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?

In terms of the preferences to processed food, that can definitely be sensory related and kids feeling safe with that food.

Meal one
We go to McDonald's and have a burger and chips. It tastes like every other time you have a burger and chips there, the sauces are the same, the veg is the same and it's cooked identically so all the textures are the same.
We have a fruit roll up for desert and it tastes like the fruit roll up you had last week and is in the same packet with the same size and pattern etc

Meal two

We have penne pasta and jarred sauce, the only jarred sauce you like and the only pasta type. Theres variation of how I cook the pasta but the sauce is the same. The consistency is the same, the salt is the same, the veg in it is the same cut up into similar size pieces etc.

We buy an off brand fruit roll up which you're not sure about.

Meal three.

I lovingly make you my own sauce with pasta. Firstly I might chose anyform of pasta, it might be crunchy small pasta or really soggy big cannelloni.
The sauce is anyone's guess, maybe this time I've added way too much garlic and salt, is it going to be watery or gloopy? I'm desperate to get you to eat veg so this time it has crunchy carrot in non routine sizes that some are soft and some are hard that weren't in it last time. Maybe its a massive portion, maybe its tiny, maybe there's lots of sauce with not a lot of pasta, maybe its lots of pasta so it's dryer. Maybe its orange sauce with green chunks, maybe its a dark red smooth sauce.
Any cook will tell you a meal never comes out the same way twice, and your mums using up what's left in her cupboard, and puts herbs in by the pinch maybe its a big pinch of basil this time rather than a sprinkle.

We have blueberries after because you liked blueberries last time. The first is a nice one, plump and mild. The second feels wrinkly and deflated in your mouth, and is super strong. You try another and realise it also is squidy but this time its sharp. You decide that blueberries aren't reliably nice because you don't know what it tastes like until its in your mouth.

My grandparents subscribed to the "they won't starve themselves" theory. My parents went away for 4 days and when they came back I still hadn't eaten anything.

I'm now a faaaairrrly reasonable eater. I won't eat pulses because I have an intolerance to them, similar to lactose intolerance. And I don't like offal or things like limpet/oysters - crab, prawns etc are fine.

So not really Not fussy, but I'm a really pretty good cook and eat a range of foods wide enough that my mother would have cried with relief if she could have known I'd get to this point as a child. The problem I had was with textures - lumps in wet were really hard for me to deal with. I still struggle with lumpy soup (thin broth with actual things in is fine, as is smooth soup).

Me too, struggled for years before adopting an eat what you like attitude, as long as they eat I don't care what it is. Every meal is a buffet with numerous different foods and they eat what they want when they want it. Still on the 0.4 percentile but following the curve 👍💓 it's soul destroying 💐

I didn't have a smug post. But yes my approach helped with fussy eater DS2. I tried to be breezy and relaxed. He had to at least try new foods but not finish if he didn't like it. Eat as much or as little as he wanted. There were no meal alternatives if he didn't like it although I am sure we would have given him some bread and butter if he hadn't eaten much. He ate what we ate generally. The two exceptions were no cheese sauce so he would have veg plain or tomatoey pasta (as he didn't like cheese) and no cooked mushrooms in his portion (oddly he does likes them raw). I wouldn't serve him anything I knew he hated - he really disliked my coleslaw so he would have chopped up raw veg instead. He is now a healthy strapping man who eats a wide variety of foods but still dislikes cheese sauce and cooked mushrooms. He now likes my coleslaw! I think us trying to make what he ate a non-issue as much as possible helped him and he became less "fussy" and we all enjoyed mealtimes.

Growing up my dinners were a battlefield and I dreaded them especially Sunday lunches. I wasn't fussy it was more to do with portion sizes. I wasn't going to inflict that stress on my family

I was a fussy kid (in the early 80s) - long list of food I wouldn’t eat, and certain conditions/ combinations required for those I would. I don’t recall anyone making a particularly big deal about it and I grew out of it at some point. Some things were helped by school dinners age around 10 or 11, others I didn’t start to eat till in my 20s. But I got to the point of not really having anything I didn’t eat (apart from brown sauce which I still maintain is the devils work).

I try to be the same with DD. She has what we are eating - always with one or two things I know she definitely likes on the plate. If she eats it all she eats it all, if she doesn’t she doesn’t. I don’t try to persuade her, don’t congratulate her for eating and don’t make a fuss if she doesn’t. To be fair, she was a dream to wean and ate absolutely anything and everything - now she’s 2.5 there’s some fussiness crept in but she still eats a good variety/ balance overall and I just keep offering it - sometimes broccoli is ‘yuk’ other times she eats it, same with most things. Some things have fallen completely off the acceptable list for now but I will still offer them/ serve them for us and put a little bit on her plate but it’s totally fine if she takes it off again.

