What Tricks Do You Use To get Kiddies To Eat Food?

I think Oriana has hit the nail on the head here. I have a 1 year old who goes through very fussy phases and has a pretty stubborn streak. I have no intention of cooking multiple meals for him, but I do want him to try new things, which he may or may not like. If he doesn't like something (or goes off a certain food) that's fine - I generally will provide him with some kind of back-up meal. If he doesn't eat this, then he has to do without until the next meal. None of us want to pander to our children, but neither do we want to create issues with food by forcing things they dislike on them.

Also, it's difficult when your child is too small to reason with - fussy eating seems to start before they are 2, when telling them that they have to eat what they are given really won't work (IMHO). It's an issue that's definitely more stressful than it sounds...at the risk of sounding like I'm saying IYHKYWU, I would never have thought I would fret so much over a fussy toddler, but trying not to let food become a battleground can be a nightmare. And yes, I hide veggies in tomato sauce (thank you, Annabel Karmel) and tell white lies about what something is just to make him try it.

I agree, I remember being at school and being forced to eat beatroot, to this day the thought of it makes me gag and I refuse to have it in the house. At my parents home we were always encouraged to try everything on our plate, we were also resonsible for loading our own plates up.

I try not to stress about food with my daughter, she gets offered what we are having and if she doesn't eat it then it goes in the bin, if she is really hungry later on its toast and milk. I don't to hide food because I can't see the point.

I agree with mixie, my 2 year old is as stubborn as hell and telling him that he has to sit at the table and eat what is on his plate or he won't get any pudding won't work. He simply won't understand that concept.

Perhaps, as he gets older, that tactic may well work and I'm not saying I won't employ it once he's old enough to understand.

My mother use to make me sit at the table until I finished my dinner, however, I was never a hungry child. It wasn't so much that I didn't like the food, I just wasn't hungry a lot of the time. I did have a varied diet though with lots of fruit and veg and not many treats at all.

I reckon this is one of those situations where you can't say what someone does is right or wrong. Food, for many people, is attached to emotion and if a child won't eat it can be a really awful experience for the parent. It always makes me feel like I'm failing to provide my child with one of his most basic needs. Irrational? Probably, but its how I feel.

If I thought colouring green cabbage red with food dye would make my son eat it, I'd probably do it!

Both my sister and I were incredibly fussy as children and we were never forced to eat things we didn't like but generally my mum tried to prepare meals that she knew we liked, not that we were offered a choice or she prepared separate meals she just knew what we would eat so made things from that list. It didn't help that my sister was vegetarian, refused all meat from being a baby so that had to be taken into consideration.

My son ate alsorts and literally overnight when he turned two he became so fussy, refused most meals he would have previously eaten. I make meals I know he will eat and if we are having something I know he really doesn't like I will make the children something different. I do put veg into things like bolognese, hadn't really thought about that as hiding it as such. Until recently he refused all vegetables, but would eat any fruit. I just kept offering him veg with his meals and asking him to try some each time. He will now eat Brocolli, Cauliflower, carrots, sweetcorn and peas.

I have to say that i'm in shock at the idea of dying cabbage red, I spend most of my time trying to avoid colourings in my children's diet and would rather only feed them red cabbage than colour the green cabbage.

I would love to know what makes children fussy eaters, I have a nephew and two neices, my nephew will eat just about anything, my youngest niece will refuse the first mouthful but once she has had that will eat anything and the middle child my other niece eats bread and sausages and not much else, oh yes cheese sandwiches, and any crap her mum can feed her, sweets, ice lollies etc. As far as I know they were all weaned the same way and have had the same upbringing in terms of food.

i most certainly did NOT say that at all. thats a bloody awful thing to do. how to give your children food issues in one easy step. sheesh.

I have to say Nick I agree with all your saying apart from the comment you made about a friend of yours offering his daughter a choice of dinners.

I think that its very important that children learn to make choices about what they eat, its as much a part of learning and growing as anything else. So I offer my 28 month old a variety of dinners and let her choose. She has a choice of veg to go with it and then chooses her pudding.

I don't see why this causes problems?

