Eating a carrot is breaking my heart

[CarrotTrauma]

I’ve NC for this as I don’t want linked to my other posts as could be outing to people who know me.

So tonight we have come down hard on our 7yo DC, they are currently bawling their heart out at the table, have been for over half an hour because we are making them eat a carrot, not even a whole carrot, it’s a quarter of a roasted carrot.

We’ve always been fairly relaxed with food. Never forced our DCs to eat food they don’t like, never made them go to bed hungry. The snack draw is always available, they must ask though. But the diet of one of our DCs has gotten so bad we have had to play hard ball.

Number 1, had always had an issue with fruit and veg, bad gag reflex even as a baby. As they have gotten older that gag reflex is still there but they do try and have got to the point where they can eat things they never could before, not a huge amount but are gradually progressing and overall we get some decent healthy food into them. A lot of this has been down to school encouragement in trying new healthy foods and eating with their friends as well as age.

Number 3 child, no problems at all, they will actually get upset if there isn’t enough fruit and veg. 95% of the time they will choose fruit of any sweets/chocolate.

But with number 2 it’s has gotten so bad. As a baby it wasn’t a problem until they started copying number 1 and refusing to eat fruit and veg. As they were close in age it was hard to stop this. They started to make progress at nursery and school and I wasn’t too worried as both told me they were eating stuff they wouldn’t at home and I thought that like number 1 they would get better especially eating at friends homes or friends coming to us as with number 1. But lockdown happened, so they stopped eating with their peers and stopped trying new things which they would happily do at school.

We’ve also moved during lockdown and they are in a new school, but since returning only dose packed lunches. Previously I could live with picking my battles because there were always meals I could sneak a bit of blended veg into and I knew I had the back up that at school they were at least trying and eating foods they refused at home. This isn’t to say I havnt tried, I’ve blended veg hidden it in many mice dishes, spread it on home made pizzas, tried cooking it in lots of various ways. They will eat a bowl of stew and at the end all the meat and gravy is gone and all the veg left. I’ve made novelty meals, got very creative in designing fun plates, but nothing works.

Just to show how bad it is, this is now my DCs diet,

Breakfast - toast with butter, beans or sausages. They use to eat cereal but after being introduced to krave through a relative this is now the only cereal they eat. The only other breakfast foods are pancakes with Nutella. We only allow the krave or anything Nutella related at weekends now. Which is why we started making hot foods during the week.

Lunch - ham sandwich, no other sandwich, will eat plain bread and butter. Pretzels, popcorn and maybe breadsticks. Absolutely nothing else.

Dinner - pizza (cheese n tomato only), sausages, chicken nuggets and chips, roast chicken, hot dogs and pasta, beans, meatballs and of course McDonalds. Won’t eat potatoes in any other form or rice, cous cous, eggs, obviously no veg at all. Will try other meats but not really fussed.

At home they spend all their time asking for snacks, their idea of a snack is chocolate, crisps, sweets, ice cream.... this is why we are at breaking point. We have no issue with our children eating these in moderation and with a healthy varied diet, but our 7yo dose not anything near this.

So tonight was the night we have got tough and stuck to our guns. I’ve had to go upstairs as I can’t bare the crying. Both DH and I have horrible memories of being forced to sit at the table and eat stewed to death veg and swore we would never do it. But we have run out of patience and need to do something before it’s to late.

[moita]

OP I get it, I do. My DS is 4 and a very restricted eater. It breaks my heart as he was a toddler who happily ate everything!

However my DH is living proof that shame and guilt around food causes massive issues. His mum used to hide food in other food and at 48 he always needs to know everything that goes into a meal.

I don't show my son my worries.

[GintyMcGinty]

Mine ate what they were given or starve basically

As many of those with actual experience of this have explained some children will actually starve. Or try to eat the food and then vomit it back up again. And believe me vomit and tears do not improve the situation at the dinner table.

Parents who trot this sort of line out don't actually know what they are talking about.

Btw one of mine will eat anything, try anything and lists her favourite foods as broccoli, Brussel sprouts and sushi.

The other one has a very limited diet based on textures. He doesn't eat junk food or snacks. He doesn't like them. But he is just as 'fussy' as those living off ham sandwiches.

If my broccoli eater was the eldest maybe I too would be handed out smug judgements.

