Are fussy children the product of a change in parenting style?

[Raz1564]

I shouldn't be casting any judgement on parents who have kids who eat just 5 types of food ... But I am and maybe I need convincing otherwise.

Growing up, we ate the same thing for lunch and dinner. Nobody could be fussy, we didn't have a choice. We either ate what we were given or didn't eat. Some of my siblings were "fussy", but the most that was tolerated from my mum was them moving some green foods to the side.

Fast forward to present day and I have fully gone old school with my approach to feeding my kids. They either eat what I give them or they don't. They now eat really well and the fussiest one eats better than every kid I know.

I decided to take this approach after seeing how much my older sister struggled with her DS. I love cooking and really wanted my children to enjoy wholesome meals.

So ... What do mum's think? Is this approach too strict for you or does it also work for you?

I disagree. As an adult, I have the autonomy to decide not to force something into my body that I dislike, and I don't think children, by virtue of their relative powerlessness in the world, should have to accept that either. Additionally, some people are more sensitive to tastes and textures than others, so it's a more difficult task for them. It's one thing if financial circumstances are very tight, but otherwise, I intensely dislike the school of thought that you choose between gagging something down or going hungry.

I've been very liberal with my kids about there being other options if they don't like what's being served and they're all excellent eaters now. In the years when they were picky, it was no real hardship for us to have a few easy and healthy alternatives in the house.

I have an ASD 10 year old who defies the sensory food issues a lot of ASD kids have, eats everything and loves to try new foods.

My 7 year old will eat only a few different foods. We're working on it with a plan she agreed to with our GP, to try something new every week without pressure and it's slowly expanding her palate.

So, 'parenting style theory' busted as I've treated them the same.

I can't say 'eat or starve' with DD. Our GP agrees it's a bad option as she's physically tiny and can't sustain missed meals without health consequences, and she'll just choose to starve.

I used to struggle with new foods myself. This is from my childhood of DM making a rotation of about four or five different bland meals that never varied. I can't even stomach fruit because it never crossed DM's mind to buy it. So I'm doing things differently with DC but do understand the difficulty when new food tastes, textutures etc. seem like poison.

One autistic dc and one who isn't. Guess which one eats almost anything we put in front of them and guess which one eats the same food every day.

Yeah I'm similar to you op.

I tell the kids that there's three things on the plate, they must like at least one of them! I.e. When it's Meat and two veg.

Of course they are fussy because of a change in patenting style!

DH was a fussy child until he had his tonsils out!

It’s so not worth being dogmatic about. Kids are individuals with their own likes and dislikes, and some have particular difficulties with textures etc due to autism.
Never sent one of mine to bed hungry and always make sure there’s something nutritious available that I know they’ll enjoy. If I want to try something new - I will bear in mind what I know my DC are likely to eat. Life’s too short for predictable battles. They all eat a broad range of healthy food.

I think it also depends on what children are offered in the first place. I'm not one for serving monotonous foods with a lack of options and I definitely don't agree with food restrictions with no choice too.

There are a few things on the plate that range from good to decent in terms of nutrition and my kids will eat what they like and what they don't. I don't offer unhealthy or alternative options though. I don't think they know any better if I'm honest, they just eat quite happily now and it's my favourite part of the day.

Yes, this is something I would say.

My Mim was a great cook and provided my brother and I with a healthy, varied diet. I was extremely fussy until the age of 7 or 8, to the point of being quite underweight, then gradually started to eat more. My brother (diagnosed ASD as an adult) ate almost nothing but hamburgers for two years. My mum was at the end of her tether. This was in the 1980s.

My Dad was born in 1944. Started school in 1949. He was told he couldn't leave the dining hall at school until he ate his peas. He was still sat there when my granny came to pick him up at 3.30.
He has never eaten peas or hardly any other veg. He has been a fussy/picky eater his whole entire life (all 78 and a half years of it).
It's nothing to do with how "parenting methods" have changed.

I now have one DC who eats anything and one who is incredibly fussy.

I was quite smug that my first two were pretty good eaters.
Third put a stop to that.
Sometimes some individual children are more complicated than others.
Much like adults.

Great. So, was this really a question or just an opportunity to pat yourself on the back for doing everything right? My own kids have had their moments, but are overall excellent eaters. I know plenty of people, however, who have done everything just as well as you and I, and ended up with a difficult eater, so my feeling is that, like much of parenting, it's really just the luck of the draw. Far better to be grateful for your luck than smug.

By the way, some of us fall into this category, which tends to lessen as we get older, which may be why some kids grow out of being very fussy eaters.

www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2016/05/31/super-tasters-non-tasters-is-it-better-to-be-average/

OP I had the same opinion a you and DD1 helped confirm my bias, but then I had DD2.

She never wanted to try any of the foods offered when weaning. So was fussy right from the beginning. I like to cook too and I'm good at it. She was offered a wide variety of tasty foods in various forms, but would just chuck it on the floor.