Our daughter has Aspergers Syndrome, a common feature of which is to be immensly fussy with food. If we had not taken a harsh line with her about food I truly believe that she would live entirely off of mushroom pate (Tartex) on crumpets, vanilla ice cream and possibly raspberry Petis Filous. To hide certain foodstuffs in her case would have defeated the object, it was important that she became desensitised to certain foods. For example 1 prawn in her pasta then two etc, a tiny bit of red pepper in something familiar then increase the 'dose' and so on. We now have her eating mostl veg and quite a few different meats, fish pies and so on. She also does have complete veto on some things; we can generally tell when she really, really, hates something and we aren't heartless we won't feed her what we know she utterly hates.

i m always surprised by it as to me its giving control to a child who s brain is not yet developed enough to know whats good for them versus what they want. granted, if the choices are all healthy, then i guess thats totally fine, but to me it could just as easily promote fussiness, and brattish behaviour. i m massively generalising of course.

i m still wondering (and i dont think anyones had a stab yet) as to what causes fussiness, if anything.

the other thing that interests me is how in this country children seem to be offered sweets so much. again, generalising, but sales of sweets in the uk as astronomical.

I agree with the sweets thing. We were blatantly told that we were being cruel to our daughter in not giving chocolate until she was well over two years old. We were stupid enough to give in and give it to her in the end, but it is one of my parenting regrets that we conformed. She could have easily gone a little longer. Nowadays my kids have sweets occasionally. But it never fails to suprise me how many parents give their kids sweets after school every day.

beg your pardon nick. I should maybe have put an "And" in there? still though, we were'nt allowed to leave the table until our plates were clean!

I believe that becoming fussy about food is a part of toddler development that takes place roughly when they start to get frightened of things in the outside world. It's certainly the case that babies of about a year are easier to give a variety of food to than a two year old. We have to make a real effort to get the 2 year old to maintain the diet he had as a baby, by eating things with him, ignoring the initial "yuck" or "disgusting" and saying "mmmmm, delicious!" in an annoyingly upbeat parenty way ? until he remembers he likes it.

Recently he's claimed not to like hummous, marzipan and mozzarella amongst other things and has had to be persuaded that he likes them again.

Nick, I'm not sure what causes fussiness to be honest. I know when I didn't eat things as a child it was because I didn't like the taste. A perfect example is how I wouldn't eat vegetables as a child, but when I got older and had them steamed, I did like them. To this day I love steamed vegetables, but I still can't eat my mother's. I think there is a big difference between a child not liking the taste of something, than not eating it because they know there are biscuits in the cupboards that they would rather have.

I suppose it depends as to what you class as being fussy compared to just not liking certain foods? To me someone who is fussy will eat fish fingers, but won't even try a bit of cod without bright orange breadcrumbs. Someone who did not like cod full stop to me isn't fussy, they just don't like it. Does that make sense?

Do you mean on this thread, Nick, or generally? I think a few have had a stab at explaining it in the science world. I think the general consensus is that it's one of two things a) as a child gets to about 18-24mths, their taste buds go through a phase of finding a lot of food too bitter. How bitter, or if it happens at all can vary from child to child so may explain why some children have a severe fussy fad and others don't. The other school of thought, which others have touched on is that it's one of the few things a small child can control, so some exercise this right to an extreme.

Evy - my heart went out to you and your sister, and I suspect it's you who's seeing things through rose tinted glasses? I suspect the many "funny" stories were anything but at the time. That's an awful thing to be forced to do.

I agree with you about sweets Nick, I got royally slated for refusing to give my 9 month old son sweets and chocolate. Unlike my SIL who always has a drawer full of sweets and chocolate and constantly feeds her three children sweets etc throughout the day. My children do have sweets and chocolate but occasionally and I am really careful about then having things with colourings in. For many it seems to be standard to give them sweets all the time, and in the case of my neice who is a terrible eater, very very fussy, I feel certain in my mind if she was fed less sweets etc between meals she would eat more at mealtimes.

I believe their taste buds do change around the 2 year mark and often things they previously liked taste different to them so they become more fussy, they effectively have to learn to like them again and it can take up to ten tries to decide whether they like something or not I believe.

Janna please dont feel sorry for my sisters and I !!! Crikey !

We had a wonderful childhood and part of that was having to eat our meals. If our parents eventually gave in and said we could leave the table, our punishment was no treats for the rest of the day. A treat being a sweetie or crisps or whatevere.

I very much doubt that we were ever actually forced to eat something that we didn't like. It would have just been a case of not preferring a certain meal.

No no please dont be heart broken!

I don't know why children are fussy. I don't even know if that's the right question; perhaps it's more, when did it become ok to say no to your parents if you didn't like a food? And when did it become ok to not 'like' a food, when did that mean you weren't going to starve as a result? I think it's got a lot to do with us not all being on the breadline, with always more food coming from somewhere, for us not caring so much about waste as before...but that's quite another discussion and too big for me to contemplate entirely.

