Anyone else have an Uber-Picky Eater Child?

SleeplessinBerlin

if your kid is eating pasta, tomato sauce is probably accepted, right? Enrich the sauce by adding other vegetables to it - zucchini, broccoli, peppers, carrots - you name it - and make sure you puree those veggies so that the sauce is nice and thick. Tomato will dominate the taste of other veggies anyway.

One of my fave pasta sauces is made of cherry tomatoes, a piece of parmesan, almonds, fresh basil, one garlic and some oil. And anchovies, just 2-3 fillets, for the taste. If you blend it all in a food processor, you have your sauce ready before the noodles are cooked.

JenAndSome

I can't even get my kids to eat corn. What I have been doing lately is putting their meat and the veggies on the plate. They don't get any of the carb until they eat their veggies. So far it's been working okay. I don't care if they dip their veggies in ranch, mustard ketchup, whatever it takes to get them to eat it.

blackmantis

Best thing for kids is to juice dark green veggies with fruit and let them drink them problem solved.

tinak33

When I was young, Mom made one meal for everyone. You ate it or you sat at the dinner table all night long until it was time for bed. That didn't mean you didn't have to eat it. She saved it for you for the next night.

We spend a ridiculous amount of time catering to our kids today. My philosophy is, put it out there, they'll eat when they get hungry enough.

Don't even get me started on designer pet food.

HAHAHAHA
This was our house.
Except we didn't always get it for dinner the next day. Sometimes we got it for lunch instead.

My brother was the pickiest eater in the family. It got to the point where 5/7 days his dinner was a tall glass of whole milk.
If he didn't like the dinner, he just didn't eat it. He never complained, he never commented about it, he participated in dinner conversation with everyone else. He just didn't eat.
That all changed when he went away to a boarding school for high school. He came back eating everything. At the school, you ate. Even if you didn't like it. haha


Quick story: When I was 4, I hated celery. My mom made me tuna for lunch and it had maybe 5-8 little pieces of celery in it. I wouldn't eat it. She told me that I had to stay at the table until I ate it.
8 hours later, I went to bed..... celery still on the plate. :laugh:
I was a very stubborn child.... And I get that stubborness from my mom.

amaysngrace

My son is non-verbal and autistic. He is 6 years old, and it seems the older he gets, the more restrictive his diet becomes. Currently, he will not eat fish sticks or hamburger helper, which he ate several years ago. So, now he only eats Yummy brand Chicken Nuggets, Banquet-brand Salisbury Steak Frozen Dinners, Ramen Noodles-every blue moon, pepperoni or cheese pizza-any brand as long as it is sliced like a triangle and the pepperoni is round and on top of the cheese. He use to drink milk, until I tried to do the gluten-free casein-free diet, now he only consumes it because I use the milk to mix his oatmeal with. He will only eat Gerber-brand Baby Oatmeal cereal, and he will let me add a sliced banana in it, but nothing else. He only drinks orange juice, any type of carbonated drink, but I will only allow him to drink Fresca or 7-up 10 occasionally, and he regularly drinks fruitables. He will eat a biscuit and cornbread occasionally. The only home cooked meals he will consume of mine are chili, every blue moon-spaghetti, and rotel. He has expressed an interest in a scrambled egg, he watched me eat, but when I let him try it, he spit it out because I had fresh cilantro in it, and he could taste it.

Now, my remedy for all this will probably be looking into a juice plus supplement to add to the foods he does eat, but since this is kind of costly, I might just invest in a really good juicer, such as Vitamix and juice his veggies and fruits, since he loves juice. I have also snuck in organic carrot juice into his orange juice and he did not seem to detect it, but it did give him the runs though. That is about the only thing I feel I can do and take him for walks with me, when weather permits. Fighting with him is a pain and I try to pick my battles with him because if he does not want to eat something he will not eat it! Even, if he starves to death, he will still not bulge in to my request of him eating anything different than what he wants to eat. Therefore, I will just try to sneak in healthy fruits and vegetables using the juicing method.