She was severely underweight (7.5 kg at approx 18m) and we ended up at a sleep/feeding clinic as she was bf every 45 mins at night (because she was hungry!). At the clinic she was only allowed 3 bfs a day and had to eat the food they made. I was smugly told that she would eat when she got hungry enough. Well she ate a couple of crumbs from some dry weatabix and a sweet potato wedge the whole time we were there and went home .5kg lighter 🙁

Eventually we received advice from a feeding specialist to forget about so called healthy diets and feed her as much of whatever we could get her to eat. Even though that meant chips every day 😳

Throughout primary school I always had to prepare a separate meal for her. We encouraged her to try new foods but it was massively anxiety inducing for her. I think a lot of it was not trusting herself to be able to cope if she didn't like something.

Now 13 she is a completely different child at the dinner table, tries new things all the time and has added lots of them to the 'yes' list.

This was a long post, but in short - YABU to assume parents haven't tried to encourage good eating habits. You think your approach is working, but really you're just lucky enough not to have fussy eaters 😉

This was moreso a post to show that I don't think it's okay for children to be force-fed foods and that I wouldn't leave my kids locked in the kitchen til they ate their peas.

With regards to the link you sent, the real question is how do taste receptors adapt to the foods they have been exposed to? We already know they adapt depending on what the individual eats. For example, people from certain cultures can taste different types of chillies in a much more attuned way to others. It would be good if there were some better long term studies on positive food habits in children.

Oh gosh ... Maybe I'll take my luck and run with it then. I don't think many parents would have an experience like yours but this is a clear example of how children can be so different.

Ok, those are all fair points, but then, why start the thread this way?

I shouldn't be casting any judgement on parents who have kids who eat just 5 types of food ... But I am and maybe I need convincing otherwise.

Because to me, it reads like yet another way to make parents of fussy eaters, who are potentially already struggling with the idea they've done or are doing something wrong, feel worse.

Taste receptors diminish in number and sensitivity through our lifetimes, which is why these issues may be particularly acute in childhood. I would never assume that someone else tastes something in exactly the same way I do. If that was the case, we'd all like the same things.

The people who say it's parenting style have obviously never experienced having a real fussy eater.
It's smug and embarrassing to hear.
It's like when people get a 'good' baby by chance and bang in about how it's because they're relaxed parents

It probably reads like that because I do think they are doing something wrong. Unless ofcourse there are medical reasons as to why a child is fussy, I just can't work out why some kids only eat the same carbs everyday. It doesn't make sense on a biological level.

I wanted to hear different experiences because in my extended family there are a lot of fussy eaters. I think it's the parents who over-cater to their toddlers needs and set up bad eating habits who struggle in the long run. I'm always saying this to my sister who has the fussiest kids but today I thought, maybe her kids are just fussy.

I also don't know of family's where one child is picky and others aren't so I wanted to read people's experiences on this too.

But if that is all your parents cooked, then you did not have any choice. Its the same for any child whose parents are bad at cooking.

Some kids are just fussy and were fussy then and are fussy now. But I do think the large increase in fussy and difficult kids eating habits is because of parenting.

I suspect, with a very fussy child, parents get ground down by offering food which is rejected, so stick with what they know will be eaten.

I’ve been on residentials with kids whose parents have been stunned when their child has come home telling them they now like cauliflower cheese with pork chops, lasagna, or curry.

It does help that we confiscate their massive stashes of sweets and chocolate and just let them pick one treat a day, after dinner.

I was a terribly fussy child, but was exposed to enough different foods for my diet to be a healthy one. My mum would substitute fish (which I hated- love it now!) with an egg or a lump of cheese, to accompany my potatoes and veg. She was very conscientious about all food groups being covered 😁.

We are thr world's biggest lovers of food doesn't stop ds being fussy

I don't know how people can say anything 100% with kids anyway

We could be the fussiest eaters on the planet and ds could love food

We have done all the suggestions under the sun for years nothing changes

We have met fussier kids but all this 'well if parents just did....' does not always work food, screens, going out,friends whatever kids are not robots

I think the previous poster who spoke about controlling what goes into your body has it spot on.
Food refusal, from hunger strikes through religious prohibitions and dietary preferences down to the toddler spitting out the carrots, is a way of taking back control. This is one of the reasons why eating disorders are more common in girls than boys: girls have traditionally had to adopt more indirect means in order to assert themselves.
(I absolutely accept there are people with extreme sensory issues, and exempt them from what I’m saying here.)
It’s a brilliant passive-aggressive way for the younger child to gain attention; it’s a way of testing parental authority, of demanding to be heard, of claiming the Main Character Energy; it’s an opportunity for a child in a big family to demonstrate difference. With children, in time, what begins as a subconscious assertion becomes a genuine aversion (see what I did there?) and they become physically unable to stomach the rejected food. Some grow out of it, for all sorts of reasons; others don’t.
Different children will respond differently to being told it’s what’s on their plate or nothing; but we need to remember that children are incredibly good at reading their parents and will have made a shrewd assessment of how likely they are to back down, or how many times they’re prepared to let the child go to bed hungry.
As a pretty omnivorous child of a very fussy mother and with a similarly fussy sibling, this is where I’ve got to in trying to puzzle it all out.