at that particular moment.

Otherwise a general rule in our house is not to force food on tehm - but be firm about what is on offer and firm that there is nothing else on offer - if they don't want to eat any of it - fine - their choice.

It's ridiculous but I always feel bad when dd doesn't want the food because she doesn't like it, but i don't give her anything else . I used to hate it (when I was a teenager) when I didn't like the meal but i was hungry. but i also know that we can't just keep on cooking different things, esp at the drop of a hat, so I just ignore feeling bad!
For my boyf it was worse when he was a kid, his dad would make him feel really guilty for refusing his mum's cooking. "She's gone to all that trouble!" His mum I don't think made a big deal about it, but he said she always looked upset and he always felt guilty.

I guess you just have to give them a meal that has reasonable odds of having something in it they will eat - so never serve up a meal where you are pretty sure they won't like anything.

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I think it's important to accept that there are certain things that some children just don't like, just as grown-ups don't necessarily like everything. For instance, as a child and now that he's a father himself, my db cannot stand tomato ketchup and dh hates the smell of tea. That's why I don't believe in the "eat this or you get nothing" routine.

I would also agree that some children, if they are not encouraged and cajoled will get by on the absolute minimum and then they will be missing out on vital nutrients at a very important stage of their development. My ds went through a phase of eating very little or nothing with us at mealtimes so I gave him Ready Brek every night.

He is now eating more reasonable amounts but for him, missing a meal was not a big deal and he did not make up for it later. I'm sure he would have become deficient in vit/mins and calories if I had said "fine, have nothing". Knowing his personality, I know that he is a fusspot, whereas his younger brother is much more open to trying new things.

mll, i agree. re tastes, my dd sounds the opposite of yours! She loves ice cream, biscuits, chocolate etc but very rarely tastes something new that's healthy! Most of the veg I get down her are disguised, in a pasta sauce for example, and NEVER eats fruit (working on that one, again to disguise it!) She prefers mushy things to solid wet things (she won't eat any fruit, or carrot or any veg actually that's in solid form - except mushrooms).

Agree also about giving them something you're pretty sure they'll like . If I want to offer something new or something she doesn't like, I couple it with something i know she'll eat...though sometimes I think that prevents her from trying the new thing cos she just eats what she likes!

Haven't read the whole thread but will do when I log back on tomorrow but sounds a bit like DS (5) However, this is bizarre, try reading Dr Sueuss 'Green Eggs and Ham' to them! DS loved it and responded to the moral of the story which is you can't say you don't like it if you don't try it. Sorry, I know this sounds a bit trivial but it really made a difference in our house! Now I have to rush out of the office and home to give DS his lunch...agh!!

Millie - you have been introducing lots of new recipes this week, and also trying techniques to make him eat.

Might it help to retreat to well-known dishes that he eats automatically, for a few days, just so that he gets back into the habit of simply eating his dinner?

Then introduce new dishes a bit more gradually, rather than 4 or 5 in one week, but stick to completely relaxed tactics. I do agree with the people who say he is enjoying the hoo-ha!

Yep, bear in mind that it apparently takes 20 exposures of a new food for a child to like it as well - that's a lot of rejections before they finally decide it's the best food ever!

I have learned to always provide veg & potatoes, rice or bread with anything new so if all else fails at least he'll have eaten something!

hello -
my Dd give me just as much greif. She is constantly constipated as she lives off pasta. She has a good brekie of ready brek but the problem is that she is spoon feed. i cant imagine leaving her for five mins with a bowl of porridge - she's 3 by the way.
New thing i have started to do is give her a orange after each pasta meal - not brilliant but it works. The other issue i have is that she won't eat any food at nursery. She'll stay hungry and then at 1.30 come home really hungry and will eat what ever it maybe but being spoon fed. She has a very basic diet. Morning Ready brek, lunch - one of the following pasta with small amount of chicken or rice+chicken or sandwich with butter finished with water and some fruit if we are lucky and dinner is often a repeat of lunch. She has yoghurts for snacks and milk after dinner but her veg and fruit levels are low. So now i'm topping up with haliborange vitamins. Its very frustrating but i don't know what to do.

topaz, stop spoon feeding her, if she makes a mess so be it.

She is only going from breakfast til being spoon fed by you when she gets in at 1:30, so that's not actually very long. Probably within a week, if you don't spoon feed her at all, she will start to feed herself properly.

as for the variety, I have one of those kids too, and I haven't cracked it yet!

Yeah Topaz, definitely stop spoon feeding her. I know it's so tempting to continue, just to get something down them, I still do it myself as encouragement to eat (it replaced nagging ) as well as dd feeding herself and i keep trying to stop myself.
Part of the mess making at mealtimes is the children exploring what they're eating - textures, colours etc etc. You've got to not mind the mess they make! Though easy for me to say cos my dd's always been very neat & tidy tbh. my friend's baby chucks everything all over the place, dd never did that!

thank you! thank you mns! it's nice to know i am not alone in this

I think most children would ahve a limited variety of what they think they like. Just as many adulkts have a limited variety.

DD1 was an awful eater, she refused anything that she 'thought' she didn't like. So she had boring food every day, usually mash and peas and chicken or fish. She would eat fruit and sandwiches quite happily. At nursery she would go all day with nothjing, then ahve a piece of toast and apple for supper.

It stressed me out no end at first, then realised that she was gaining weight, had tonnes of energy and no problems.

I don't know what changed, could ahve been the weaning of DD2, but she started wanting to have different things, and once she relised they were nice, she'd have more. She has a chart and if she tries 10 more things each time, she gets a treat. But there is no cajoling her to try. We are talking things like trying cheesecake, sauce on ice cream kind of thing sometimes, other times chicken satay or mange tout. But it is always her idea to try it.

May not work for everyone, but we found backing off did work.

Those words are banned from our dinner table. Even when little guests come.

I say, 'I'm not interested in what you don't like. Just eat what you do like'.

I never offer alternatives.

My kids all eat really well. They know they've got no choice.