And for those of you who do not have an autistic child, letting an autistic child go hungry until he or she eats what you present to them will not work. They will starve themselves to the point of hospitalization, at least mine will. Although I never let him get to that point, because after presenting to him a new food several times and he rejected for 3 days in a row, I just let it be and gave him what he normally eats. Not saying that the OP's child is autistic, but in case she is, then she already knows what she is dealing with.

BeccaBollons

I have a 2 and a half year old who eats only bread and milk regularly. His sister who is now 6 ate EVERYTHING I gave her, and usually cried when the food was finished. So I thought fussy children didn't really exist, I thought it was environmental, a learned behaviour, and that other parents obviously just weren't doing it right. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Enter my son, who would only feed for 5 mins at a time when I was breastfeeding. I couldn't get him to try ANY food at 6 months, so I just breastfed for a year, and the only food he would eat was toast, and egg custard from a jar. I'm not kidding. Health visitors said he's growing fine and he'll eat when he's hungry, but he doesn't. Now he's a bit older I can get him to eat a very small portion of dinner, but some days he won't touch any of it. I don't give alternatives, and he doesn't fill up on snacks. He has loads of energy, is tall (but skinny) for his age, and sleeps through the night.
I just think he is one of those people to whom food is not that important. My mum and sister are the same, but I am really not!
I'm hoping that within the next year or so he'll just keep increasing his quantities and variety.
So, to answer the OP, yes I have a picky eater in that he only picks at his food, and how I deal with it is to make sure he eats something, however small an amount. And hope he grows out of it!

saxmaniac

No offense, but I feel sorry for your kids. "If they like something too much, it's a CLEAR sign that I should step in and limit it!" Where on earth did you get this notion? What are you hoping to accomplish by punishing preferences this way? Would you like someone to do that to you? If my kid loves to eat something, I love making it for him. You can't get "addicted" to any one particular food. You're projecting your issues onto your kids. I'm not saying this to be mean, but that's a MEAN way to treat a kid who is honest about what their preferences are to you.

I'll raise my kids, you raise yours, OK?

We choose what to buy, they choose what to eat. For now. It's pretty simple.

Let's say if your kid ate 3 boxes of Oreos in a day, you'd go out and buy 4 next week, that way they "express their preferences"? Because that's what you are saying.

For a while they got really annoying about eating chicken nuggets, and would only eat those and whining about it. So we stopped buying them temporarily, and, lo and behold, being tiny children, their attention wandered and they started eating other things. Then we brought them back into rotation.

My son decided he didn't like dinner, and started just eating a few sandwiches for a snack and skipping dinner. Then he'd decide he didn't want to come to the table. We'd run out bread. Rather than buy more bread, we only bought enough for a reasonable amount.

I parent my kids, they don't parent me. Refusing to buying them something they want is not "punishment".

amaysngrace

When I was young, Mom made one meal for everyone. You ate it or you sat at the dinner table all night long until it was time for bed. That didn't mean you didn't have to eat it. She saved it for you for the next night.

We spend a ridiculous amount of time catering to our kids today. My philosophy is, put it out there, they'll eat when they get hungry enough.

Don't even get me started on designer pet food.

HAHAHAHA
This was our house.










Except we didn't always get it for dinner the next day. Sometimes we got it for lunch instead.

My brother was the pickiest eater in the family. It got to the point where 5/7 days his dinner was a tall glass of whole milk.
If he didn't like the dinner, he just didn't eat it. He never complained, he never commented about it, he participated in dinner conversation with everyone else. He just didn't eat.
That all changed when he went away to a boarding school for high school. He came back eating everything. At the school, you ate. Even if you didn't like it. haha


Quick story: When I was 4, I hated celery. My mom made me tuna for lunch and it had maybe 5-8 little pieces of celery in it. I wouldn't eat it. She told me that I had to stay at the table until I ate it.
8 hours later, I went to bed..... celery still on the plate. :laugh:
I was a very stubborn child.... And I get that stubborness from my mom.