I know I’m lucky that she generally eats lots of healthy stuff (as well as being all over anything sugary when that’s available too) and that I could equally get a child who found the whole eating thing much tougher - I don’t see it as any particular vindication of my parenting style.

Also - there’s nothing particularly wrong with fishfingers! I always see them demonised on these threads. I don’t think it’s doing children any particular favours to set up a good food/ bad food dichotomy and act like perfectly normal foods are the devil. A decent brand of fishfinger is literally fish and some breadcrumb coating (normally coloured by paprika) - worst thing in it is probably a bit of salt. I don’t serve them every day or even every week - but I’m totally comfortable if she has them occasionally.

I was quite fussy but that’s because my mum was poor and couldn’t afford most things so when I left home at 18 I’d never tried most veg/fruit, never had fish, never had proper meat etc so had to start again, it took a while but I can generally say I eat most things now 😁

I have 3 SEN SC who all have different safe foods so have to cook 3 different meals for them and then a meal for me, DH and DD, we don’t eat together as I don’t want DD to pick up on it even though there’s a reason for their ‘fussiness’ the one who will literally only eat chicken nuggets and chips would rather starve himself then even try anything new, he doesn’t eat anything else apart from toast.

I have a very fussy 2 year old, so just at the start of this journey. But she won’t eat chocolate, cake, biscuits, ice cream as much as she won’t eat broccoli, apples etc etc currently we stick to the always having a food we know she will eat at each meal even if that means cooking something separate. Maybe as she gets older if she doesn’t grow out of this we may try a stricter approach. If you try to force her to taste or eat something she retches and vomits, has done this since weaning at 6 months. Currently maintaining her weight percentile (tho it’s low) and an otherwise very healthy vibrant child so I’m not stressing about the food. For context my 4 year old loves mussels, salmon, veggies (basically everything home cooked) as well as the usuals chocolate/biscuits. They are just different kids and one has an iron will!

@SweetSakura

One of mine also has this, as does my DH. It didn't factor much into DH's childhood as most everything was cooked into glue, but it definitely affected DD's eating until we figured it out. As long as it's even lightly cooked, she's fine.

I also completely agree with you about not turning food into a battleground. Why on earth would you do that? What does it prove other than you, as a person in a position of power, can probably force a child into giving up bodily autonomy.

I sort of agree with you OP and this would be my approach but I just hold my head in my hands as I cannot control my indulgent husband 😑

I wonder why that is?

I partially agree with you I. The sense I cook normal food - I never introduced children style food - no nuggets / burgers / frozen chips / hot dogs / beans on toast as meals. Purely because that wasn't the type of food my husband and I had been eating for the years before the children came. So when the children came I made mild adjustments - very spicy food was toned down and salt was adjusted. But I just served from day one what we ate - even in restaurants I'd end up asking for a smaller portion of a main meal or sharing mine as the kids menu were foods they hadn't eaten.
As the children have got older of course they've been exposed to junk / McDonald's etc I'm not overly precious about it - but the food they 'know' and are used to is what we cook.
They can still be 'fussy' about certain things - but they eat normal real food. If I'd have fed them until 5 on nuggets and blended pasta sauce there would be very little chance of moving them onto chili con carne or vegetable and lentil stew!

You are lucky that your kids are not fussy. With DD we also tried the whole "if she's hungry she will eat" thing. She didn't eat. She is below the first centile for weight and tiny. If she wanted to have chocolate spread and chips with every meal I'd happily provide that just to get calories into her.

Ds loves food and happily eats anything.

Count your blessings and stop judging.

I remember being made to eat semolina. I physically gagged and heaved. I wasn't prepared to do that to my children. Even now, decades later, the thought of that texture makes me want to heave.

There is a middle ground to this - no one should be made to eat food they dislike. I was prepared to make adjustments for my children (eg DS2 preferred his carrots raw and didn't like things in a sauce) and they seem to have turned out OK as adults.

Tbh I think there are so many reasons why a child becomes fussy that you can’t just assume it’s a parenting thing.

Ive certainly had to gently push my dcs to try new foods. And that seems to have worked. Being used to eat a variety of foods also makes a difference (that’s where you see ‘cultural’ differences and some children eating ‘weird’ foods like candy- eg olives or kimchi- when most children in the U.K. wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole).

