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Original poster

Argh - how do you deal with your child's picky-eater friends on a sleepover?

60 replies

Miaou · 05/02/2006 13:34

Dd1 has three or four good friends, two who have been on sleepovers and one who has been to tea. They are all really picky eaters (well to my mind anyway) - eg they only eat white bread, yoghurts if they are a particular make/no bits, pizza if it is bought, cheese if it is orange (huh?), etc etc ... Now I'm all for accommodating different tastes and would like to serve up something they will eat - but sometimes that just proves impossible! And I don't think it is unreasonable of me to not buy in special bread/yoghurts etc, particularly as we are on a very tight budget.

Yesterday dd1's sleepover guest went home having eaten one slice of pizza, a few Pringles, a slice of toast and a small bowl of soup with a slice of bread, in 24 hours!!! (She kept asking for something else to eat but all I had to offer her was fruit, which she declined!!)

Argh - baby crying - and I had so much to say on this subject - please add your thoughts/ways of dealing with this!

OP posts:
Crystaltips · 05/02/2006 15:20

I had one child who would only eat straight pasta - as curly wouldn't do.

Another child would only eat ham if it was from the pressure cooker

On the plus side another child's mother asked for my spaghetti bolognese recipe as her child only ate cheese and biscuits ( he never told me that )

Tortington · 05/02/2006 15:25

i dont like kids anyway, dont like other peoples kids more, dont like fussy eaters even more.

if you come to my house you have what we eat - if you dont like it - then tough eat when you get home.

am not inflexible - i wouldnt offer fish to someone who is allergic. i will try to accomodate allergies - even if the kid informs me they dont want sprouts - or even whe whole veg thing - fine.

i understand that some people dont like some things - but i dont understyand is some people not liking most things. hat gets on my nerves is pandering - like i like an apple but i like it cut into pieces, hard shit.

my son infomed me he doesnt like green apples - he was 15. so he went without. for fucks sake. an apple is a bleeding apple - specially when its tesco cheap shit.

Enid · 05/02/2006 15:27

god you're hard custy

gomez · 05/02/2006 15:27

I am not going to start buying special food for visiting 5 year olds sorry - if they are that fussy that toast, youghurt, fruit, sandwich or oatcakes aren't any good but will happily eat any variety of crisps/sweets/chocolates etc. then they wil be leaving my house a bit peckish.

This particular wee girl has the most limited diet you could imagine and I am not getting involved in special catering for her. She won't eat bread & butter for the record .

gomez · 05/02/2006 15:30

Spot on Custy - I get the not liking sausages or pasta or fish or whatever but how can you not like ANYTHING - except X,Y or Z, cooked this way, served that way and only on a Tuesday. Nah, that is taking it all too far.

getbakainyourjimjams · 05/02/2006 15:32

DS1has an incredibly limited diet (he's severely autistic, it goes with the territory and its not as simple as pandering to it). Anyway he's obviously never going to go on a sleepover but if we go somewhere where someone is providing food I take food with us. He can't have gluten, but if there is stuff being offered that he can have then I'll offer it to him, ifhe refuses he can have the crap I've brought that he will eat. Having said that he rarely eats in a different setting anyway, but that's a different story (oh except with school- he seems to eat anywhere with them, but it's easier for them). If someone's child was that fussy then I would expect the mother to provide the food tbh.

Enid · 05/02/2006 15:35

ah I would love to cook for your and your kids jimjams one day

I suppose I come at this a bit differently as I like kids AND I like cooking for kids. sAd I know.

getbakainyourjimjams · 05/02/2006 15:35

Believe me you wouldn't want to cook for ds1. Help yourself to the other 2 though.

chipmonkey · 05/02/2006 15:42

ds1 has a friend who only eats noodles and chocolate. They live far away so it has to be a weekend trip. I still have four packets of noodles in my cupboard from his last visit. has to be noodles only as well, he won't eat the little packet of sauce that comes with them!

Original poster
Miaou · 05/02/2006 15:46

see this is churning on in my absence!!

To be fair to the girl who came for a sleepover, she is very polite and a lovely child, but by her own admission she only eats junk food at home. She ate one slice of pizza minus the crusts (then ate the crusts when dd2 piped up "Mummy! x has left the crusts! We're not allowed to do that!" ), then said she had had enough. An hour later she said, "Miaou can I have something to eat? I'm starving" [roll eyes emoticon] And the problem is, we just don't buy crisps/biscuits/sweets/etc, which is what she was after, all I could offer her was fruit or bread and butter (but she didn't like the bread as it is homemade wholemeal stuff!)

Like Aero, I want children to come and to have a good time, not go home and say, I'm not going there again, they have horrible food! But dh made pizza because she likes pizza, and she was offered the choice of three different soups and dh made the flavour she chose, so we did our best. I really don't have a problem with that, or with offering alternatives (my dds are old enough to understand that it is acceptable for the visitor to "not like" the food that is offered, but not them ), it's just that she didn't like the alternatives...

We have another, regular visitor, who said to me one day, "Miaou, why do we always have pasta and cheese when I come for tea?" to which I replied "because it is the only thing that we cook that you will eat!!!"

OP posts:
Moomin · 05/02/2006 15:47

yes but if your kid is a genuinely picky eater and is invited to stay for tea of whatever, a repsonsible parent would warn the host and give advice or even pack something for them to eat if it was an issue, surely? I can't bear all the pickiness from kids who are obviously keen on crap.

