Having friends with fussy kids over for dinner

abitofhelp

l keep on reading this thread and not posting a reply. i really hope your meal is a success i'm a confident cook and always ask guests in advance for any likes and dislikes.i dont want to spend money then have it wasted. as a mother of two boys brought up in the same way the eldest will eat anything the youngest is very fussy also equally fussy about junk food,not that he has it often. there is a lot he wont eat but also a lot he does. if we are going for dinner i explain about his fussines but also i would not expect anyone to pander to his whims. a lot of the meals we make at home he will not eat, i will cook him a seperate healthy meal but the food i make for the three of us is placed in the middle of the table and he is encouraged to try it. its not as simple to say its the parents fault although in some cases i'm sure it is. we grow our own veg, bake our own cakes and bread, he adores fruit and meat eats little veg, wont attempt pasta or rice though he did as a baby. i was asked by one parent if it was hard to feed him as he wouldnt eat junk food, madness. i really wish you well with your meal. i think i might try a moussaka one night, i could plonk that in the middle of the table, he would certainly eat the lamb

Justamum

DundeeDoll wrote: »

One person's 'fussy' is another person's taste.

I agree. I got quite annoyed with my mum once when she was talking to my children about when I got 'fussy' about my eating and became a vegetarian! :mad: The fact that I had ethical reasons for doing it seemed to go over her head. Anyway I've since become vegan :rotfl:

MidLifeCrisis_3

Thanks everyone, I'm sure we will have a good evening with plenty of wine. It's not really a dinner party as such, it's just that I'd like to serve something a little bit more special away from sausages or shepherds pie. I agree that everyone has different tastes and that some children just won't eat this, that and the other, but if you never get to try it then how do you know if you like it or not. As a child I could be quite fussy and was made to eat things like liver, sprouts, lettuce and tomatoes which I absolutely hated and I would never have even touched curry, but I like all these things now as my tastebuds have changed and I have become far more adventurous with food as I have got older. My youngest is fussier than my eldest, but we still offer the foods, whether she always eats them is another matter.

I too have catered for a vegetarian who didn't like veg, it did make me snigger to myself:rotfl:, but I always managed to find something she liked. We also have a friend with a child who has a food phobia due to a near choking incident, but we know what she eats and can work with that.

I'm not worried about the nutritional value, as my kids love nothing better than the odd McD's and will opt for fishfingers at the drop of a hat, I just hope that they have a nice time and hope that maybe they will try the meal.

TheConways

Hqve you thought about fajitas? A bit messy but great fun, and you can get the kids to assemble what they like.

We have friends who came for dinner with their 2year old - "he'll eat what we do," they said cheerfully. I was gobsmacked when the child grabbed a huge olive stuffed with a garlic clove from the table, chomped it down, and went back for another one. The lasagne also went down a treat!

andygb

TheConways wrote: »

Hqve you thought about fajitas? A bit messy but great fun, and you can get the kids to assemble what they like.

We have friends who came for dinner with their 2year old - "he'll eat what we do," they said cheerfully. I was gobsmacked when the child grabbed a huge olive stuffed with a garlic clove from the table, chomped it down, and went back for another one. The lasagne also went down a treat!

Thank you for this post, because I had almost given up hope of hearing about "normal" people.
Sorry if anyone takes offence at that, but we go to France and Italy a lot (it used to be two or three times a year), and what we have noticed, is an entirely different approach to children and mealtime over there. It is quite common to see whole families together in restaurants, the children eating exactly the same food as the adults. I would also guess that is the case in the family home, where one meal is prepared for everyone, and people see dinner as a family/social occasion.
This is what used to happen in the UK, when I was young, none of this preparing such and such for one person because they are a bit picky. Why were food intolerances not so common then, and if they were and we did not know about them, then how come people were not falling over ill all the time, and were in fact healthier, lighter and fitter then?
Get people back to eating real food, cooked from scratch with basic ingredients.

valk_scot

I brought my two up to be non-fussy and it's always a joy when we go somewhere with a buffet and the kids are having a go at just about everything, to the amazement of other parents. On the other hand they do have a couple of dislikes each, mostly of the so-called kiddy foods that crop up on every childrens menu. My 10 year old DD wouldn't thank you for cheap sausages or baked beans for example. When she goes on Cub/Scout camps the food is usually of the "kids only like this" variety and she's the one eating her way through a pile of bread and butter instead plus the fruit and yoghurt none of the other kids will touch.