[Nowisthemonthofmaying]

Haven't RTFT but it could be worth looking at the Tiny Tastes method - it's been very successful with some children with autism with very restricted diets

[Rupertbeartrousers]

Although not buying any ‘junk’ food and not having a snack drawer are different things. Particularly if the snacks are accessible/adlib.

I think I would still try to keep the safe foods to mealtimes if possible to avoid filling up on snacks inbetween.

[Cowbells]

@Talkwhilstyouwalk

I would literally stop buying junk food and only offer healthier options. Will be a shock to the system and they may reject it at first but I'm sure they won't starve themselves!!

Sadly this isn't always true. Children with underlying sensory or gastric issues will starve themselves and the techniques that work for normal slightly faddy children are disastrous. A completely different approach is needed for autistic children and others with similar sensory problems surrounding food.

[Sirzy]

Ds is now tube fed because of his restricted diet. Ok his may be an extreme case but it does happen. He would very much starve without his safe foods and has gone days without eating anything (pre tube and post) even with the safe foods available.

The main issue for us is actually his safe foods are too healthy, he eats apples and strawberries happily - but they don’t provide the calories he needs to grow.

[Hoppinggreen]

@Talkwhilstyouwalk

I would literally stop buying junk food and only offer healthier options. Will be a shock to the system and they may reject it at first but I'm sure they won't starve themselves!!

Some children actually will

[Hoppinggreen]

@Shehasadiamondinthesky

I wouldn't put up with that. Mine ate what they were given or starve basically. I didn't have chocolate or crisps in the house at all and would not tolerate whining. A child cannot maintain good health on a limited junk food diet like that.

Well mine chose to starve.
Some children actually can’t rather than won’t eat a varied diet.
It took time but DD has a very good diet now (although some foods are safe and others aren’t) but I remember crying over 4 peas!!
OP I know it’s hard but if I can give you one piece of advice it would be to try and relax and make food very unimportant. Nobody should be the bad cop

[CoalCraft]

Forcing won't work.

I had a similar diet as a kid and honestly I still eat like crap. I am not and never have been overweight, it suffered any other significant health issue. Obviously it's not good, and I'm not saying you shouldn't try to improve DC's diet, just trying to reassure you that they won't keel over from it in the short term.

I'm not sure what the answer is. As I say I have yet to overcome my veg aversion. What I do know is that being forced to eat something only worsened my attitude towards food and, if nothing else, guaranteed that I would never willingly touch that food again.

You also may not be able to force her to eat it. Attempts with me largely failed because I would gag if something I didn't like the texture of was in my mouth.

[FakeColinCaterpillar]

I had a very limited diet as a child. I hated vegetables. About 5 meals a week were just tinned soup as it’s all I wanted (can’t touch it now).

When I got to about 15/16 I just chose to make myself things and started eating things. Most of my diet now is vegetables and I eat a very broad diet.

I can tell you all the things I was force-fed... I don’t eat them now. It’s counter productive.
I’m going through similar work DD she eats and okay but limited diet. At 13 she is starting to show an interest in trying things. Peer pressure helps as she doesn’t want to look fussy.

You can’t force someone to like foods. All you can do is offer and find opportunities where they might try more readily (with friends) or hide veg in things. Please don’t make your DC eat things they don’t want to.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

I don’t think I did jump straight to food phobia. I was pointing out that some children will starve themselves and there’s not really any way of knowing which ones until you have done the damage.

Regardless of cause, I can’t see that getting into a stressed out battle of wills over food will help anything.

[AccidentallyOnPurpose]

@Scienceisnotopinion

Rafals, why jump into food phobias? Surely trying everything else first is sensible?

Trying things is sensible. Insisting no child will starve themselves, or that if they're hungry and it's the only thing available they'll eat it isn't.

Actually for a child on a restrictive diet, cutting out the safe foods completely is severely damaging. Their diet just becomes even more restrictive.

[Scienceisnotopinion]

Rafals, why jump into food phobias? Surely trying everything else first is sensible?

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

@Talkwhilstyouwalk

I would literally stop buying junk food and only offer healthier options. Will be a shock to the system and they may reject it at first but I'm sure they won't starve themselves!!

Some children actually will. Not really a great idea to take away the stuff they will eat if you don't know whether what you have is a behaviour issue, a fussy eater or an underlying issue like AFRID, food phobia or sensory issues.

