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

DS is now 34, very much alive, and always had a restricted, diet, and still does.

Some things that worked for us

• absolutely no-fuss no-force approach to trying new foods. We bribed him to try new things but if he didn’t like them then that was absolutely it, no negative consequences. This way we discovered curry, pineapple, parsnips, fajitas and I can’t remember what we ruled out.
• recognising exactly what he doesn’t like - mostly textural and unpredictable mixing. Respect this. He hates gravy, stir frys, salads. But loves a roast dinner, pasta with the sauce evenly distributed, things he can put together himself like fajitas, nibbly bits.
• see it as her mildly interesting quirk, not your failure as a parent. She will have other talents and things could be far far worse.

see it as her mildly interesting quirk, not your failure as a parent. She will have other talents and things could be far far worse.

Sounds like ARFID to me, I suspect my dd 13 has it,It’s more common in children who are neurodivergent like my daughter.It’s classed as a eating disorder but it’s not about weight or size it’s about taste,texture and even the packaging of the food amongst other things.I would have a read into it if I were you.Good luck!!