Getting kids to eat proper food!

Right, I have two little blighters aged 5 and 3, to be honest the 5 year old is ok and eats fairly normally but can be a little fussy but to give him credit he does at least taste different food. The 3 year old on the otherhand is a bit of a nightmare. When he was a baby he had a few problem with different food intolerances and as a result is on the small size. Fortunately he is over it now and is able to eat everything now and the doctors say not to worry about his size.

What we are really struggling with is getting them to eat a ‘normal’ evening meal, I understand this does not happen over night but we have tried a few things from insisting that they try one mouthfull before they get down from the table, to just not insisting on anything and trying to keep a relaxed dinner table environment.

The meals are still fairly simple not wild curries and overpowering flavours, and we don’t want to make meal time a fight and force them to finish the meal as i don’t believe they become to love food that way.

Anyone got any experience with this and any advice is greatly received!
Cheers!

seen it with friends kids and I dont think there is an ideal solution that will end your issues.

Decide which is most importnat to you
1. a nice meal time
2. them eating a meal
Devise a plan that achieves the one you pick a syou are unlikely to get both in the short run

Do they pick [ within limits] what they have for tea?

Kids are different though my eldest eats about x 2 of his younger brother and weighs less.

Good luck as it can be a pain to deal with

Double post

We had this, and in the end it came down to a battle of wills. We won, he didn’t starve. He now eats best of all three, it was a control thing it seems.

Going through this with one of our twins at the moment. Refusing any food with ‘skin’ on. Even peas! And most veg

What worked yesterday was laying out what the reward would be for eating it all and then naming each individual item of food with a human name. Even the peas! Frustrating to say the least, but she ate all the veg offered for the first time in a while

My experiences of two lads at similar ages are as follows:

1. Small portions – it can be intimidating to face a huge plate of food. If they want more they can ask for it

2. Keep it simple, complex flavours are quite an aquired taste. We seperate out the different ingredients where possible. If they want to mix it together they can

3. Make it fun – get creative with how you present the food, I make faces out of peas, carrot batons etc

4. Sit with them and have a chat, maybe even have a rule where if they eat their main at the table they can have pud in front of the telly or something

5. Make sure they are hungry before dinner, sounds obvious I know but kids stomachs are pretty small. The apple that they had an hour ago might have filled them up.

Getting them involved in making the food and seeing where things come from has helped my two be very open to different foods. Gutting squid with them and getting them to touch and sometimes play with the fish/meat/veg before we prepare it is very amusing. Picking from the garden is a big winner.

Also having tactile food like wraps and loading up a lazy-Susie with salads and veg’s for them to pick at makes it all fun.

Sometimes they have off days when they are tired etc and even if they make no effort we make an effort not to be dissapointed or make a big deal of it. I’d rather they ate at the table with us than cry at it.

I was a complete fussy bugger as a kid, and had a million fights over finishing stuff, not being allowed to get down until the meal was finished, not being able to have pudding till I’d eaten my first course.

My wife was always allowed to eat as much as she wanted and stop, and to have pudding even if she didn’t want all her first course. She turned into someone who is completely unfussy about food.

So with our daughter, we’ve always just had the rule that we provide a meal, and she can choose whether or not to eat it (and what parts of it to eat). We never nag to eat a mouthful or whatever. So far (only 2 and a half now), she seems fine with that. Some days she doesn’t eat a full meal (or much at all), other days she eats tons, she seems to know what she needs and how hungry she is.

If you think about it, if someone came round your house, and you offered them a meal, and they said no thanks, I’m not hungry, you wouldn’t sit there saying ‘oooh, go on, just one bite’, so it seems a bit odd with kids.

Also, when you say ‘fairly simple’ and ‘not overpowering flavours’, have you tried them with strong flavours and curries and things? Some kids seem to like exciting flavours more than they like the bland kiddy food. Our one’s first food was dal and rice (not super chilli hot, but actually spicy), and she loves pickles and chutneys and things like that.

She also quite likes extremely chilli hot things for about 1 second, then the burn hits, she goes ooh ooh ooh and screams for a cup of milk, then the minute it stops hurting, tries again, ooh ooh ooh, repeat until food is taken away – I have to surreptitiously put the tabasco sauce on my scrambled eggs or cheese on toast or else she will insist on torturing herself with it!