First thing to do is get rid of all the stress and anxiety. Not much is going to happen if he's in fight/flight/freeze mode whatever the issue is.

[Scienceisnotopinion]

Wouldnt force them to try, just take away all other options. If the inly available food is vegetable they ll eventually eat it.
A restricted diet is very damaging

[Toothpaste123]

@GrumpyHoonMain good point.. Although my child loves chips.. Which is of course a potato. Funny that 🙄😁

[GrumpyHoonMain]

@Toothpaste123

OP I have to admit I'm a bit taken back by your post. It seems that you let your dc decide what they eat and you even negotiate with them about what food you'll be cooking. Really?! And what is the purpose of this 'snack drawer' that is filled with unhealthy things? Crisps and chocolates are not snacks, they are treats! Treats are for special occasions only. In our family that's weekends, birthdays etc.. No weekdays.

I never force my children to eat anything that makes them gag. I also have bad memories of being forced to do so at home and in school.. But in our house the parents are in charge. We cook what we like and the children will have to just deal with it. Plenty of times they turn up at mealtimes and go EWWW i don't like this food and try to throw a tantrum, but I just tell them that it can't be their favourite every day. Today it's this, tomorrow it's something else.

My eldest for example hates potatoes. In any form..mashed, boiled, roasted etc. My Dh and I love potatoes. So we fill DCs plate with a bit of potato, and lots of everything else. I tell him he has to try the mash every time, but he is allowed to leave it if he eats everything else. If he could, he would exist solely on plain pasta, white bread and sugary things. Which is exactly why he doesn't get to decide! Hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, crisps, chocolates, jam toasts etc are treats and we only have them at weekends. They are not every day foods.

I think you've become so concerned about causing your dc any psychological stress that you've ended up disadvantaging their physical health. The grown ups do the cooking and grocery shopping! The kids will just have to deal with it. If there's nothing unhealthy in the house, the 7 year old will just have to eat what's there. My eldest claims to hate bananas and apples for example, but if I peel and chop them and leave them out, he will help himself. If there was a treat jar somewhere in the house guess what he'd choose instead? Exactly..

I agree with this approach but should point out that as potatoes are a nightshade it’s actually quite common for people to be allergic / have an intolerance to them and that’s why they don’t like them. DH always hated them - said found them difficult to swallow and it would cause digestive discomfort but only found out recently he has an allergy and it’s common

[AccidentallyOnPurpose]

@Talkwhilstyouwalk

I would literally stop buying junk food and only offer healthier options. Will be a shock to the system and they may reject it at first but I'm sure they won't starve themselves!!

How can you be so sure?

[roguetomato]

I agree with Sirzy/Rafa.
Also the dc is still quite young. So once they are old enough to understand the importance of balanced diet, they may change. My dc hates fresh fruits, but eats them if it's cooked. Not so keen on veg either, but since learning about nutrients/healthy eating at school, he would eat some because he understands he needs them to grow up healthy.

[Talkwhilstyouwalk]

I would literally stop buying junk food and only offer healthier options. Will be a shock to the system and they may reject it at first but I'm sure they won't starve themselves!!

[VeryLongBeeeeep]

@NotChristine

[Long-time lurker, my first post, as this is a subject close to my heart.]

Please, please, don’t make food a battleground. I’m an only child of a late marriage and my mother’s anxiety went through the roof over my avoidant food behaviour. It was horrendous and the entire wider family (both geographically and emotionally close) became invested in this battleground as it became increasingly entrenched and played out at family dos. I even went to stay with a relative who was adamant they’d have me eating ‘normally’ in a few days.

They didn’t. It became a huge battle of wills and hugely upset my mother, who carried a bitterness about it to the end of her life. So if you make it a huge source of fuss, hovering, anxiety, upset, cajoling, begging, forcing, anger, stress, or even just comment, it will end up creating a legacy for both you and your child.

Family dos were a nightmare with relatives commenting and cajoling. One Christmas, aged about 9, I was quite distressed at everyone fussing over me eating just dry bread, and my older teenage male cousin said quietly, ‘Come on, I’ll join you in eating some bread’ and tucked in in solidarity, an act of kindness that brings tears to my eyes even now.

In my 50s I now recognise that I have entrenched ARFID, much improved over many years, but still with foods I won’t eat - a direct legacy of the huge issue food would become. My now husband was relaxing to be with, because even when we were dating he expressed no surprise and made no comment at anything I ate or didn’t eat, and I further expanded my food repertoire in a safe way with him.

