Do your children actually eat what you cook?

[cloudy23]

I feel like I spend ages planning meals, only to hear "I don't like that" before they've even tried it.
Do you make one family meal and everyone eats it, or do you end up cooking different things?
Always looking for ideas that don't end in a battle at the dinner table!

One meal is cooked. They eat it or they go hungry (they always eat it) - and rude comments are not tolerated.

I ask mine to try it, they don’t have to like it but they do have to try it, i also make sure if its a meal that one isn’t keen on, it comes with sides they do like. I keep a list of meals that work and can consult back when needed. I don’t cook individual meals if one doesn’t eat.

I never make them eat anything. I may make minor adjustments to one person’s meal if that’s how they’d prefer it but I’ve never cooked a totally different thing. No one is allowed to be rude about the meal.

My first 3 do.
The 4th... i just can't even with him

My kids are 5 and 2. They rarely eat of the different parts of a meal but they usually eat at least some. There is no alternative if they don’t.

Mine usually do. What has really helped is putting all the components in the middle and everyone serving themselves. It does mean extra washing up, but I don't mind if it means more relaxing meal times. There are usually leftovers, which end up being my work lunch for the next day, so very little is wasted.

I cook different things. I have resigned myself to this when they are little but I do include things that are healthy e.g. avocado, cucumber, fruit etc. I also make life easy by batch cooking for them e.g. cottage pie / curry and freezing. I might make variations of what we have so if we have fajitas, they have cheesy quesadillas. Sometimes we have the same dinner - bolognese, macaroni cheese, lasagna (but it does tend to be pasta dishes). I use a lot of the pre cooked chicken thighs from the supermarket and just heat them up the serve with pre batch cooked portions of sweet potato and so on. As one of the kids has got older, they have started to have more of what we have. So for example, tacos but this started out as an addition to what was already on their plate. I also do what I call 'snack plate' dinners. I figure it just has to be healthy but won't always be a complete meal in the way I see it so could be a portion of fruit (berries /banana etc), a mini corn on the cob, some chicken pieces and bread and butter. I just think exposure is key when they are young. Mine are 2 and 6.

How old?

Same here - luckily they like food so no meal time battles.

Why put so much effort into planning

Just cook what they like 🤷

Yes they do. They have no choice.

I think I must be a bit of a pushover 🤣
I often end up cooking one meat-based meal, a vegetarian version and also a low salt version for toddlers... and then also something completely different for DD who hates everything!

Yup, we don’t offer alternatives. They are 3 and 4 and sometimes say “I don’t want this” I will just tell them they don’t have to eat but they must sit at the table whilst everyone else eats and usually they will find a part of the meal they like.
I always offer some veg sticks as a starter while I’m preparing dinner- I find if they have stable blood sugar when they get the meal they are more likely to eat it.

Our son will eat anything apart from aubergine, our daughter however is a bit fusy, she is only four though. We make sure there is always something she likes in each meal, even if its something boring like rice.

My kids are 8 and 6. We cook one meal, but we may sub out an element if I know one of them absolutely won’t like it, for example DS hates fish, so if we’re doing grilled fish with new potatoes and veg, he gets sausages or a piece of chicken instead of the fish, but all else is the same. That happens maybe once a month though, on the whole we eat one meal. We sometimes serve up the food family style and let the kids choose from the dishes on the table, what they put on their plate, which they seem to enjoy. We also all sit at the table as a family and eat together which I think helps.

On the whole they eat a good variety, although DS eats a narrower range than DD. They will eat some vegetables although not all, and neither of them is wild about salad. But they will try most things, at least once, which is as much as you can ask for I think.

Yes they eat what we do but only since about age 8/9. Before that we had kids meal at 6ish and adult meal at 8/8.30 - more because of work than different tastes but that too.

Mine is 1.5-we always have the same but she has hers in separate bits sometimes eg if we are having curry and rice Theyll be separate, and then she always has sweetcorn or peas on the side as she loves them. And honestly we don’t make much effort, we have the same meals on repeat quite a lot. We never make her try / eat anything and she is offered plain yoghurt and fruit whether she eats main meal or not.

One does. One sometimes does.

we often have 2-3 choices because DH is vegetarian and DS has ARFID.

and I’m not an asshole about making people go hungry because they don’t want to eat want I do

This but I think in what different members of the family like/dislike.

My little one possibly has ARFID so he always has his own meal. He's only recently started eating hot food again so I don't mind doing him a different meal 😅

Mine do but sometimes it's adapted slightly to suit their tastes better. They are 2 and 4 and don't like spice so if we are doing curry or chilli I might make a less spicy version for them. A couple of nights ago we were at my aunt's for a meal and she was making paella with seafood, my kids have never had that but I told her not to make anything else for them (she had asked beforehand) and they ate lots of it but picked out the mussels as they didn't want them. That's generally the way we try to eat with them. My 4 year old was picky for a long time so I used to make sure that if I was cooking something that she might not like that there was something on the side that I knew she would eat, for example making foccacia or garlic bread on the side for a pasta dish (which I usually wouldn't have done). It took a while but she's getting more and more adventurous with food and eats a fairly wide variety of food now and just today on holiday she was eating octopus and squid off my plate which she had never tried before.

I make one meal but try and make it something everyone likes. Dd2 (15) can be quite particular about what she eats so I always make sure there are pizzas, noodles, ready made ramen broth in the fridge/ freezer so if she doesn’t want to she can make herself something. Dd 21 sometimes eats with us or sometimes makes herself something later on.
Nothing really gets wasted I will have leftovers for lunch.

I have a teen girl and a primary age boy. At the moment yes they eat what I cook.

Ds grumbles because he would prefer to live off peri fries, pizza, bolognese, Thai curry and carbonara. And yet I serve him things like fajitas or chicken ramen or cauliflower cheese or chilli con carne or home-made breadcrumbed chicken or salmon teriyaki or smoked fish - all of which he likes.

Sometimes I try something new and it becomes his favourite food overnight. He eats enough fruit and veg but he runs hot and cold depending on how many teeth are wobbling or new, and whether he has had a “bad experience” (eg one sour grape or a strawberry that was a little squishy).

I make a variation of one meal for e.g. tonight we had spag bol one had just the pasta with cheese another had some of the sauce without the meat on their spaghetti.

Mine would just fish fingers and pizza if I had done that!

It's food, not their birthday diner. They need to learn to eat for fuel, not because it's a "treat". Eating everything is not optional (providing it does n't make them sick, but you know your own kids).

How would they get used to eat everything?