Would I hide food to get a child to eat it? It depends. If they had a bad diet, then yes, I certainly would - chopped up veg hidden in sauces, that kind of thing. It does them no harm and at least they are then eating some veg. Ditto with fruit, wherever you can hide it (raisins in jam are probably a very bad example). I often hide lots of foods from my niece this way. However, I've also learned from doing this that if she really doesn't want to eat something, she'll find it in whatever I put it in. The successes by far cancel it out, mind.

I've tried the "just have a few mouthfuls for pudding" tactic, but this only works when pudding is unhealthy anyway, so I'm not sure I think it's such a good idea.

It's certainly very disheartening to see a child eat nothing but rubbish.

Ah ok I see where you're coming from. To me though it isn't giving total control as I offer the alternatives so I might say "do you want pasta or chicken or spaghetti bolonaise". All three are alternatives that I want her to eat so I don't reel I have relinquished control. I don't see that this is promoting fussiness and her not choosing one of these three isn't an option.

I am astonished by the sweets thing too. I have an emergency stash of chocolate buttons in the house for medicine taking purposes and if we go to a party etc she is allowed to eat what she likes. I really dislike seeing children in prams munching on bars of chocolate and Greggs sausage rolls ?

E also is allowed to choose snacks - she has her own little buffet to go and get them but her options are fruit or special children's biscuits. Again promoting choice but choice with control

I think one on hand there are physical changes in the tastebuds and what can be actually be detected. Small babies are programmed to like sweet things (breastmilk is teeth achingly sweet - it's the easy calories they need essentially) and the other tastes develop later. As an aside there is evidence to suggest that breastfed babies are more likely to eat a wider range of foods in later life as they are exposed to a wider range of flavours through breastmilk.

Secondly, and I think this is key, I think that it becomes an issue of control on the part of the child. This is a really important part of development, if frustrating for parents where from the age of 2 ish they start to challenge and explore boundaries and that includes food. How you deal with it is important - but I don't think you can just squash it out of them. It has to be channeled in the right direction - after all, in other areas of their lives we actively want our children to grow up as inquisitive, questioning people.

Regarding your point about a child knowing what's good for them, there is quite a lot of evidence that if a child is given complete control over what they eat they actually end up eating a balanced diet. That's one of the principles behind baby led weaning, where you introduce solids by allowing them to choose and feed themselves, rather than deciding that today they will have baby rice and mushed apple.

thats intersting (and the rest, i m just focusing on this bit) - how DO you deal with it?

NickJ - I certainly didn't mean to be insulting but in my experience adults frequently have quite distorted views of their childhood from the diminishing size of favourite chocolate biscuits to whether children were all much less fussy, stroppy, demanding, disobedient, noisy...

My point is that food fussiness is NOT a new thing down to liberal parenting, it's probably a developmental stage, as others have detailed, and that parents for years have probably just ridden it out. I was pretty unfussy as a whole, my mum says, perhaps you were the same.

I'd add that toddlers are quite often very conservative and unadveturous in their food tastes and quite faddy - liking certain things for long periods and then changing to something else. But then I do the latter as an adult - I've had toast for breakfast for years and now I'm back to porridge...

I also don't understand why offering R say apple juice or orange juice in the morning, or weetabix or rice krispies is so terrible - he maybe 2 years old but he has to start learning to make decisions at somepoint, and sometimes he actually has a preference - yesterday he asked for milk - probably a healthier option - instead.

There's also a school of thought that offering choices can help reduce tantrums, I think - giving a bit of independence seems to reduce the need to grab it at less convenient and inappropriate times...

Anyway, I spent the afternoon at a 3-year-old's birthday party and I was highly impressed that a long table of 1-3 year olds can sit and eat nicely, they all took cucumber and carrots as well as crisps, with verly little input from parents, none of them went silly over cake, and they all waited until everyone was finished apart from a few stragglers. I blame nursery for such lovely table manners and have hope for the upcoming generation!

I run a cooking group for pre-school children, a lot of them come as they are fussy eaters and their parents want to try and get them eating. we cook things that often contain fruuit and veg and I find that by using these foods to make something they view as a treat they then often get a positive association with that food. I think a lot of it is that hey almost build up a fear of certain foods as they build them up to be bad things. In my group the kids make things like mini quicjes and pizzas - using peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, sweetcorn. Sweet potato scones, mashed potato cakes, beetroot cake, carrot cake, courgette cake etc, lots of fruit in cakes. Things we cook aren't strictly healthy but they do introduce the foods ina positive way.

