Meals for kids, same as rest or differant?

jellyhead

well, we're all happy :-)

we have different tastes, sometimes my son will order pizza with hubby but i won't touch it. should i be forced to sit there and eat it with them? i think not. son hates red meat and dairy, he's not being difficult though, if we try hiding foods in with others he can taste them, he genuinely doesn't like a lot of foods, apparently it's quite common, especially in boys. i'm happy that he's eating lots of fruit and veg and drinking lots of water. the only problem is that he's too thin (no meat, chips, cake, chocolate or ice cream like most other kids), i've tried finding fatty food for him but he's not keen, so once a fortnight he eats in mcdonalds to get his quota of fat and salt i really do think he has the best diet out of all the kids we know personally so although i'm spoiling him and it's extra effort making his meal i really don't mind.

i had a nightmare the other day about the time i was forced to eat white bread by an aunt who thought i was being a brat for only liking brown. she was really angry that i was sick on her, but swallowing white bread is like swallowing a tampon, i could never see the point in forcing a child to eat something it hates after that. it's not as if she changed my eating habits, i still don't eat white bread.

Savvy_Sue

jellyhead wrote:

swallowing white bread is like swallowing a tampon,

Not a comparison that had ever occurred to me...

My eldest has mild Asperger's which wasn't diagnosed until 12, I think that's why we had many of our battles over food. Like yours, mine can taste things 'hidden' in mince etc. I 'gave up' the day he 'hid' pizza in the washing machine.

But I also remember the day I accidentally gave him a peanut butter sandwich, in company. He must have been 4 or 5. Honestly, it looked harmless enough, I didn't know it was peanut butter or I wouldn't have given it to him as I KNEW he didn't like peanut butter! Anyway, he took a bite, puked it straight back, and I started yelling at him! An older child was shocked, never having seen a child being told off for being sick before. But then, he'd never seen my son spitting food out just because he'd decided he didn't like it that day.

Looking back, I really don't think he could swallow it. Not allergic or anything, just couldn't get it down.

He's a lot better at eating food with flavour now, but he still doesn't LIKE anything at all spicy.

jellyhead

at the time i didn't know what tampons were, and i've never actually swallowed one, but white bread is scary. it's thick and absorbent and sticks to your mouth and throat, swelling up inside you and choking you. that's probably not true at all, it's just the way i feel about white bread. i've heard people describe peanut butter the same way.

spud's mildly aspergic too, perhaps, it's undiagnosed and i think it may all just come under the 'dyspraxia' umbrella, difficult to say, the SENCO at school just assumed he was aspergic when she met him, as does every professional he meets but the diagnosing paediatrician just said he's a 'mystery' - it took him 6 years to come up with that label lol! the dietician said she meets lots of boys with dyspraxia/autism spectrum who simply can't stand certain textures in their mouth (and most will eat plain pizza if it's not too cheesy, despite hating cheese and tomato). okay some kids are faddy for the sake of being so, they change their minds about foods and refuse foods they previously enjoyed, but not all kids are doing it out of naughtiness. my son says he hates dairy, then backs it up by not liking ice cream or chocolate, so i believe him. he says dairy tastes slimy, it leaves a fatty coating when he swallows, makes his mouth and throat feel greasy. he does try new foods, just a mouthful before making a decision. knowing that i'm allowing him to decide for himself and won't force him to eat more than one mouthful means that he tries the mouthful with an open mind, he isn't scared of trying new things. it's a shame spud doesn't like peanut butter, i think it would be quite good for him, might put some meat on his bones.

but yes, i'm quite happy to make him a separate meal. i do think kids should sit at a table and eat with adults, with no TV on and no leaving the table without eating the veg, but i don't mind if we're not all eating exactly the same thing.

wanderlust_wannabe

Stuff like this gets me so :mad: . However, some of you have hit the proverbial nail on the head.
Kids today are so picky because they're parents allow them to be! It's as simple as that. When I was being brought up it was a case of if you don't eat it - you go hungry. It worked for my brother(25), my sister (18) and I(27). Not one of us is now picky about the food we eat (not quite true, we very rarely touch any of that processed rubbish. Our mum and dad brought us up on good wholesome fresh food and it's stayed with us into adultish life).

Obviously there are the odd things each individual might take a dislike to, but going back to the original thread of the lad wanting chicken dippers (btw !!!!!! food!) but refusing normal chicken is just plain rediculous!

A good friend of mine's wife suffers the same faddy syndrome after her parents used to cook one meal for her, one for her brother and then one for themselves!!
She now only eats chicken (cooked bone dry) plain (she'll stretch to having some cheese or ham on it if she must, its a nightmare trying to find a restaurant that doesn't serve it with some type of sauce.
On christmas day he has to cook a turkey for him and his daughter and a chicken breast for his missus! She won't even change to Turkey!!