I've been wondering about this issue for a while, esp as my mate who has two older boys is so fed up of her sons' friends refusing her food that she keeps frozen chips and nuggets in the freezer just for when certain friends come over! I'm not as generous, now do i want dd thinking i think that sort of food is ok for some people but not for her. She had a friend over for the first time the other day. They're both 4. i played what i thought was safe by doing cream cheese rolls, carrot sticks, raisins, cheddar babybels and cherry tomatoes. Her little friend ate NOTHING apart from a bite of roll but only when i'd picked off every single seed from the tope (they were warbuton's seeded batches).

when i took her home she told her mum she was starving and ate 3 fromage frais in a row. I felt really embarrassed and uncomfortable! but now i feel angry wth myself for being like that. i HATE all this palarva!!

Moomin · 05/02/2006 15:49

sorry, the 'yes but' i started with was for a post YONKS ago but i was slow off the mark getting my act toegther to reply!

Enid · 05/02/2006 15:54

I always have fish fingers and chips in the freezer for picky friends

and shock horror even my own children eat fish fingers and chips once a week or so

chipmonkey · 05/02/2006 15:57

Enid! I thought you'd make your fish fingers!

Original poster
Miaou · 05/02/2006 16:23

Which is fine, Enid - I don't want this thread to turn into a "junk v healthy food" thread, that kind of misses the point.

We know a boy (who we don't see now) who is incredibly fussy, and won't eat any junk food, amongst many other things. He was a PITA to feed; he only ever ate at our house at parties and even then refused everything except buns and chocolate biscuits! Despite dd1 going to his house for tea, he was never invited back to ours (and I explained why, too!)

But we don't eat them, so should we buy these things even though we can't afford them/don't like them so that we can offer them to guests? Is it rude of us not to?

OP posts:
carla · 05/02/2006 16:28

Message deleted

chipmonkey · 05/02/2006 16:31

Miaou, if you happen to have food in your freezer that he will eat and that you and your family also eat thats fine. But as to going out and buying things that you can't afford, no, you shouldn't be expected to do that.

tortoiseshell · 05/02/2006 17:30

Fish fingers aren't crap imo. Dh has them at least twice a week. At least it is some protein.

I hate this assumption that kids are picky because they eat crap. It's just not true. Ds is picky because he is picky. I have come to the conclusion that he has very sensitive taste buds (as suggested by Robert Winston ) because he has a very acute sense of smell, and can tell a mile off if I've mixed something else in with mashed potato for example. And he won't eat anything with much taste to it.

Just makes me mad when everyone assumes he's picky because I let him eat junk the whole time. For the record, he won't eat any yoghurts (or fromage frais), raisins, nuggets, burgers, pizza or any of those typical 'crap' foods.

tortoiseshell · 05/02/2006 17:31

But I wouldn't (and don't) expect a parent of a child he was visiting to make special arrangements - he knows if he doesn't like something he just does without. Hence why he is very thin.

cheltenhamgal · 05/02/2006 17:36

talking of sleepovers, it wasn't the food that was the major problem(although she is vegetarian at seven)but the fact she wouldn't do what I asked her to as I wasn't her mum, to the point that she wouldn't change her socks which she had worn the day before and slept in, her excuse was the others rubbed her feet, and she wouldn't wear her clean trousers as they had a hole in, so I ended up sewing the hole up !

chipmonkey · 05/02/2006 18:01

BTW I wasn't suggesting that fish fingers are crap. We have them all the time, especially dh, who was reared on them. I like the ones which are obviously fish fillet, rather than munged-up bits of fish. Just that Enid makes her own chicken nuggets which are fantastic.

chipmonkey · 05/02/2006 18:05

Wouldn't Enids Chicken Nuggets be good for fussy sleepover people

Enids Chicken Nuggets

750g minced chicken
175g breadcrumbs
175g grated cheddar
1 tbsp mayo to bind
1 clove garlic
salt and pepper
beaten egg and some fine toast breadcrumbs to coat the nuggets

Preheat oven to 180C. Mix all ingredients up to and including salt and pepper together. Form into walnut sized nuggets and roll them in beaten egg and then in toasted breadcrumbs. You can freeze them now if you want to.

Place on greased baking sheet and cook for about 20 minutes (45 if frozen). Voila!

They don't take long to make and once they are done you can freeze them. They are delicious too!

foxinsocks · 05/02/2006 18:44

I used to think I would insist kids ate what I cooked but I felt so bad the first time I did it, that I immediately caved in and gave the child plain pasta (had done a spag bol so plain pasta was right there).

I'm lucky in that my kids are not fussy eaters but when I was little, I ate everything in sight and I had a little sis who was very picky who used to well up when made to eat something she didn't like. So I never force the issue but I do try them with what we are eating first.

Stilltrue · 05/02/2006 20:18

Tortoise shell I understand what you are saying; I have a somewhat fussy 10yo (though better than many of the examples here!). We eat good food at home, can't remember when they last had fishfingers etc etc. Like you I don't expect his friends' mothers to fuss around him because I certainly don't. He is too lean though...

chipmonkey · 05/02/2006 20:24

foxinsocks, my little sister was a picky eater too and I remember my dad trying to get her to eat by making her sit for an hour in front of her uneaten dinner and giving me sweets to eat in front of her. I felt so sorry for her I used to pass her sweets under the table!

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