Whilst it's cooking we try different foods, a bit of peer pressure works a treat, simple things like lining up three apples, all different types that look very different in colour and seeing if they taste different. Have a go and see!

You offer limited choices where feasible, I think. (So one healthy food item vs another healthy item, one pair of trousers vs another pair of equally appropriate trousers, choose your book for bedtime...).

You accept that tantrums can be about communication and frustration and/or tiredness rather than sheer cussedness (however difficult and embarrassing).

And you learn to listen to your child carefully - I do try but the number of fights I could have avoided with R if I had really listened and looked at what he was trying to tell me (with his limited words and signs) rather than been distracted or been presumptious about why he was trying to do something I didn't want. For instance, yesterday we were telling him about the fish we were going to get for our new tank and he went tearing up the stairs with me and his father shouting come back down NOW only for him to reappear with a goldfish bath toy. ?

I'm buggered if I know. I'm not there yet ?

This is what I've learned from C so far and from looking at other people with older children.

I think giving them choices is important because they feel they have some ownership over things. They're learning to make decisions essentially. Also, I think that as parents we sometimes need to reassess why we do or don't want them to do stuff. Sometimes I think we have a kneejerk "I don't want you to do that" reaction, which when we analyse it, has no real reasoning behind it. They're not necessarily doing things to be naughty or difficult, they're just exploring and we do need to encourage that.

At the same time, I don't think we can just "they're just exploring" as an excuse for bad behaviour.

In terms of food (and actually, many things in the toddler world), choices are important. That doesn't have to be a choice of whatever they want to eat in the whole world, for example, but between rice crispies and weetabix for breakfast, or cheese and tuna sandwiches. Sometimes I think you have to let them have dislikes - after all, I choose not to eat sprouts - and perhaps just to go with it for a bit. As Zeb says, their tastes change so often and something that has been a complete no-go for a couple of weeks will become a favourite. Pushing the issue is more likely to create problems (MrH still maintains that the reason he hates peas is because he was forced to sit at the table until he ate them).

It can be hard when they don't want to eat anything you're offering, because you know that it'll lead to meltdown later on. Or a sleepness night. Sometimes eating anything (and therefore giving in to toddler demands) is better than going to bed hungry.

(this is a bit stream of consciousness and not very well structured - and it's worth remembering that all things are easy in theory but much harder when you have a 2 year old having a tantrum about baked beans)

Oh that's cute ?

He excelled this weekend at switching between extreme cuteness and extreme whinginess. I'm done in!

I totally know what you mean about stopping them doing stuff without having a good reason, I do catch myself stopping him and then thinking actually does it matter? I'm the same with H - I catch myself being really set in my ways and critical when he does something differently!.

It's hard because you don't always have a lot of time in the situation to think it through. A lot of it is hangups from our own parents as well. There were things my parents told me not to do that might or might not have been for good reason but which are sort of fixed in my head now.

This is really interesting. H and I have managed to produce possibly the fussiest toddler in the world. I am a glutton- there's not much I wouldn't eat. My parents were very strict about food and were the kind to serve the same meal for 5 days in a row (the exact same food, not a freshly prepared version) until we ate it- the result was that my brothers and I became expert in hiding things to feed to the dog later. Still, there's no lasting damage except that I still overeat because I'm conditioned to clear my plate. I should really do something about that.

My toddler will be 2 next week, he was breastfed and weaned using home-made purees of fruit and vegetables. He ate practically everything he was given until he turned 1 I suppose. It seems to be about texture as much as taste- he will pick up something and quickly drop it if he doesn't like how it feels. He won't touch fresh fruit and will only eat veg if it's mashed into potato. I hide whatever I can, whenever I can to be honest. I put chopped peppers, onion, tomato etc into home-made cheese straws, I mash carrot into potato, I made home-made "chips" from a mix of potato and parsnip chunks.

How do I deal with it? Well it's heartbreaking when I make a nutritious meal from scratch and he throws it on the floor. But I calmly scrape it up from the floor and put it in the bin, and then offer it again another time. Sometimes he'll start eating something after he's been offered it 10+ times and refused. I don't withhold pudding as I don't want him to get the message that pudding is more desirable than his main course. Plus, he only likes yoghurt and fromage frais so I prefer to see it as part of the meal rather than a treat.

It wears me down to be honest. I worry that some days he eats practically no vitamin C except the tiny amount that's in his yoghurt. The only good thing about it all is that he hates sweets, chocolate, cake, jelly and ice-cream so at least I don't have to worry about those.

