After school food for fussiest reception-aged child please??

[sundaypaper]

My DS has become the fussiest eater (ate everything before he was 2). Won't bore you with too many details but he favours beige food, cold picky plates over hot meals and refuses meat, cheese (except parmesan), eggs and most yoghurts so getting protein into him is tough. I make my own bread and sneak chia seeds in to get protein not him and I try my best. He will eat apples, bananas sometimes. He used to eat carrots cucumber and peppers but has recently been rejecting those. He never eats tomatoes. Hot meals-wise he'll eat plain spaghetti with parmesan and butter, "chinese" noodles (basically noodles with a sprinkle of soy sauce), and that's it. He has started picking out all the veg in the noodles and leaving it or asking for it plain. If I mix baby corn or mange tout into it he gets upset and refuses it. No pizza, no burgers, no chicken, nothing else. The only veg he will now seem to eat is broccoli.

At school he is given a hot lunch (dinner), and then another hot meal at after school club. When I pick him up around 5pm he's very hungry (I assume he's not eating much at school). When he started reception last September I tried making a hot dinner to eat with him everyday (pasta, curry, slow cooker meals etc) but he got so upset and never ate it. After Term 1 I gave up and since then he's been having a picky plate with a cumpet, yoghurt, apple, oat bar, etc. I always add carrots / cucumber / peppers but he leaves that. He is still hungry after this and I end up doing another crumpet or toast (homemade bread) or wheetabix. Crumpets are processed which I'm not happy about but he will eat them. He won't eat sandwiches as there is no filling he likes apart from Nutella which I don't let him have. I feel bad as I think I should be making a hot meal but he just refuses to eat it and I ended up serving wheetabix anyway out of desperation.

I know all the advice about no pressure, serving family style, they need to try it all 14 times, keep offering etc etc etc.

As a baby he ate everything including spicy food, veg, meat, cheese the lot.

What can I give him after school that will fill him up and is healthy which he might actually eat?? Anyone in this position?

Does he eat porridge? What about "milk puddings" like blancmange, custard, rice pudding, semolina? Even Angel Delight is fundamentally just milk with a bit of cornflour and sugar/flavouring. Milkshakes? You can make your own with some banana and peanut butter, or a little bit of chocolate spread. You can even whack a bit of flavourless protein powder in there if needs be.

Pancakes, thin crepe style, sound like a good suggestion - you can make those savoury or sweet.

In a bid to make food less of an area of stress could you try being more playful with it, make a funny face out of different bits on the plate, turn mashed potato and baked beans into a volcano with a turkey dinosaur roaming around, make up fun looking bento box style arrangements. Sitting down and eating a plate of food is fundamentally a boring activity for a 5yo that we grown ups insist they do several times a day every day, snore, what's the point. Suddenly presenting them with some pasta dyed blue and some little bits of frankfurter cut into the shapes of a shoal of fish with broccoli seaweed - can he be a shark and gobble up the little fish, wow that's more fun. He might still say eww I don't like it but worth a try.

Sugar-free peanut butter on toast? Nuts are my favourite thing to try and get some kind of healthy snack into my kid at home.

Our after school picky plate consists of:

Pack of Fridge Raiders (plain/yellow ones) - DD will eat these even if she wouldn’t eat other meat
Cheese String or Dairylea Dunker
Yoghurt
”Super Sweetie” - vitamin gummie
Fruit - usually has to be cut
Small pack of biscuits eg Jammie Dodgers or crackers eg Mini Cheddars

I don’t feel as bad if she won’t eat much of her main meal after this since it’s given her some basic nutrition. She is terrible for eating almost any main meal that isn’t buttered pasta, even nuggets and chips don’t appeal to her. I sympathise OP!

After two years of jacket potato with butter except Friday when he eats the fish fingers and chips (as I was adamant he’d have the free school meal) we switched to packed lunches. My son was diagnosed with ASD and ADHD and has a lot of sensory issues. He will cheddar, mozzarella and babybels, yoghurts, chicken nuggets, fish fingers and fish fillets so I can get protein in him but a lot of it is processed.

He will eat raw and cooked carrots and green beans. He also eats apples, bananas, grapes, strawberries, blueberries and satsumas.

He will eat plain pasta, noodles, rice, cous cous and scrambled eggs or omelette but it’s taken a lot of patience and trying new foods, praising him for trying them etc to get him to this stage. Again he eat everything as a toddler.

His lunch is butter on a tortilla wrap, salt and vinegar twist crisps or salted popcorn, carrot sticks and either grapes or a satsuma, some form a little cake or a couple of Oreos. His snacks are raisins or plain crackers (ritz type or cream crackers).

I make sure he has milk at bedtime to up his protein too. I have wondered about adding protein powder but wanted to get advice on this due to his age. He’s always been skinny but he does gymnastics so does have some muscles mass in his arms and legs. He’s on ADHD meds so has his height and weight monitored regularly by the paediatric team and they are happy his growth is steady (he’s always been on the 9th centile)