Please help - my ten year old daughter’s diet is so poor

[funkmonke]

Since my daughter was small, she’s been the fussiest eater and because shes always been tiny in size we just let her eat what she wanted and what we could get inside her rather than letting her go hungry as that what she would do!! And going to school day after day or to bed with an empty stomach seemed for more detrimental than letting her eat what she wanted as she couldn’t afford to lose any weight. We were told my gps and psychologists that she would get less fussy as she got older and to not make a big deal about it.

anyway: here we are at 10.5 years and her diet consists of:

Breakfast:
pancakes and golden syrup (4 times a week)
piklets and jam

lunch:
roast chicken sandiches, salad leaves, brioche
strawberries
crisps
yoghurt (sometime)

dinner:
pizza express pizza
chicken fish goujons or burger and chips
Salad leaves
cucumber

This is all she’ll eat day after day after day…

im worried about her health going into puberty and also going to secondary school and how she’ll cope in the adult world if she can’t have simple easy lunches like pasta and jacket potatoe and cereal / toast for breakfast.

she also has a residential trip in September where the only food will be what’s there. I’m so worried about her being starving hungry!!!

does anyone else have any idea what I can do to encourage her to eat more? She seems to have phobia and very over sensitive to diff tastes and textures

anu other breakfast ideas?

we’ve tried cereal, porridge, eggs, toast, croissants

thanks in advance!

xxxxx

It's not the best diet but not completely restrictive either as she is eating food from all food groups.

What's her reason for not wanting to try the foods you have offered her such as cereal, porridge etc?

That doesn't sound too bad compared to some people. I suggest you just back off and chill out as much as you possibly can about it, maybe have lots of fruit or healthier snacks around and available, and let the residential happen as it does. I suspect she will find she eats because she's hungry there. Try not to mention it a lot and make it a big thing beforehand.

Is she ND? ARFID is often a symptom.

She tries them, has a few bites but doesn’t finish… and I could spend hours and hours trying to get her to finish but I can’t force her and it all just ends is misery.

but she def does try the stuff!

she’d happily go hungry and not eat all day given the choice but then she suffers with focus issues and mood swings and anxiety so eating is really important for her overall balance

These far as I am aware she is NT but she does has traits of ADHD.

I had not heard ARFID but she could well have it. Do you how I could get it treated ?

That's fine as long as she has a few bites of something new/ different to her normal diet, keep offering those foods and eventually she'll eat more and more of them.

My kids would eat pancakes and chicken goujons everyday if they could, I just don't give them the option to.

I don't think thats so awful, try not to worry & just keep offering new foods. My son was/is the same and is a few years older. He is gradually eating more variety. We give him more responsibility for making his own food if he wont have what we are having and that has helped encourage him to try what we are eating. He also has to make his own packed lunch as he doesnt want school dinners. My main concern is upfs so as long as he is eating some decent food I am trying to focus on weaning him off rubbish bread. Its a struggle!

Puberty might actually mean she chooses to change diet herself. Both my DD and DSD were quite restrictive with eating and both have much improved over the years - partly driven by being hungrier, having more autonomy over food and gaining in confidence to try unfamiliar foods.
Being away from home is difficult though. If she's away for a few days there's not much you can do. But being around other kids can help as she may want to try things her friends like. Try not to worry.
It sounds like she's quite anxious around food being familiar - I think some children cannot cope with food that has an unpredictable quality (like fruit) so I would try occasionally to introduce food that is the same every time. Dry, crunchy food also seems less scary.

It doesn't sound like ARFID at all

I’m not sure about treatment. My Dd is 17 with with a restricted diet and ADHD

l give her vitamin tablets.

Sounds like my son, he's 15 now. When he went on school trips at that age he did come back quite hungry but it didn't kill him 😄. She's going to have to figure this stuff out so I'd keep doing what you are doing but continue to offer different foods etc. We have dinner all together and I'll usually keep his components separate/not put sauce on - he often doesn't eat much of it but I think good to make him try. Then he often makes himself pasta pesto to eat separately. He's now good at being polite when out and figuring out something he'll eat part of.

Oh and he is the healthiest seeming of all of us. Slim and muscular!!

How old are you children?

the thing is my daughter will just be starving all day and she suffers from concentration issues, hormonal outbursts and generally can be very emotional, I don’t want to cause her to struggle even more by having an empty tummy all day and night. X

I don't actually think it's that bad. A friend of mine told me that when she was three, she would only eat spaghetti hoops, I think this went on for about a year. She is now healthy and fine.
When I read your post, I thought it would be terrible, but it really isn't.
She's fed, not dead.

My kids are slightly younger than yours, they were also very fussy eaters but I've had to be firm but fair with them. They eat what I make them, if they chose not to, there's nothing else to eat. After about 2 days of this they realise they are hungry and will just eat what's given.

I know they're not starving as they will eat breakfast and cooked meal at school. So if they go a day or two without dinner they won't be starving.

Maybe keep her breakfast and lunch as it is and tackle the dinner for now?

I know but she’s going to be a teen soon! She’s no longer 3… 😅😅😅

Good plan!

It's much better than my diet at that age. I was fine as soon as I left to go to uni. The worst thing for me at home was mum making a huge (positive I suppose) fuss when I did try anything new. Or going on at me to eat things I couldn't face, this made me feel anxious and sick ( I wasn't otherwise an anxious child).

Both of my children went through similar stages, for one year my DS would only eat weeetabix for every meal , ( both ND) however now that they are at uni they eat anything and everything.
I just made sure they had multivitamins every day.

Were they similar ages? When did their diet Improve?

So what happened when you went to uni?

Do you eat well now?

Eh I wouldn't worry about that. Tbh it's not a million miles away from what my son (9) eats, although he does eat a lot more fruit and no pizza (but no stranger to a happy meal).

I wouldn't worry too much - my dd was similar at that age and grew up to be a total foodie who eats everything and loves cooking/trying new recipes.

The main thing is that she's willing to try new things - I would try and introduce a really good variety of nutritious things in small amounts just on the table rather than on her plate so there's no pressure.

Also, try and get her interested in cooking.

Start with things she likes such as pizza and get her making it. We used to make a pizza and pasta sauce with loads of veggies in it and blend it.

The breakfast isn't going to be helping with her focus and concentration because it's loaded with sugar and doesn't really have much in the way of protein or healthy fats. I think I might be tempted as a starting point to see if she would accept her usual food at different times of day. Unconventional maybe. But if she would eat e.g. chicken goujons for breakfast then at least she's getting some protein in and isn't setting herself up for a big sugar crash.

Lunch sounds OK. Would she accept a healthier alternative to the crisps? Baked crisps or lentil chips maybe? There are some decent not-too-processed options in the supermarkets nowadays. Would she accept greek yoghurt with honey or fruit purée rather than ultra processed kids yoghurts? Maybe start off trying to stretch her "safe foods" rather than introducing brand new items?

DH's brother was incredibly fussy as a kid and had a very limited diet. He improved massively at uni, because of a bit of positive peer pressure in halls, and also because he lived with a Chinese student who cooked everything from scratch and would give him bits to try. He was too polite to decline and eventually he learned to love it.

My GD recently went on school residential and was horrified to be given pasties and sausage rolls. When asked if she ate them her reply was “I had to, I was starving and there was nothing else”

She will normally eat most things meat veg etc but doesn’t like it mixed up.

This trip was definitely educational.