Ugh is it meant to be this hard?

[Thisisntthowisawthisgoing]

My 3.5-year-old has always been difficult at mealtimes, even since she was weaned. She eats an extremely limited range of foods, and this seems to shrink every month. We make a point of not offering alternatives, sticking to the meal we've prepared and eating together as a family. We do try to eat things she typically likes, but even that doesn’t always guarantee success. She can eat something one day with gusto and then never touch it again. It’s frustrating.

Sometimes she'll eat if I feed her or if we make it into a game. For instance, I’ll load the spoon/fork and say, “I’m saving this for myself after my drink, don’t you touch it!” Then I make a big show of having a drink, and she eats it with a giggle. This works for a few extra bites, but it’s tiring to have to go through this performance for every meal, every day. On the days when I don't have the energy/goodwill for it, she just refuses to eat.

It’s surprising how little she can consume in a week. Yesterday, she only had two bites of porridge for breakfast, some dried mango and a quarter of a bagel at lunch (rejecting the peppers, carrots, grapes, babybel and mini cheddars), and for dinner, she managed a few small meatballs but refused the mash and veg. Her brother was still hungry after finishing his so I offered him dessert. She was a little upset by this, but not so much so that she would eat more of her main. I’m not strict on desserts, but I don’t think it's fair to give pudding if only a small portion of the main meal has been eaten.

This morning, we had scrambled eggs on toast. She ate about a quarter of a slice of toast and no egg. I offer milk at breakfast and dinner, but she only drinks a fifth of a cup. Today she’s gone to nursery with a packed lunch, though it often comes back barely touched.

Our usual day with me looks like this:

• 7 am: breakfast
• 10 am: snack
• 12 pm: lunch
• 3 pm: snack
• 5 pm: tea

Recently, if she refuses a meal, I reoffer it at snack time, as it feels wrong to let her skip a nutritious meal in favour of snacks later on. Mixed results though, sometimes it feels like she's eaten nothing all day. Which then means I'm also dealing with hanger. Double frustration!!

I'm a big fan of 'it's all a phase' but seriously, we're on year 3. I'm not sure you can call it a phase when it's gone on this long. We have no reason to suspect she isn't NT. She takes a vitamin every day and isn’t underweight, so I’m not worried, but the constant battle over food is tedious. It just doesn’t seem like it should be this difficult.

We’ve had various versions of this with DD1 who is now 9.

One Christmas I couldn’t get her to eat anything other than soggy buttery half toasted toast for almost a week (I justified it that it was multi seed bread…). And drank plenty of milk - she’s always done that

I tried not to worry too much but was always having to reassure her dad that she was fine, our expectations were just too high on how much she should be eating and that her hair was growing really well (my sign for if someone is generally healthy) as well as staying on the same growth percentile for weight and height.

Nursery always said she ate fine there until we realised she was feeding it to the boy who sat next to her…

No-one quite understood why I celebrated when she suddenly decided she likes chips! (If they’re skinny crispy ones).

She’s still fussy, but eats without complaint, including a small range of fruits and veg (pears, cucumber, sweetcorn, carrots), cheese, pasta and potatoes and really enjoys fish of all kinds. So there is light at the end of the tunnel!

Her little sister is completely the opposite. Likes pretty much most food (and mixed up foods) but is incredibly slow at eating so it’s her that we have to nag at mealtimes now.

I’m no dietician, but I reckon that if she drinks a couple of glasses of milk a day and you can get at least one fruit/veg into her plus some protein (egg is perfect) and carbs then she’ll be fine. They don’t need all that much compared to an adult, but you’ll soon know if she’s hungry.

Two of mine were like this - I just stopped the snacks altogether ad after an adjustment period they began eating their meals.

Feeding it to the boy next to her!!! Oh man how did you feel when you found that out? They're so tricky!! Glad you've found the light, 9 years is a long time.

One thing that does give me some sort of...idk what the word is...reassurance maybe? Is that she rejects all food equally. She's just as likely to take a bite out of a fruit/vegetable and say 'no thank you' as she is a chocolate cake or ice cream. If she doesn't like/want it she won't eat it. I think if she was saying no to the healthy stuff and yes to the unhealthy I'd feel worse, but the universal rejecting reassures me that she must genuinely not be hungry. Though then hard to explain the hanger 😂 maybe she's just in the threenage stage!

We laughed a lot when we found out what was going on at nursery (the mum of the boy didn’t find it nearly so funny…)

Don’t worry, it’s not been the whole nine years! Things have come in gradually (and generally gone again as soon as I’ve stocked up) but now we have a big bowl of ready brek for breakfast, usually packed lunch at school (a pot of plain pasta, a pot of cucumber, a pear and a chocolate bar - she won’t eat sandwiches or any sauce on the pasta) and a meal in the evening that has at least one vegetable, meat or fish plus a carb portion.

I think school lunches helped as once she was out of nursery she cared more about what the other children thought. The boy from nursery went to a different school…

Her favourite things were vegetables for a long time. Sandwiches have never been popular, so we used to take a pot of mixed veg out for picnics (frozen mixed veg zapped in the microwave before we went out). We used to get such strange looks from other families as though I was forcing her to be your healthy when actually I just couldn’t get anything else in.

I hear you. Especially on the bit about 'as soon as I've stocked up' 😂

For the longest time my son would only eat cucumber, carrot, tomatoes, peppers, basically any fruit, yogurt, cereal and cheese toasties. It was kinda limiting for 'meals' (no pasta, nothing potato based, didn't like pizza or casseroles or meat or anything) but I couldn't moan too much when I considered what he was eating. Tremendously healthy list! So yes can imagine the looks but as you say, if it's going in it's a winner!