Me too. My mom tried to make me eat beets or peas, which I will not eat to this day. I will pick out all the peas in a tuna casserole or a chicken pot pie and it will be a big pile on my plate. The funny thing is my mom would always bribe me with a dessert and she told me if I ate all my beets, I would get strawberry shortcake or peanut butter cookies. Then she would leave the room, her mistake, because I would just wrap the beets or peas in a paper towel and stuff it in the trash. When I was in elementary, I would just place it on the top of the trash can and she would sometimes notice it, but not often. However, as I got older, I became smart enough to know to wrap the beets up and put them in the bottom of the trash can, so she could not see it. Of course, the dog was always readily available up under the table, and I would hand him things I did not want to eat, with no problem.

PixieGoddess

I can't help from the parent point of view, but I was that child. Below are some of my suggestions, and I didn't read through the thread, so sorry if there are repeats.
1. Try lots of different veggies cooked lots of different ways. Example: I have always hated raw carrots and still do. But I LOVE cooked carrots. So see if she likes something better with a different texture. Similarly, let her try it without seasoning first; if she doesn't like it, try adding different seasonings. (I've actually sat down with unseasoned veggies and lots of different spices and just season one bite at a time to see what I like - that could be something fun for a kid!)
2. Engage her in cooking. Looking back, I can see that I first started to branch out a little when I started learning how to cook, maybe because I liked to experiment with cooking and learn to cook lots of different things? I dunno, just a suggestion. It also helped convince me that mayonnaise (the evil icky food of my childhood) was not lurking inside every single dish that my mother made.
3. Give it time. Honestly, I didn't shuck off the last of my picky eater mentality until college, when I was dependent on the dining halls for all my meals. So I started trying different foods because (a) they were available, and (b) I didn't want to keep eating the same select foods twice/day for weeks on end. I also wanted to go out sometimes with my friends, and I didn't wanna be a downer that always got a burger at all these ethnic restaurants we went to, so I started trying stuff. (Peer pressure can sometimes be good!)

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Legs_McGee

When I was young, Mom made one meal for everyone. You ate it or you sat at the dinner table all night long until it was time for bed.

It was this way in my house too. I hated eating when I was a kid. It was a war of attrition; but I usually won. I'd sit there for hours and hours. My parents had jobs and stuff - I didn't have anything better to do.

tinak33

Question if you had a daughter like yourself how would you handle the situation? Would you make a second meal for her, would you change the recipes so she would accept it, would you keep her at the table, or would you let her make her own choice at meal if old enough?

i know for certain that i wouldn't bury my head in the sand, as my own mother did, refusing to change her tactics despite my weight dropping dangerously low.

there are things that my kids dislike. we talk about it, think about alternatives, compromise on frequency. i never make my kids eat the things they utterly loathe. i don't see the point in continuing to put cabbage on her plate if she hates cabbage. i cook less cabbage and give her extra brocolli & peas.

i try to emphasise the fun of finding healthy diets you like, not in forcing down yucky greens whist dreaming of yummy candy.

if nothing i did worked, i'd be taking my kid to the doc and asking to be refered to an expert. a lot more teens die from eating disorders than they do from being picky!

I like that you make finding healthy foods fun. And I like that you don't force feed your daughter a vegetable over and over if she doesn't like it.
My mom made eggplant parmesan once when I was about 7 or 8. I hated it with a passion. She never made it again. I am the oldest of 7 kids. We don't have a small family and I was the only one who didn't like that meal. But when she cooks for everyone, she wants everyone to eat. She loves to try different recipes and she will. With different ingrdients and different vegetables and different combinations. She finds out the healthy family favorites over time and will make those more often. She never catered to one kid's taste.

Also since there were so many of us, a lot of the stricter rules she enforced on my brother and I (we were the oldest). As more kids came along, the rules were more relaxed. haha We always pick on her for that. :laugh:

nope. i think i just don't like onions.

I don't like onions either. :grumble:

AprilMae1975

I have two kids who are 14 and 19. They are both super picky. I have always made them eat what I cooked even if they didn't like it. I also make them try new things even when they don't want to. I would say that I have tried to cook things I know they will like just using new recipes. My son hates vegetables but has eaten them all his life. The other day he told me he actually likes that I stuck to my guns and made him eat everything. No one can tell you what to do but you are the parent and you can always use that to your advantage!

stephv38

http://benandbirdy.blogspot.com/

This blog with recipes and funny commentary may not be everyones cup of tea, and I will grant that her kids eat things mine would not, but I have gotten quite a few ideas from it!