So, I have no idea what's made him fussy and I have no idea if I'm handling it in the right way so this probably isn't a very useful post- sorry.

I know I don't usually post 'over here' but I have been reading this with interest.

A also have a very fussy toddler. E is 14 months old and I can count the number of things he will eat on one hand. He was BF for 6 months, weaned on a mix of mush and jars, but by about a year was still refusing lumps. He will eat some lumpy food now but flatly refuses most other things. He goes to nursery 2 days a week where they get a huge range of foods, and they haven't yet found anything much that he will eat. They have never come across any child like it before.

I agree with whoever said it's about texture. He will squeeze and squash food in his hands before he decides whether to even put it in his mouth.

I also agree with whoever described it as heartbreaking. I cannot understand why he won't eat certain (most!) foods. I can't actually force-feed him, and while I hear the 'he'll eat if he's hungry' argument, it simply doesn't sit rght with me not to offer him something he likes if he has refused what has been offered (as a guide, he will eat toast, ham and cheese, most fruits, yoghurt and roast potatoes). Tonight, for dinner, he was offered roast pork, veg and potatoes on his tray. He ate 1 roast potato and the rest got slung on the floor. He then had half a banana and a yoghurt.

So, yes, if I find something he will eat, I would gladly hide things in it that are 'good' for him. I have actually recently posted on BT about how concerned I am about E's iron intake, so am looking at ways I can increase this (answers on a postcard please!).

I also think that there are huge differences between a 4/5 year old and a 12/18 month old. I don't know what or why makes a fussy toddler, but I think it's important to keep offering healthy choices, however difficult it is. I actually have a 2.5 year old who is a very good eater, so I am living in hope that E will 'grow out' of this very trying phase.

My heart goes out to all the others who struggle with 'fussy' children. I was brought up in a family of 7, my Mum made one main meal and that was all you got. If you ate it or not was up to you, but there were no other options! I had previously thought that fussy children were 'made' or 'pandered to' but I am really stumped with E. If it is soemthing I have done, or not done, I would be very upset. But he was weaned in a very similar way to O so I am all out of ideas.

Sorry this turned out to be so long!

This is a really interesting thread.

I am just astonished at what parents go through and honestly wonder why people have children, but I guess that's a whole other thread! It sounds like hell and a lot of hard work.

I think any choice in what to eat should perhaps be the component parts of the meal (if protein, veg, carbs etc ) should be served onto the table and the child allowed to serve themselves. This is what we've done often with my 3 year old after mum had a truly fussy eater staying with her who said something telling about never ever being able to serve themselves ever, what you were given you had to eat.

It is heartbreaking when the 2 year thing happens, before then wee man ate everything everything, loads of indonesian food, any level of spice, then overnight wouldn't do it. Dutch, italian, english, that's about it. Lots of veg and fish, and good meat, loves a spot of carpaccio etc.

MrDD was wildly fussy and I did wonder why until I met his mother. She is a fine cook, but clearly not all that fond of food, eats not much, won't eat ANYTHING that didn't exist in the 30's in mining village scotland. i've actually heard her say to my boy 'try this, you might not like it', wheras I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than be anything but positive and passionate about food, as my parents were with me, and I have only ever truly hated one thing. Parsnips. Even then I doggedly tried them every time they were served for 34 years and one day I started to tolerate them.

My point is, relax about food. Visibly enjoy food, not falsely (they're not that stupid), make sure they try everything. Eat together as often as is practical, get them helping, sniffing ingredients, seeing food as an involving thing. Coming back to the program on food phobias I saw, the parents (understandably) were at their wits end, and the children were consequently hugely anxious around food. If they don't eat it, relax. Don't put so much effort in. Once a week get an M&S kids ready meal, just so you aren't so heartbroken when they refuse it.

And as a final point, MrDD ate almost nothing, terrible, all sorts of food anxieties, he is 6ft 2. Super healthy, surfer, rowed for his country. They just need enough energy to grow. Oh yes, and he eats everything now, eventually it works. Or maybe his desire to get out of cooking overruled his desire to control what he ate..hmmm..

Pu$$y Cat & Carrot, if its any comfort, my 2 year old is exactly the same as your children. He'll eat fruit like its going out of fashion and yoghurt too he also eats toast and plain pasta with no sauce. Sausages are acceptable as well but tht is pretty much all I can get away with without having a battle on my hands. I just keep offering the food that he doesn't 'like' and occasionally he suprises me and clears his plate.