To be honest, I think it may well be luck that she isn’t super fussy so far, but having the system of not hassling about eating things makes it very unstressful for us even if she doesn’t want it – we just cook an evening meal, we all sit down to eat, and if one of us isn’t hungry or doesn’t want to eat it right now, then it isn’t a problem. Sometimes if it’s something particularly nice like paneer curry (my favourite), and I have spare room in my tummy, I’ll check if she’s finished with hers and see if I can tidy it up, at which point she sometimes decides she does actually want it after all.

If you want to know how to make them sit at the table through a whole meal and not run around, then I’ve got no idea though – she is up and down between courses (and sometimes during a course), and often on her mum’s knee / climbing up her back or whatever. I figure that will come out in the wash at some later point.

Joe

Oh, and we have family meal times, usually all of us if we manage to get home in time, otherwise whoever is at home eats with her. I dunno if that helps anything.

having tactile food like wraps and loading up a lazy-Susie with salads and veg’s for them to pick at makes it all fun.

What she calls ‘Dinner on a broomstick’ (aka meat kebabs or vegetable brochettes) has been a big hit in our house the times I’ve tried it.

Does he like bolognese? All sorts of goodness can be whizz-blended into that to keep him healthy while you work on his fussiness.

Mine doesn’t like anything saucy..curries, bolognese, macaroni cheese. Fortunately he eats veg.

Make sure they are hungry. My nipper was was run ragged as a kid as we never had a car, legs and bikes were the main form of transport. When we got home she would eat anything and if you didn’t feed her she would start sizing you up to see if she could fit you in. 😯

Apparently putting the same meal out (ie the same ingredients, not the same thing reheated) again and again no matter whether they eat it first time works too. Apparently after a few times ignoring it they finally realise they might need to eat it.

Good call about the bolognese. Wife is extremely good at hiding vegetables in a meal (not really needed for the kids, but she does it sometimes anyway). cauliflower mashed into mashed potato and swede and other stuff. Once I think it got into double figures the hidden ingredients.

So far (only 2 and a half now)

Our both ate anything at that age. Wait until they are 4 and if you have no problems then you might have cracked it!

I’m with matt, stay strong and consistent, you’ll win in the end. I’ve got my boys to cook with me, which as had mixed results, they were really interested in me gutting fish, couldn’t wait to try it.

Not a big fan of letting them get up and down from the table all the time.Personally I would rather get some good manners in them now than have to start from a worse position later on.

I wont force my daughter to eat her tea, but if she isn’t hungry for tea then she isn’t having just pudding!

* Feel a bit Dickensian seeing the posts above :S

Our both ate anything at that age. Wait until they are 4 and if you have no problems then you might have cracked it!

Yes, for sure, right now we’re just thanking our lucky stars that she is a good eater. But I figure that even if it is the case that she goes fussy at four, we’ll have had three and a bit years of not being stressed out at dinner time, whereas if we were doing all the ‘one more spoonful then you can have pudding’, we’d have had three and a bit years of fighting with her, worrying about whether she was eating enough etc.

To be honest, I can’t see how we’d win any fights anyway – the level of stubbornness she displayed when she decided to potty train herself was more than any of us (or her very experienced childminder) could resist – She made a sudden and slightly inconveniently timed decision that she didn’t want nappies any more, and then later on suddenly decided that potties were a no no, and she’d only wee in a proper toilet or outside under a tree; Both times no one could convince her to pause a bit; she is extremely very stubborn when she wants to be. I was pretty stubborn around food as a kid, hence all the fights, and I think she is pretty similar in that respect.

Tell them they might get Alzheimers if they don’t eat proper food. 😈

Ours won’t ever respond to a battle of wills. Nothing good comes of that.

I was a fussy eater as a kid, and from that I learned that you can’t force the issue or you risk creating blocks. So we just let her eat whatever’s there. However snacks and treats are strictly controlled. So some days she will eat well.

She does love deserts and treats, though, so we say that only good eaters get deserts. This often works.

However there’s a big difference between not liking stuff and not wanting to eat stuff we know she likes. There’s a lot she doesn’t like b ut fortunately she does like plenty of veg and meat so we don’t try to forec her to down things she hates. This is very bad in my experience.

Sometimes I have to feed her like a dog though, but if she eats she eats, so I let that one slide 🙂

Ours won’t ever respond to a battle of wills. Nothing good comes of that.

Definetly yours then 😛