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9 year old and food!

5 replies

issabel · 08/02/2024 17:33

DD was never particularly fussy as a baby or toddler, unlike her older sibling. However she is becoming increasingly fussy with regard to food and it is worrying me.

The list of food she won't eat keeps growing (e.g. we now have broccoli at almost every meal because she says it's the only vegetable she likes. However the last few times it has been a challenge to get her to eat all the broccoli because she says she no longer likes the stalks. I'm worried this will progress to not liking it at all).

She also fights us over using a fork to eat with (I've given up on the matching knife for now!). I'm only mentioning this because I think it's odd that she doesn't want to use a fork - is it just laziness?

In all other respects there are no issues at all. She is polite, well behaved, academically and socially she is doing well. She does a lot of sports and is good at them.

She does not have access to social media at all (making me the worst mother in the world as everyone else in her class is allowed it) so there is no chance of that kind of influence.

She is very skinny but always has been really. As a baby she was consistently 9th centile. I (unknown by her) checked her height/weight on the NHS website and she is now 2nd centile.

My other child was so different - very very fussy as a baby but by 9 most food dislikes had gone away, so I don't know where to start with this one!

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Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
wubwubwub · 08/02/2024 18:55

When did the "fussiness" start?

What does she eat in a normal day?

issabel · 08/02/2024 19:40

The fussiness has sorted of gradually got worse in the last 2 years. With her being my second I know they go through phases sometimes so I've have been "going with the flow" and trying to focus on getting enough calories without making a fuss about her eating. But the 2nd centile thing has shocked me.

In a typical day she would eat

Breakfast: bowl of cereal (normally 1 weetabix/Cheerios/choco hoops) with blue milk plus one pain au chocolat or croissant. Daily vitamin.

School snack: half a slice of toast (or half a bacon sandwich on Fridays).

Lunch: hot dinner if the option is pizza (cheese only), plain burger or sausage and mash, or a roast (she reports that she doesn't eat whatever veg comes with the hot dinner).

Packed lunch is a plain ham sandwich, slices of cucumber, babybel, yoghurt, grapes or apple slices. If I put anything more in then it doesn't get eaten.

Dinner: approved meals involve broccoli, roasties or mash or chips or plain pasta or plain rice, and plain meat - chicken preferred but will eat pork/gammon/beef/lamb - but not mince (and one very specific chicken pie that she likes), or cheese pizza.

Snacks/pudding at weekends would include toast, crisps, nutrigrain bars, cucumbers or grapes. Maybe a banana if it is absolutely perfect and only as a last resort.

It is mostly dinner times that are worrying me as the foods she used to eat include things like spag bol, lasagne, stir fry, korma curries and naan bread, beef stroganoff. Now that I've listed all of this it looks like she is avoiding anything with sauces or mixed up. Everything has to be plain now. And she used to eat carrots, cauliflower, sweetcorn, mashed turnip, red peppers, courgettes.

OP posts:
CadyEastman · 08/02/2024 19:50

Sounds very much like my DD who was beyond fussy. Turns out she has ARFID.

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issabel · 08/02/2024 21:34

That's interesting @CadyEastman did your dd start off eating a wider range of foods like mine has?

My older child has sensory needs which I know now definitely affected how they approached eating as a toddler. Because DD has always been so different to my previous experience, I've never considered she could also have similar needs.

OP posts:
CadyEastman · 08/02/2024 21:48

I think DD's started at about 12 months. Before that she would eat almost anything.

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