So what do the kids eat...?

Reading thru this thread I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong? I basically still cook the same as always only now I'm cooking a bit lighter version, watching my portions, and cutting down on my carbs (I was a severe addict!). So my family enjoys dinnertime same as usual.

Have others seriously changed their menus? If so, how? (btw I'm obviously new around here!).

We all eat the same thing. The only time we make anything different is if we have fish, but then we make fish sticks for the kids. It doesn't hurt for the kids to learn to eat healthy too!

i do fix something a little different for my kids, not crap, just different. They eat pretty healthy food, but their repetoire is a bit limited. They love carrots, broccoli, peas, corn etc but i like to try different veggies. So i will fix two veg, but make them try mine as well. if i make mashed potatoes which they love, i will just have a very little bit....and then there are some meals that we all eat the exact same.....works differently every day....

My son has Aspergers and is a very picky eater. single ingredient foods, no veggies, very limited. His diet consists of chicken nuggets, fries, fish sticks, vienna sausages, flour tortillas with cheese melted in them, pepperoni pizza, plain hot dogs, chips, and grapes or oranges, or watermelon. And scrambled eggs, ham and cheese , or peanut butter sandwiches. All very easy to fix meals. So yeah, most of the time I fix him a separate dinner from my husband and I. But it has been this way for most of his life, so no difference there.

We do supplement his diet with multivitamins, and he is extremely healthy.

My son is a preteen. He has always been super picky. REALLY picky. He will eat quinoa though. lol So you never know. He fixes his own breakfast and lunch, but everyone has the same (generally) healthy dinner. When we have pasta, I do shirataki or spaghetti squash, and the guys have real pasta. Or when we have tacos, I make myself a taco salad instead. But aside from those easy sort of substitutions, dinner is take it or leave it. We do require that he eats at least a couple bites of the protein in his dinner.

My son does Lucky Charms or other crappy sugar-laden cereal for breakfast, and mac and cheese or mini pizzas for lunch most days. We've required recently that he at least includes some fruit in there for fiber. When I try to get him to eat salads, etc with me, he generally does not eat at all. I can get him to drink protein shakes with me. I've reached a point where I've tried pretty much all the advice from ppl over the years (making cute lunches, calling the food cool names, only giving the kid whatever we eat, mixing the brown and white rice together, whatever). I swear most of the ppl who give this advice have never had a *truly* picky eater. (But I'm sure it is fun to judge if you are not dealing with this personally, or if you were blessed to have children who grew out of it.) My kid is almost 10, he barely weighs 55 lbs soaking wet. He has always been very low on his growth curve (bobbing between the third to tenth percentile). Husband and I mutually decided we'd rather have him eat some calories, any calories than continually have him skip meals and fall off his growth curve. Son says he plans on being the smart and funny guy to get girls to like him, not the big and strong guy, so he feels that he is all set. lol

His pediatrician says that he will eventually make better food choices because he always sees his parents making good choices. I'm not so sure about that, I feel that that should have happened by now. I don't anticipate this getting better when he enters his teen years. Either way, this does not affect my weight loss (and now maintenance). At least I am setting a good example.

This is my son almost to a T (minus quinoa and he does love meat). He's 13 and 85 lbs...tall and a skinny minny. He was always in the lowest weight % and when he was a baby docs always told me he was too skinny and too fatten him up (one said give him all the Haagen Daaz he wants). He's in the 40% now for weight and 95% height - bones, skin and a little muscle. My son only eats one veggie - baked sweet potato fries. Believe me I've tried hiding veggies in other foods, etc. He can smell pretty much any kind of veggie a mile away. For him, smell and texture are HUGE turnoffs and always have been. I still vividly remember when he was 2 yrs old and Grandpa offered him 6 peas with his roast beef. He ate the beef first and then the peas and immediately vomited them and the beef up. My poor dad felt awful and said "well won't try that one for a while!" Another time at 4 yrs old, a bean made it into his taco and same thing - took a bite and vomited everything up...he told me later "that bean was stuck on my tongue." It was like an automatic gag reflex.

Yes sometimes I want to pull my hair out or cry. I've tried to balance out our dinners during the week so that we eat pretty much the same main dish about 4 nights/week with different side dishes, but there are times where I'm craving a HUGE salad or big bowl of sweet potato carrot ginger soup and hell would freeze over before he would eat either of those. Most of our main dishes are just grilled beef, chicken pork, or fish and side dishes are grilled or roasted veggies and some kind of pasta. I usually skip the pasta.

My accomplishment this past couple of months is that he is eating a ton more fruit than he used to. I've been better at putting fresh RIPE fruit all over the place - in snacks, huge fruit plates while we're waiting for dinner to be served, etc. We both learned that we love fresh pears. I'm not going to lie - I do buy some processed snacks for his school lunch sides, but I'm picky about those snacks; I try to buy stuff with the fewest ingredients, additives, and no hydrogenated oils. Snacks at home usually are leftovers that have to be reheated.

Thank you for sharing this because I've read all the other posts and was thinking "jeez it's just me with a kid who won't eat ANYTHING." And thanks to the other posters because even after 12 years of living with someone I thought was the pickiest eater on earth, I'm going to try some of your tips, some of which I've tried before with no success but hey today is a new day.