When did your DC stop being fussy eaters and start eating like normal human beings?

[TheRozzers]

Oldest DD is 11 and would happily live on chicken nuggets and pizza if we let her.

Younger DC seems to be following suit.

We rarely eat as a family as they flat out refuse normal food (by normal I mean anything containing onions, garlic, cooked vegetables or a sauce of any kind).

They will happily eat toddler food - plain pasta, grated cheese, raw carrot, cucumber sticks.

Please tell me they will grow out of it?

Well before 11 if I’m honest.

why? Because I wasn’t serving nuggets and chips for dinner. Sure when out at a restaurant they can order what the heck they like. But I wasn’t cooking that for the family night after night

I was a champion fussy eater (poor DM tells stories of sitting trying to persuade me to eat yoghurt by saying ‘one spoon for me, one for you’ and DF could never face cooked carrots in later life as they’d appeared at every meal for years as the only vegetable I would eat). It is no surprise, perhaps, that there is an heavy ASD presence in the family. I hated any odd textures and would throw up if pushed to eat things. And then, aged 12, it all changed. Overnight.

So, there is hope.

Same here. I was just fed what my parents ate, with accommodations made for spice and salt.

My DS is 9 and I'm still waiting. Although I don't pander to it. I cook one homecooked meal a night. I will allow slight variation on with or without sauce, or a different veg etc. One processed meal a week.

I know a 13 year old who still gets chicken nuggets every day as he wont eat anything else.

I went veggie at 12.

despite my mums best hopes I have never grown out of it and am still veggie.

she has given up now (my brother married a vegetarian so both households are fully veggie).

her grandkids are vegan.

DS was very fussy with food (probably ND-related) but has got more adventurous now he’s an adult and realises how much better he feels when not vitamin-deficient.
When he was younger and his diet was my responsibility I worked from a base of his safe foods and got him to make a list of safe meals containing a carb, a protein, and two types of veg/fruit.
Some of them were a bit tenuous or fusion but it got him thinking of different ways to incorporate vegetables and fruit into his diet without constant negotiation, and having a list of about 20 meals meant there was room for choice and variety.

Dd1 was about 14 but I am sure she had AFRID but she is in her mid 30s so wasn't a "thing" then, but she got a bit braver with food.
Dd2 was never really fussy and ate most things

My daughter was much better by around 14 and through sixth form improved a lot. By the time she was at university, she was eating almost anything. I think seeing peers eat things plays a huge role. Somehow the rest of her family eating a wide variety of healthysorrysuspicious foods didn't reassure her as much as her classmates eating them. Teenagers are highly swayed by their friends and sometimes this is GOOD.

This is what I did with my Dd although she had about 5/6 fruit and vegetables she would eat.

Sorry but I have fussy eaters aged 16 and almost 18 - though both eat a balanced diet , it can be quite limited ( especially for the younger) . I rarely make a simple meal that everyone eats - there is normally some variation .

It is what it is , I meal plan each week and stick to it . My priority is good nutrition. I back up with chewy vitamins .

DH has recently been told he might be autistic. So my mind is going overtime now re the DC

editing to say as others have done that I have a list of DS2s safe foods - I originally made it when I had a health scare and realised DH would have no clue what he would eat

Yes i agree they are swayed by their friends By 15 /16 they were out and about and sometimes eating what their friends ate was better than drawing attention to not eating.

I don’t serve them nuggets and chips for dinner, just try to adapt what we are eating so they will at least eat some of it.

We have spaghetti bolognese they have plain pasta and cheese.

We have fajitas and they have plain chicken in a wrap with some grated carrot.

We have veggie curry and rice they just eat the rice - I usually give them a slice of ham and some cucumber with it so at least it vaguely resembles a meal.

My kids haven't yet (oldest is 11 and autistic). I (also autistic) ate normally from age 16.

What do they do at friends? They’re going to start to feel embarrassed eating like toddlers pretty soon I suspect

you eat together even if they eating a diluted version?

Would they eat egg fried rice with ham

8 to 10.
Before that despite my best intentions I raised faddy kids. It wasn't a case of us eating the same as they ate much earlier on school days because of sports/ activities.
They were always ok with spices / garlic etc just not very adventurous and suspicious of new things. I decided that as long as their diet was nutritious it didn't matter if it was repetitive. I never knowingly served something I knew they disliked.
It was gradual at first, "letting" them try something different and exotic that we were eating.
Around that age I started a list of meals everyone liked and put it on the fridge. I would pin a list of this week's meals as well, subject to some swaps.
They are adults now. Both good cooks, interested in food and adventurous.

DD has just turned 20 and is at uni. She still picks vegetables out of bolognese, pasta sauces, shepherds pie etc. She has got better at uni but still eats a quite limited variety of meals. Shes always been fussy since I weaned her

My step son has just turned 21 and he is only just coming out of his 'no I don't like that' stage. We cook lovely food and he is slowly tasting it and realising that he likes it. Plus the narrative around food for him has changed, and he is starting to realise how interesting cooking and food can be.

My kids had teenage friends who would only eat pizza or nuggets. That was more common than those who ate anything.
In fact some of those are not much better as adults.

More common than not? Seriously? That’s a bit depressing at 16

My children always ate like normal human beings, because the only food on offer was the food that DH and I were eating.

The idea that babies and toddlers need special food (an idea largely promulgated by manufacturers of expensive baby foods) is the origin of most of this 'fussiness'.

Most of mine were never fussy eaters and the only one who was a fussy eater as a child never grew out of it. Her dietary repertoire has increased over time but as an adult she still has quite severe ARFID.

I was a very fussy eater as a child and dreaded mealtimes, but this changed around the time I went to secondary school and by the time I went to university I could be confident of being able to eat almost anything that was put in front of me.

My BIL is 52 and still fussy. We were at a BBQ the other day with a wonderful array of foods. He ate a chicken drumstick and a sausage with some bread. Once we went to a family party, where again the food was amazing and all he ate was cucumber and a bit of baguette.
He eats like a child, but really stubborn and defiant with it. I suspect some ND there. There are diagnoses on his side and some others ongoing.

We planned against the picky stage as much as possible by never making ‘toddler food’ or plain foods an option.

Everything from weaning was flavourful, diverse and constantly being served in different ways. We introduced spice pretty early, lots of fruit and veg and fed DC what we ate. We never used the children’s plates with the dividers either, everything as it would be served to an adult but smaller.

We never did beige food because my DH is a recovering picky eater (ND), who lived on the stuff, so we couldn’t have that be an option. Now the safe foods in our house are avocados, tinned fish, stir fried veggies and that sort of thing because that is what they are used to, there was no way for it to become ultra plain foods as they hadn’t tried them. Now they don’t have the taste for it, McDonald’s is too salty, chips are too plain etc.

I’m less sure on how to get older children to add variety but maybe encouraging them to cook with you, preparing the ingredients and trying them and really experimenting with food.

I never used baby food with the exception of some of the baby breakfasts cereals that were around in the 90s, everything else was homemade or veg/ fruit mashed up
My dc ate fine from weaning till about 16ish months, it is easy to say oh my child eats because I did x y z, but when you suddenly get a toddler who refuses food then you will try anything to get some food in them, it is easy to judge when it didn't happen to you.