“What’s for tea?”
“Lasagne.”
“Does it have mushrooms in?”
“Yes, but in tiny pieces, you won’t even taste them.”
“But I HATE mushrooms! Why would you put MUSHROOMS in it?” *throws self on floor at the horror of it all*
Does this sort of conversation sound familiar? (The mushroom hater is meant to be a child, not a partner or customer in a restaurant or anything.)
All parents at some point or another must surely be the victim of fussy eating. It’s certainly been the bane of my life in one form of another for the last 18 years, whether it’s babies refusing anything other than breastmilk or tiny squares of toast and marmite for the first year of their life, or teenage fads for wheat free, diary free or vegan diets.
A while ago I took part in a fussy eating focus group for a new product called PaediaSure Shake. I’m not going to go on about it, but basically they’ve set up a new fussy eating website with lots of information to help you manage those difficult phases when your child refuses to eat anything that isn’t beige.
It inspired me though to make up another infographic, this time about fussy eating. All the statistics are, as usual, entirely the product of my own imagination, but I feel they reflect the situation pretty well.
Feel free to share it and your own experiences of fussy eating.
My meals are regularly met with “yuck, not this, I hate this, it’s yucky. and I don’t think I’m that terrible a cook. Can’t wait until they develop more adventurous tastes.
It gets very demoralising doesn’t it, having your cooking constantly rejected as though you just served up some sort of swill?
Definitely our house….add in last week they would eat xxxx now its the most evil food in the world….
Also the heat of food, too hot to eat…last week I gave my boy something from the fridge and he said it was too hot to eat!!
Haha! I know what you mean Julie, Belle once refused to eat cucumber, claiming it was ‘too spicy’…
Hahaha…. x7 kids. Seriously I just make one meal for everyone now and I’m almost immune to the insults. They’ve mainly stopped arguing and have reverted to “whoo, no mushrooms/Quorn/sweetcorn/sausages/burnt bits/floor dirt”… I get at least one bit of praise a day, more on Fajita day… :D
I get this from my customers int he restaurant that I work in. Just today I had a complaint that a ladies fish had bones in it….
Hello! Yes – it’s hard to take when lovingly prepared food gets rejected but Jenny has it right – just keep on serving everybody everything relentlessly! It really works. I have some serious reservations about the shake thing though…. I feel a blog post coming on : )
solving picky eating
I just seem to be on repeat saying “if you don’t like xxxx just put it on the side of your plate….” seems to work that they actually end up eating SOMETHING from their plate…
haha Wendy at tots, this is the exact phase on repeat at our house come tea time. i have a very stubborn toddler and a very picky boyfriend, sounds like she wont be making it any easier for me as she gets older and i think its time to give up with him x