To sum up - it's your house, your money your spending on grub so give them what you eat! If they don't like it they can wait until tomorrow and see if they want that. It's about who sets the rules and who rules the roost.

Anyway whats wrong with sitting down at 8pm and having an evening meal together? Give them a couple of slices of toast to tide themover after school and them sit down at 8 and have a grown up evening meal. It's how meals are eaten together on the continent all the time, to make it more appealing let them start sampling a glass of wine with they're evening meal. A good way of introducing responsible drinking to the kids.

Curry_Queen

Some of you have mentioned having children on the autistic spectrum and I can fully understand why these kids are very picky over certain types of food. If you think about it all their senses are much more highly attuned than ours and their attention to detail is phenomenal so it makes sense that flavours and textures in food will be much more prominent and is why they know they're present even if you try to disguise it.

Going back to the problem of faddy eating and children's general likes and dislikes, have any of you tried talking to your kids about why they don't like something and what is it about a particular food they don't like ... texture, flavour, the way it was cooked etc ...

I was having a discussion with my son the other night about the 5-a-day fruit/veg portions we're all supposed to eat and making a list of all the different types of fruit/veg we usually eat. He's always had a thing about not liking courgettes so I asked him what it was he didn't like about them, and it all boiled down to when he first ever tried them and thought they were cucumber (one of his fav veggies) so got a shock to find they were nothing like cucumber LOL! It's this that has put him off them ever since but I know for a fact he will eat them disguised (grated in soup!) so he has now agreed to eat them as long as they don't look like cougettes

There were a few other things that cropped up too that he said he didn't like but is willing to go along with me and try them if I cook them in different ways so as to change the flavour and texture.

One other area of disagreement we've often had is over breakfast and he will often skip it completely, which I'm not happy about on school days or when he's playing football. He totally refuses to eat porridge or muesli (great for slow release energy!) so to get round that I bake healthy oat biscuits and he's quite happy having a biscuit and a glass of milk for breakfast now

jellyhead

i tried giving spud spaghetti bolognese this week. i didn't think he'd eat it because it's sauce, he doesn't usually eat wet things but he did eat it but left the bits of meat. he always knows when i'm trying to give him red meat. i'm going to try quorn next. MIL suggests lamb mince because lamb's 'softer' than beef. it's all worth a go. he's also eaten fish fingers this week, the ones with pure fish inside, he still hates the slimy ones they serve at school though, not much fish in those, it's caked together rusk and stuff like that. he does try new things, he's not being faddy for the sake of it. i really don't care that i'm usually cooking something separate for him - as long as he's eating lots of fruit and veg, not drinking coke, not eating chocolate. his diet is an awful lot better than any of the children eating the same meals as their parents.

i did go through the process some of you advocate of letting him go hungry, thinking if he doesn't like what i'm eating he can go without until he's hungry enough to eat what i'm having, but how many days or weeks are you supposed to carry that on for? i had to stop when he became anaemic, too weak to walk and the dietician was really annoyed that i'd allowed my health visitor to talk me into it. she said a child drinking milk might be okay with that but not one who drinks water, it's not good for them to starve.

i thought it was illegal to give wine to under 5's by the way? and no he can't eat with us at 8pm, he goes to bed at 8pm. if kids stayed up until past 8pm at night there'd be more threads about bad behaviour in school

wanderlust_wannabe

I assumed your children were teenagers which is why you were finding it difficult to get them to eat the same stuff as you which is why I suggested the wine and grown up meal times.

However, if your child is only five then I don't see the problem. Put your foot down and don't give in. Yes- let him go hungry for a day even two - I don't believe he could last out weeks - slight over exaggeration I thinks.

The problem is he knows you will give in, so is prepared to last it out. Stop making a rod for your own back. Put the food in front of him, if he won't eat it take away and put it in front of him the next meal time. He'll soon get the message.

A bit of tough love at this early stage wil snap him out of the faddy ways he's got into and benefit him in the long run.

wanderlust_wannabe

Dieticians are half the reason that so many kids these days are so bloody picky in the first place!
Whatever happened to kids being told what to eat by - shock horror 'THE PARENTS'. It's not rocket science - just a balanced healthy diet!

tiff

I'm afraid I agree with wanderlust on this, if your kids are young its down to the parents. I was always made to eat whatever I was given, zero tolerance LOL

Curry_Queen

I think in jellyhead's case where her son is aspergic makes a huge difference as I mentioned in my post above and I also think she is doing the right thing in making allowances for her son's eating habits.

But for other children who are just being downright awkward then yes, tough love is the only way to go, especially from ages 2 and upwards, and it never did me or my siblings any harm and none of us are particularly fussy eaters!