But one if my dcs is on the spectrum and there is no way he’ll eat some stuff due to the consistency. No amount of tough parenting will change that.
And the other one has some clear dislikes, like everyone else tbh, but for foods most people will find neutral (eg eggs). I wouldn’t call it being fussy though….

Before I had my son I was the best fictional parent with regards to what he would eat and how he would behave. Everyone said we would have the most chilled out baby as we are both such relaxed people. In real life he was fussiest child alive even as a baby and cried constantly. He's now four and I make full balanced meals every day and 95 percent goes in the bin. Yesterday I did eggs benidict for breakfast, homemade leek and potato soup and soda bread for lunch and a chickpea curry and pilaf for dinner. My son ate two spoons of egg, one bite of salmon and soda bread and that's doing well for him.

Child: "I don't like this food any more. Can you make me something else?"

Parent: "No, I've made this and you can eat as much or as little as you want, but this is all I am making."

(Child then either eats or doesn't eat and parent makes no comment either way).

I don't understand how on earth you think this response "makes food an emotive issue".

Not pandering to a child's whims is not "making food an emotive issue". On the contrary, making them whatever they demand all the time would then make it an emotive issue when they begin to have an extremely restrictive diet, can't eat out, can't eat at friends' houses etc. That is when it becomes an "emotive issue" and everyone gets stressed and frustrated.

Simply saying no in a firm way with no drama is an important part of parenting. There is nothing emotive about it. The child has complete autonomy to decide whether or not they want to eat, and as a parent you let them make that decision, but you don't make them something else whenever they don't fancy what you've made.

I'm not suggesting draconian approaches like serving it to them for breakfast or anything ridiculous like that. I'm simply saying that when they are hungry, they will eat, and you can let them make the choice without pandering to their every whim.

Eggs Benedict and curry are quite 'grown up' meals for a 4 year old @glittereyelash

That lecture conveniently ignores the amount of people, particularly children, with undiagnosed allergies/intolerances/coeliac/food pollen syndrome

If you followed the thread you would see that in my original post I said that ,obviously, this does not apply to children with special needs.

spelunky what would you do if the child just didn't eat? Lots of parents on here have said that their dc will starve rather than eat some foods.
I think a lot of posters don't have actually fussy eaters. I think if you say 'like it or lump it but there's nothing else' and your dc just crack on and eat the meal then they probably just aren't that fussy!

I would leave them to not eat (again, assuming no special needs).

Children are much more capable of regulating themselves than we give them credit for.

The food on offer is varied, they get a range of things (i.e. if it's lasagne there will also be garlic bread, veggies, salad etc). If they are saying they don't like it anymore and don't eat, that's up to them. If they want to just pick at garlic bread, that's fine. But I'm certainly not making anything else when they ate that exact meal with no problems the week before.

Until the point where they were actually looking weak and pale, I would let them experience being hungry. It's not going to kill them.

And if you read my message you would note that often these needs/allergies/intolerances go undiagnosed for a long time.

There is something smug / boasty and sanctimonious about this OP.

Trying to disguise it with a debate.

I'd like to know from the 'I won't allow kids to be fussy so I brought them up right' parents whether they themselves 'eat everything' or whether they have dislikes themselves?

Most adults wouldn't dream of forcing down something they hate (except maybe in someone else's home).

I was a fussy child, lived on bread and marmite, gradually expanded the range quite naturally as I got older and now eat most things, so one's tastes in childhood are not set forever.

I've noticed that people who SAY they 'eat anything' (always said smugly) don't always 'eat anything'. My DD2 is very fussy even as an adult, and her DH always said he himself 'eats everything - his mother brought him up properly' - and when I met his mother, she scorned my parenting - 'your DD wouldn't have been fussy if I'D been her mother!' but then..... then gradually I'm adding more and more things to the list that my (lovely) son-in-law doesn't actually eat.... quite normal things... and I get the feeling many people THINK they aren't fussy, because they only cook or are given things they like.... the minute they're faced with a bowl of something unusual (cold boiled octopus tentacles, with suckers, in a salt-water jus springs to mind, something I was once unexpectedly served) they have the potential to become just as 'fussy' as the rest of us.

@Mothership4two it's just an example of what we had yesterday. The day before it was porridge, toasties and meatballs and spaghetti and he ate half a toastie the rest was untouched. I've tried every combination of foods imaginable and he just doesn't like many foods. He basically lives on toast, crackers, yogert, cereal and the odd bite of something different.