Now here’s a twist in the tale: it took my husband to recognise that my food history was a response to the stress I had as a toddler when I lost my hearing, as it happened about then. I’m not saying that ARFID has a physical or psychological cause in every case, so not wishing to alarm OP or anyone else, but it was definitely the trigger in my case in a bewildering world, and my other senses, smell and taste, were (and still are) heightened, so food that was yucky had an extra yuck factor. To my parents there was no correlation, and it was just another issue they had to deal with.

I so wished that my parents had taken my husband’s relaxed attitude. They were otherwise loving and constructive parents and a huge help to me in my education and negotiating being deaf, but it was definitely a blind spot of theirs to the point that even in the last years of my mother’s life a casual mention of my food issues resulted in a huge well of bitterness and anger.

Please step back, let them eat their safe foods, and try and introduce foods on a separate plate and let them just try, without comment. No comment, whether positive or negative. That attention, focus and investment when a child is being tentative in trying food, is off-putting and I’m sure without being the focus of such intense attention, it would have felt more ‘safe’ to try new things, because then if I didn’t like it or only wanted a tiny bit, it wouldn’t have been a matter for comment. If all you get for your attempts is anger or cajoling, it’s not positive reinforcement but a negative one, and I just stopped trying.

If you take nothing else away from this thread, OP, read this post from NotChristine.

I was that 'fussy' child, and in my younger years of childhood food was a huge battleground. I had a horrendous diet, looking back - from choice I lived on one flavour of soup, one brand of crackers with one brand of soft cheese, one type of bread with one brand and texture of peanut butter. That was it for years. I remember sobbing into a bowl at the dinner table one night, being forced to finish something I hated. One of my most powerful memories.

Then when I was around 11/12, my mum effectively left me to it, and took the pressure off. I remember one foreign holiday when I was about 12, I think, where I had that same flavour of soup for dinner every night for a fortnight. But what I also remember is that there were no comments, I wasn't made to feel weird or a failure or that I'd let them my parents down by not being adventurous. It was just what I ate, no big deal. And gradually, gradually I started to widen my food repertoire. I'm not conscious of making the precise correlation between the removal of pressure and me relaxing enough to try new foods, but it happened nonetheless.

I'm middle-aged now and I still have texture issues, there are some foods - mostly some meat and shellfish textures - I'll never be able to eat without gagging. But otherwise I'm a fairly adventurous eater now. I'll try just about any cuisine, I've had everything from Indian to Thai to Vietnamese to Moroccan and more. And so far as it's possible to tell, my awful early years diet has had no lasting effect on my health.

So what I'm trying to say, OP, is try to relax (I know easier said than done) and leave your DC to their safe foods without comment. If they try something new, let them try it without comment. Yes, certainly look into ARFID and see what might help but please, please don't make the dinner table into a war zone.

[threenagerhell]

Oh OP don't beat yourself up. It's hard. It's good you've acknowledged something needs to be done

What about freezing the yoghurt so it's like a ice lolly?

Making smoothies with fruit and veg? You can get some really tasty ones and add yoghurt to that too it's v filling and can easily be a breakfast with a cereal bar?

[VanGoghsDog]

Lol @ "good ham"!

Is this a sub category of "naice ham"?

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

@Sirzy

The more you try to force the issue the more it will become a battle of wills. You won’t win but you risk doing long term damage to their attitude to food.

Make sure every meal has something they will eat. Keep new foods separate but available with no pressure to eat them. Don’t make a fuss over what they do or don’t eat.

Get them involved in doing some cooking with you. Even if they don’t eat the end product they are still getting used to different foods and having fun with food.

The more you show them your stressed the more they will fight back

This. But I’d also get rid of the snack drawer being available whenever they ask. Maybe have set times for snack.

Also bear in mind it can take 10+ times for children to be receptive to new foods. Perhaps start with something similar to a food they will eat and serve it regularly alongside something you know they will eat.

[SeventyEleven]

@arethereanyleftatall

I agree with you *@SeventyEleven*
There's a world of difference between good ham on homemade sourdough seeded bread & supermarket ham on white supermarket bread. But I got the impression from the op (sorry If I was incorrect op) that it would be the latter option that her child was eating; which was what I was referring to.

You are totally correct! I do get your point now.