I say make what you like, provide some nice bread and salads for the sides and have a tub of good ice cream plus toppings (adulty ones as well) availible for pud, or crackers and cheese. Easy cooking and if her kids won't eat anything it's her problem not yours tbh. I remember going to dinner with my parents was an absolute privilege and grown up behavior was expected, not a toddler meltdown about the peas on my plate. I ended up discovering a whole range of foods I didn't get at home because my mother or father didn't like them, lol, or things my mum didn't know how to cook.

snowleopard61

Ceirdwyn wrote: »

Just don't do what my Aunty did one time and dish up to a rather unadventurous child (me) stewed octopus :eek:

That just reminded me - after all this talk of fussy children - that, aged 10, I was given stewed tripe by a grumpy uncle and couldn't possibly have refused it. I really wasn't a fussy eater - no particular virtue; I just genuinely liked virtually everything, except (1) liver and (2) rather bizarrely, rice - both of which I learnt to like as I got older - but I've never had to choke anything down with such difficulty as that plate of revolting, smelly, wet, flabby white stuff. Ugh, ugh, ugh!

MidLifeCrisis_3

OMG that sounds disgusting, turns my tummy just thinking about it. Reminds me that my granny always used to serve us tongue sandwiches; I had to eat them, but mum's voice still rings in my ears "tastes just like ham, you like that" still can't stand the thought now and seem to get a sudden awareness of the feel of swallowing my own tongue eughh. However... if someone offered it to my children I wouldn't try to put them off and would hope they would try it for themselves and make their own minds up.

So nice to hear of other children like mine that love eating adult food and will often scoff down things like stuffed olives that I don't even like myself (I have tried them tho lol!). I've heard, and love the idea, that school dinners in France are treated as a social occasion so children learn not only an appreciation of food, but appropriate table manners - what a fab idea and nothing like our school dinner hall where they can't wait to trough it down and get out to play!!!

BTW does anyone else get fed up with going out and kids menus only consisting of sausages, fishfingers, nuggets, chips and beans too even for Sunday lunch? It's rare to find otherwise, but when we do my kids love nothing better than tucking into pasta, mild curry, roast, etc and will often ask if they can have something off the main menu instead. In fact, a child we know has hated chips since he was a baby and the amount of times his mum has asked for salad instead and has been met with the 'really' attitude and been treated like he is a weirdo:(.

bargainbetty

I was a 'fussy' kid, mainly because I wouldn't eat baked beans (still won't), am mildly allergic to egg yolk and thought then, as now, that peas are the spawn of the devil. I was also a bit conservative, because once you've thrown up beans, egg and peas, you get a bit fearful of new stuff - I mean, what kid can't stomach baked beans?

We moved next to a Chinese family who owned a restaurant. The mother gently encouraged me to try little bits of what she was cooking to see how the ingredients mixed together to give new flavours. I was fascinated and ate anything except seafood (another allergy).

My mother's face the day the eight year old me had refused sausage, egg, chips and beans in favour of a spicy beef curry was a picture. My taste buds appeared to be designed for more exotic foods very young - I haven't stopped eating curries, chillis and Asian spicy stuff ever since.

My niece is fabulous - she was offered a chocolate biscuit, and asked if she could have some grapes if she finished it. We then found the biscuit hidden under the side of her plate while she ate the fruit instead.

I'd cook what I liked and encourage the kids to try it. Always works at dinner parties too.

snowleopard61

bargainbetty wrote: »

and thought then, as now, that peas are the spawn of the devil.

No, that's tapioca

With reference to the throwing up (sorry!), someone I know went to stay with relations as a child and was made to eat something he hated ... it didn't stay down long!