You know your child is a fussy eater when...

[melpomene]

You start wondering whether ketchup or popcorn can be counted as a portion of vegetables.

Your green wheelie bin is full to the brim with your child's leftovers.

Your toddler will only eat a banana whilst still in the supermarket (We do pay for it first). She will not touch bananas at any other time, however fresh they are.

Your other child's 'fruit eating' sticker chart has been gathering dust on the kitchen wall for 5 months, during which time she has not eaten a single piece of fruit.

haychee my love, you may have a point who knows, but one has to be diplomatic and sensitive in order to get a hearing, not storm in like a bull in a china shop - it just alienates people

Re those with poor diets growing up healthy - a friend's dh (he is attractive, intelligent, strong etc) lived on chips, peanuts and chocolate until he was 18 or so (and went away to university) ...so no long term harm there. My friend knew him as a child - he would go over to her house with his family for Sunday roast, they would all have roast and he would have chips!

Sorry.
I didnt realise it was tongue in cheek.
I came in early and just thought along a different track.

Truly am a baffoon!

Starving my dd worked for us, thats all. Wanted to share my revelation.

When you watch that Fussy Eaters prog on BBC3 you can just picture your own child on it in 20 years' time.

That program scares me

I guess if you look on the bright side they were all still alive!

notice how they always give them nice hair n the good outlook and minging styles on the bad eating option?

When you have a cupboard full of things pretending to be treats - fruit flakes, humzingers, raisins etc - and even they dont get eaten

Your child will demand anchovies and green thai curry but will not never ever, eat a grape

when you start trying to calculate how many jaffa cakes your child needs to eat to get one portion of fruit

when he leaves a party and the hostess Mum says "He didn't eat anything - really nothing" and you say "I know - thanks anyway"

Your child refuses to eat a favourite food because she's since discovered something nicer.

When your dc goes round to a friend's for dinner and the parent asks what they should cook and you say very politely - 'don't worry about it, they won't eat whatever you serve up...' and when you go to pick them up, the parents says very quietly and with some surprise - 'they REALLY didn't eat ANYTHING while they were here'.

You are elated when they eat 4 raisins, because that is all they have allowed in their mouths for two days

The hospital dietician suggests you put olive oil on top of oven chips to get more calories into them...

You realise the pairs of 12 month old trousers they wore when babies fit really them really well as capri pants when they are 4...

When you start calling foods by daft names in an attempt to get them to eat. Only time it has worked is with fishfingers They are called Ocean Nibbles here a la Charlie and Lola!

DH hasn't quite got the hang of the names for food thing, he was calling sausages ' Monkey's Fingers' to which DS2 (my fussy one) replied 'ewwwchh I don't wanna eat monkey fingers!'

I'm sure chocolate covered raisins would count as one of your 5 a day Surely!!! Not that DS would eat them

When you spend the day at someone's house and after hours of begging and cajoling you finally get them to sit down at the table with a plate full of plain rice and a paltry piece of chicken breast and everyone sneers at their plate and says
"Is that all you're giving her?"
"What - no sauce/veggies/real food?"
"Oh poor you darling - is your mummy starving you?"
all while their little darlings are stuffing their faces with exotic and interesting foods which just serves to make you feel more inadequate

Just realised I was still on my bonfire name! that was like so yesterday (or the day before..or the day before that!)

when your dd picks up peas one at a time and takes the skin off them before eating the inside then about 5 mins later the skin.

will not eat anything that resembles fruit in any way shape or form - oh except pineapple off a pizza but wont eat it any other way. Mind you she now occasionally eats grapes in the supermarket (we pay at the end lol) well she kind of sucks the juice out then gives them to me and expects me to eat the dried out grapes!

Oooh eating peas, grapes and pineapple isn't a fussy eater!!! Oh how I wish DS would even so much as look at those things!!

I've just realised my DD isn't such a fussy eater as I thought.

First playdate ever t'other mum kindly asks if fish, mash and peas would be ok...er, no, DD might eat A pea out of that lot. But she does like cheese. Cheese on toast then..er, no, not melted cheese, and has to be really strong cheddar or stilton come to think, and er, untoasted bread and er, no butter.

But eating out is easy...every pub does a ploughmans lunch!

And she will eat mushy peas.

Thank god for this thread. I was really starting to worry that all you mumsnetters had children who ate houmous and raw organic vegetables for snacks!

Can I ask... is it true that if your first child is a fussy eater, the second one will normally eat everything under the sun?

ds would eat hummous but we can not buy it easly here

so everday is bread and cheese

no hot food ever ever his words
when im ten maybe

i tried to be calm
but a a week or so ago i sent ds and myself on a sweet ban

at least he eats something and now can not ask for a biscuit as the fairies are looking after them

thank you for this thread

and eating out means taking a mini picnic

No hot food .

Ds won't eat cold food .

Not everything under the sun Strawberrymartini but in this house no.2 eats lots of what no.1 doesn't eat and vice versa so they end up widening their repertoires because they try what the other one is enjoying.

Of course you get the opposite too. One goes off a fave food because the other says 'yuck'