A couple tricks I like:
* Make it fun: Ie, dips and do it yourself toppings, skewers for eating, mini portions like a tasing at costco (my kids eat anything at a free sample tasting!) Some examples, a white bean hummus might be a milder taste than reg hummus. With tortilla chips. My kids will eat guac but not avocado! I made mini sliders turkey burgers the other night and used potato rolls as the buns. We like rice bowls with a variety of toppings set out for kids to do-it-yourself with.
* Go ahead and use a little butter, sugar, cheese as needed to make it go down! I have been making a sort of "churro" thing with a whole wheat tortilla, fried in a little butter and filled with sweet potato, cinnamon and little brown sugar. Even things like pizza can be healthed up by using a whole wheat bagel or english muffin, some mozz and spag sauce in the toaster oven!

aimforhealthy

No offense, but I feel sorry for your kids. "If they like something too much, it's a CLEAR sign that I should step in and limit it!" Where on earth did you get this notion? What are you hoping to accomplish by punishing preferences this way? Would you like someone to do that to you? If my kid loves to eat something, I love making it for him. You can't get "addicted" to any one particular food. You're projecting your issues onto your kids. I'm not saying this to be mean, but that's a MEAN way to treat a kid who is honest about what their preferences are to you.

I'll raise my kids, you raise yours, OK?

[/quote]
Nobody's trying to raise your kids, girl, you're posting on a public message board and you're going to get responses to what you say.

Let's say if your kid ate 3 boxes of Oreos in a day, you'd go out and buy 4 next week, that way they "express their preferences"? Because that's what you are saying.

Yes and no. We are a 2-person household and I can't imagine us having 3 boxes of Oreos in the house at one time, but if we had one and he ate most of them in one sitting (he better save some for me!) - oh, well, no more Oreos until we do groceries again, which we do once every 7-10 days. But if he asked me for more Oreos next time we went grocery shopping, I'd have no problem buying more of them.

Because there is nothing inherently evil about Oreos. And if a child wants to eat a box of Oreos one day or even several days in a row - big deal in the grand scheme of things. You yourself admit that kids' attention wanders - sometimes you just need to get a craving out of your system and that's all. I've never met a child who eats 3 boxes of Oreos a day every day for years. It's just not a huge deal to me and I think it's more detrimental to restrict food than it is to present options and information and let the child make as many choices as they're able to.

For a while they got really annoying about eating chicken nuggets, and would only eat those and whining about it. So we stopped buying them temporarily, and, lo and behold, being tiny children, their attention wandered and they started eating other things. Then we brought them back into rotation.

Okay. You admit that you restrict your children's food choices because they aggravated you about wanting certain foods too much. You called that "an addiction" in your original quote but it's clear now that you don't even believe that. In this scenario, your children were not "addicted to nuggets." They just worked your nerves about them, and you retaliated by not buying them nuggets hoping to modify the whining behavior.

This is not for their benefit, but yours. That's okay, but let's be clear that it doesn't actually benefit your kids to restrict nuggets if they whine about them too much.

henriettevanittersum

I lie. *GASP* Yes I do. Are there onions in here? You see any? No? Well, that's because they're not there (visibly)... I used to blend everything. He's 13 now and will try more and more, but the structure of the food is his main issue (almost like Asperger's), so I keep blending the pasta sauce. Juicing works for fruits. Thank God he now likes celery and carrots...

glovepuppet

I like that you make finding healthy foods fun. And I like that you don't force feed your daughter a vegetable over and over if she doesn't like it.
My mom made eggplant parmesan once when I was about 7 or 8. I hated it with a passion. She never made it again. I am the oldest of 7 kids. We don't have a small family and I was the only one who didn't like that meal. But when she cooks for everyone, she wants everyone to eat. She loves to try different recipes and she will. With different ingrdients and different vegetables and different combinations. She finds out the healthy family favorites over time and will make those more often. She never catered to one kid's taste.

