Food issues 4 year old

ncmc

My daughter is 4 and she’s what I would call a fussy eater, always has been. She pretty much won’t eat any traditional dinner with spuds, veg etc. She’ll hold a bit of food in her mouth for 10 minutes easy, it’s like she really has food issues. I don’t know how to deal with it. Today I told her she was having no supper if she didn’t eat her dinner but still she just held the food in her mouth. So she went to bed hungry and I feel terrible and feel I handled it really badly.

She will eat pasta, nuggets, pizza etc without any issue, it’s just traditional dinners she has an issue with. What do I do, do I just ignore it and hope she grows out of it? Do I offer her alternatives/supper if she doesn’t eat dinner? I feel so bad when she goes to bed hungry!

lazygal

I'd keep offering lots of variety. I accommodate preference within reason but even if they like nuggets every day they don't get them. I'd cut out snacks and drinks except water. Being hungry isn't the end of the world as a once off.
I'd be bored of "traditional" meals every day too. We get ours involved in meal prep, we look up new recipes in my cookbooks or see what we have and what we could make. They love cooking with us. Not every night but on weekends.

2xj3hplqgsbkym

My kids are like these too.
Turns out they don't really like potato , veg and mash .
So now I have accepted that I give them a healthy version of what they do like. E.g home made pizza with raw carrot sticks, cucumber and mixed nuts.
Homemade chicken nuggets with home made wedges , cherry tomatoes and apple.
They only seem to like cold/ raw veg . Their meals aren't conventional dinners but still healthy and a lot less hassle.

coffeyt

2 and 4 year old here. Love pasta/rice dinners but also don't do the potatoes/veg/meat dinner. I was told before by a phn that its very common at that age as a lot of children don't like the texture of potatoes but all I know is my two just don't like it.
I try and stick with things like spaghetti bowl, homemade curries, sweet and sour chicken and sneak in veg into all of these.
I also do a traditional dinner on a Sunday and they are starting to eat very small amounts (as in maybe 2/3 spoons if I'm lucky) in an attempt to get them more used to it and they don't get offered anything else that day.
Also hoping with winter that I can do a few casseroles and sneak in cubed potatoes that way but will have to see how it goes.
As long as they are eating a decent mix of carb/veg/protein I try not to worry but it is frustrating as the potatoe/meat/veg is very easy to do and would be a great option so unfortunately no massive advice to give just know you are not alone in it!

coffeyt

Oh and one other thing is that both mine loved potatoes and veg until about 18months and both stopped at around the same age so maybe the phn was onto something.

fritzelly

Dinner followed by supper? What are you feeding them, especially for supper?
Wont eat dinner you've slaved over then up to your room and no games/phones etc (and cut out snacks in between meals) - when you're hungry enough you'll come down and eat anything.
Everyone loves junk food because it tastes lovely with all those additives and pricks those receptors in your brain regardless of how bad it is for you.
I hate plain old mash but spice it up with things like turnip etc. M&S do a great range of mash with various ingredients!

ncmc

Thanks for all the replies. I do think we’ve got into a bad habit with giving her supper, I think she knows that she doesn’t have to eat dinner as she knows she’ll have something else to eat afterwards. I think I need to get more inventive with food and think of sneaky ways to get veg into her. So I appreciate the tips!

shesty

How do you know she went to bed hungry?She may have eaten enough during the day to not be that hungry.
There's a fussy enough four year old here too.She made the mistake of telling me when she was three that she didn't want the dinner I gave her, she wanted the "nice" dinner....ie, the nuggets and sausages the two other kids in her minders only eat.At that point I told the minder to let her be hungry if she wouldn't eat her dinner - the minder was delighted because she doesn't like feeding them boxed stuff.She still has a small enough range of dinners she will eat, and she has only just started to eat bits of potato...and my two year old won't eat potato at all.Textural thing I think.
I don't offer sausages, nuggets etc.We don't have them in the house.Occasionally we have pizza, or maybe potato waffles with dinner.I make homemade meatballs and pasta and tomato sauce, homemade chicken goujons, with carrot and maybe pasta or potato, shepherds pie (weirdly she will eat shepherds pie all mashed up!), bolognese, risotto and the like.I just keep giving them proper dinners, they take what they want from them.Dinner is at 6 and that's it, there's nothing else.My two year old is a better eater but she is finicky about chicken too, won't eat and never has, ever since she was weaned.

She won't starve if you cut out supper, they cut their losses really quickly!!!

Moonbeam

She sounds like a normal 4 year old to me. Their likes and dislikes can change very often.
They are discovering their likes and dislikes but also your reactions.
I keep dinners pretty simple as my 4 don't agree on much.
I find spaghetti and meatballs,chicken goujons,burgers are foods that they will eat and our local butcher does a weekly deal.
I would love to be able to make lasagnes and curries and freeze them for them but not a chance that they would all eat it.

nikpmup

My lad most definitely has issues with texture, but I've worked out ways around it. For example, he won't eat things with skin, like grapes, sweet corn etc, but if I chop them up fine, he can cope. I also find if make it interesting to him, he'll get on board - so, green food is Hulk Dinner, red is Iron Man. I make homemade meatballs, fish fingers, chicken goujons etc. I get him involved in the prep - he eats pizza with onion, sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, spinach after he's spent 20 mins placing the ingredients on in a rainbow pattern! (I use mini wholemeal pitta bread as the base and use passata as the sauce, then on with the veg & cheese) He loves things like spag bol or chilli con carne, so I grate carrots, aubergine and courgettes into it when I'm cooking it, they pretty much disappear in the sauce. I've recently discovered that if I peel the skin off a courgette and spiralise it, my son can't distinguish it from spaghetti so he's been eating courgetti for a few weeks now! Today, he helped me make "pinwheels" for lunch - basically a tuna wrap sliced into little "wheels", but it had sweet corn, spinach and tomato finely minced up and mixed in with the tuna mayo. I told him pinwheels had to have green, yellow and red in them or they were wrong.
I'd definitely lose the supper, she will soon learn that there is nothing coming after 6pm. I've also introduced a treat day where he gets to go to Eddie rockets or mc donalds and eat beige crap, but he can't have any other treats during the week, so he knows there's no point in asking.

byhookorbycrook

The late David Carey stressed that food refusal is often the first thing a child can do to display their independence. Firstly, don't feed into the attention and don't do supper. Dinner is served , the same for everyone (within reason)

Don't comment, don't say "eat up" or fuss that she will be hungry or malnourished. If she doesn't eat, remove the plate when everyone else is done. Then that's it for the night. Children won't actually become malnourished unless they complete refuse EVERYTHING and certainly won't starve. Next night, remind everyone that there won't b supper, just dinner. And leave it at that. It will take a strong will and a few days. Don't serve things that she really, really hates, but don't limit dinner to her few fads.

shesty

This 100%.You can't force them to eat and they know it.So you need to act like it doesn't matter a damn to you.Hardest thing ever.