I'm genuinely at a loss with DD. For about a year she's gone with the cream cheese bagel/crumpet/croissant/something but that's now being left in the lunch box (personally if i'd eaten something almost daily for a year I would also be sick of it by now!). As a pp said I've tried cutting out the snacks (well, reoffering the previously rejected meal at snack time for it to be rejected again is = to cutting snacks in a way) but that hasn't made her any more likely to consume at the next meal. The hard bit is sometimes she sees what's on the table (something we're sure she'd like) and she'll cry because it's not what she wants and she'll tell me she's hungry, but she doesn't want what's on the table. But we've cooked it because it's something from the seriously limited list that she's previously eaten so it's hard to sympathise!!! Or we go rogue, cook something new, and then she gets upset because she doesn't know what it is ('I don't like that!' before she's even tried it).

Excited for tea time 😅fish cakes tonight. Been hit and miss before, so here's hoping.

Good luck with the fish cakes!

For all that picky eaters are frustrating, the feeling of elation when they eat and enjoy something you’ve cooked is that bit more enjoyable.

Ugh, it's frustrating but if she's not underweight, is healthy, and treats all food the same way, I'd just leave her to it. Food is available and she eats it or doesn't. Her choice. As per PP, I'd also ditch the snacks.

@ditzzy zero interest in the fishcakes! Did have 3 goes at a corn on the cob though

Next time I’m sure she’ll love them!

Corn on the cob is a good choice anyway. Congrats on surviving another mealtime.

My middle son was like this. Every meal time was a struggle. ‘I don’t like that kind of dinner’ every night. Didn’t like anything and seemed to exist on air.

he’s now 13 and costs me a fortune when we go out as he order the rib fillet steak, medium, with pepper sauce and steamed greens. And he just returned from Japan where he ate everything put in front of him, including raw prawns. His host family took him to a fancy Japanese restaurant that served all the traditional food and he ate the lot enthusiastically. Stuff I wouldn’t even eat.

Is she healthy height and weight?

We try to have meals with at least something DC will reliably eat. Then other bits they may or may not. And I serve stuff in separate bowls eg mash on plate, stew in bowl on plate so it doesn't mix.

Lots of kids are fussy. If you think she's not getting enough calories or the right nutrition, ask your doctor. Some kids have arfid, problems with mouth formation, gut problems etc.

I used to make a fuss about making special children's cocktails, milkshakes etc and treat it as a very special thing - frozen fruit and a bit of milk, usually!

Or silly things like pretending to be deafened when DC eat crunchy veg...

Some people are fussy about food and just never change. My dad is 80 and still fussy! My DD19 is a fussy eater. I say her palate has stalled at the point of a 5 year olds party buffet. She eats fruit and veg but would live on plain pasta and chicken nuggets if she could! She is a very active and healthy person (doing a dance degree and does gymnastics as a hobby) she just has a very sensitive palate and doesn't enjoy too much flavour. No sauces or spice of any kind. KFC is too spicy because of the pepper! She was offered food as she grew up but I suppose you can't help what you like. I gave up stressing about it years ago

Cut the snack, especially if is snacky food. I wouldn't re-offer the uneaten lunch mid afternoon, I would just skip any mid afternoon snack and have a different early dinner.
It is also time to finish doing a circus performance to get her to eat. Make simpler meals, a steak, sweet potatoes, cucumber salad, or grilled chicken, with some plain rice and roasted zucchinis.

My DD was like this, and in the end, I let her graze on (mostly) healthy things and gave her a tiny dinner. It seemed to work and reduced the stress. I realised she was getting calories, just not in big meals. I remember the worry, though. It started to improve at 6, and she's now a tall teenager who eats like a horse, which I never would have expected. Her brother was 3 square meals a day from the word go.

DS isn’t much interested in food, and finds it difficult to sit at the table. TBH, I don’t really enforce anything. If he eats a series of small snacks, like oatcakes, banana smoothie etc… that’s fine. I do worry that he doesn’t like meat, but he likes fish fingers! His dad likes taking him to McDonalds but I don’t want that being a regular thing. And he wants sweeties, of course! But if I can get enough fruit, a bit of veg & some yoghurt into him, then I’m happy enough! He never really looks for food.

My 20 year old has always been like this. We used to notice that she only ate one day in every three! She’s still very fussy now, hates certain textures. She will eat a good variety of fruit and veg though. At one point when she was younger she ate rice with grated cheese and gravy for every dinner! We’ve basically tried not to stress although she is pretty slight and that’s raised eyebrows with the gp in the past.

Dried fruit is ridiculously high in sugar, it's like feeding them haribos, so not only does it make them not want savoury foods, it gives them a sugar high (& then low) which affects their moods, so avoid that if possible.

Try getting them involved in food growing (chucking seeds in a big pot will do and then burying a carrot for them to dig up if need be) and food prep really helps them want to try new foods; especially if they get heaps of praise for "growing" or "making" dinner.

Fair enough, it's a real 'treat' food for us tbh, we buy it once in a blue moon and this was left over from a birthday so popped it in the lunchbox. Sandwich, fruit, veg sticks, dried mango and a babybel sounds pretty healthy/balanced unless they only eat the dried mango 😂

As I said not worried about it, she's a healthy weight. It's just jolly frustrating sometimes!

Had a good day today though, she's eaten her whole breakfast (with a bit of play cajoling) lunch and dinner. Astounded!