Also since there were so many of us, a lot of the stricter rules she enforced on my brother and I (we were the oldest). As more kids came along, the rules were more relaxed. haha We always pick on her for that. :laugh:

thanks

this week, at 16, she's packing herself salad with her school lunch. she's glowing with health, says too much junk food makes her feel ''bleurgh!'' and has great body image.

i don't claim to have all the answers but i'm proud of not screwing her up over food.

tinak33

I lie. *GASP* Yes I do. Are there onions in here? You see any? No? Well, that's because they're not there (visibly)... I used to blend everything. He's 13 now and will try more and more, but the structure of the food is his main issue (almost like Asperger's), so I keep blending the pasta sauce. Juicing works for fruits. Thank God he now likes celery and carrots...

BAHAHAHAHA
My mom did that too!!! But the opposite.

I knew she was lying though. She told me flat out that if I ever asked her if there were onions in something, she would say yes.
"Even cake!?" I asked. Yup. Even cake.

I hated onions so much that if I knew they were there, I wouldn't eat it.
Now, I still don't like them, but if they are in a soup or meat sauce or something and they aren't raw or crunchy or big, I will eat them.

saxmaniac

Okay. You admit that you restrict your children's food choices because they aggravated you about wanting certain foods too much. You called that "an addiction" in your original quote but it's clear now that you don't even believe that. In this scenario, your children were not "addicted to nuggets." They just worked your nerves about them, and you retaliated by not buying them nuggets hoping to modify the whining behavior.

"Addiction" was in quotes, I don't believe they are actually addicted.

My post had a context; let me spell it out. If OP's child is unwilling to try any new foods and only eats a few things, because that's what "uber-picky" is, then one possible solution is to simply not buy the foods that they *do* eat. It's a hell of a lot easier than trying to cajole a 2-year old into trying new foods with reasoning and logic and bribes and whatever.

You are reading way far much into what I'm saying.

tinak33

I like that you make finding healthy foods fun. And I like that you don't force feed your daughter a vegetable over and over if she doesn't like it.
My mom made eggplant parmesan once when I was about 7 or 8. I hated it with a passion. She never made it again. I am the oldest of 7 kids. We don't have a small family and I was the only one who didn't like that meal. But when she cooks for everyone, she wants everyone to eat. She loves to try different recipes and she will. With different ingredients and different vegetables and different combinations. She finds out the healthy family favorites over time and will make those more often. She never catered to one kid's taste.

Also since there were so many of us, a lot of the stricter rules she enforced on my brother and I (we were the oldest). As more kids came along, the rules were more relaxed. haha We always pick on her for that. :laugh:

thanks

this week, at 16, she's packing herself salad with her school lunch. she's glowing with health, says too much junk food makes her feel ''bleurgh!'' and has great body image.

i don't claim to have all the answers but i'm proud of not screwing her up over food.

That's awesome. You should definitely feel proud!!

And I honestly think no one really has all the answers, because every kid and every parent is different. You work via trial and error. Something that works for one parent/kid won't necessarily work for you and yours.

aimforhealthy

Okay. You admit that you restrict your children's food choices because they aggravated you about wanting certain foods too much. You called that "an addiction" in your original quote but it's clear now that you don't even believe that. In this scenario, your children were not "addicted to nuggets." They just worked your nerves about them, and you retaliated by not buying them nuggets hoping to modify the whining behavior.

"Addiction" was in quotes, I don't believe they are actually addicted.

My post had a context; let me spell it out. If OP's child is unwilling to try any new foods and only eats a few things, because that's what "uber-picky" is, then one possible solution is to simply not buy the foods that they *do* eat. It's a hell of a lot easier than trying to cajole a 2-year old into trying new foods with reasoning and logic and bribes and whatever.

You are reading way far much into what I'm saying.

Addiction is a very powerful word that LOTS of people on this board struggle with, and it is grossly misused when referring to a 5yo really wanting chicken nuggets, even in quotes.

Let me "spell out" what my point is: Kids are not picky eaters because they like a certain food too much. They're picky eaters because a) kids are naturally and biologically programmed to picky and reluctant to try new foods AS A RULE and b) they don't yet trust that something unfamiliar isn't going to be disgusting. This trust will grow over time with the patient and nonjudgmental and consistent introduction of new flavors and textures, and has nothing to do with how much they like Oreos/nuggets/pizza/whatever. It's a false dichotomy to think otherwise.