Fussy Eater? It’s Not Your Child’s Choice, it’s Yours!

This has been bothering me for a long time and a TV programme last week has launched me into action.

I run an autism support group and it’s common knowledge that a lot of autistic people have sensory issues around food. With all of my children having differently wired brains in one way or another, they all experienced some difficulties with certain foods due to texture etc… But I never had the challenges that the family on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s programme, ‘Easy Ways to Live Well’ did.

This family had three children. All of them would only eat a very limited diet but their son (the eldest) was by far the worst. His diet consisted of Pizza… and pizza.

Hugh went on a journey with them of course and had them playing with different foods making fruit ‘people’ and taking them to his own garden to try different fruit and veg straight out of the garden and was successful in expanding the children’s diets a little.

Why did they have to go to such lengths though? Why were the children such fussy eaters in the first place? Some serious thought and research needed here!

Whenever I look at modern behaviour I always take a look back at what we know about our caveman ancestors, after all, a lot of our behaviour still stems from the hard wiring created thousands of years ago.

So, picture the scene, Mr and Mrs Ug have been hard at it all day, Mum collecting berries and seeing off the Sabre-Toothed Tigers and Dad out hunting for whatever he can find, be it deer or more berries. He comes back after a long day hunting and he’s managed to bring down and kill a deer, venison for dinner then. The deer is shared out (cooked or raw) and everyone eats. Imagine Ug Junior turning his nose up and having a tantrum because he doesn’t like Deer or berries?

Mrs Ug doesn’t have a fridge and freezer full of alternatives, they’re actually lucky to have anything to eat at all tonight, very often they go to bed hungry and Ug Junior doesn’t like feeling hungry. But Ug Junior knows that he either eats the Deer and berries or that will be exactly what happens, the desire to survive and feel satiated is far greater than satisfying his taste buds. Apart from that, this is normal, their diet generally is very restricted, but nutritious enough for them all to survive and be healthy. In other words, the Ug family have very little choice in what they have for dinner every night.

Fast forward to Medieval times. Our diets have expanded to include grains and a greater variety of farmed meat and vegetables but the majority of people are incredibly poor, most barely scraping a living and bartering was commonplace. The water was so contaminated and dangerous that everyone drank a type of ale, I’ve tried it, I found it to be revolting!

But again, Mr and Mrs Brook (they live next to the brook so hence the name!) didn’t know any different, it was that or risk some nasty disease, and Mrs Brook would spend most of her days spinning fibres to make yarn for clothes and cleaning and cooking for when Mr Brook came home from work. That’s the way things worked back then.

They would eat whatever they could afford to get, either by buying it from a local producer or bartering something they produced themselves. What was on the menu was all there was, eat it or go hungry. Can you see a theme appearing here?

Fast forward again to the second World War and we have a much greater variety of foods available but with every resource the country had going into the war effort, food was scarce. Rationing was first introduced in 1940 when Bacon, Butter and Sugar were rationed, but very quickly extended to include every food apart from fruit and vegetables.

People who used their gardens to produce food were obviously better off and a sort of bartering system returned along with a thriving black market of ‘luxury’ goods for those who could afford them. Imagine only having 2oz of butter per week and only 8oz of sugar, no wonder obesity was virtually non-existent, and, as had always been, whatever was served up was what you ate!

Fast forward again, we’re in the 21st century, everything is available all the time. Conveniently packaged in tins, resealable plastic bags, frozen in bite-sized pieces ready to grab from the freezer at any moment, no preparation required!

It’s so easy isn’t it, your 2-year-old doesn’t ‘like’ the meal you’ve cooked so you grab the bag of chicken nuggets that you know they’ll always eat and a few oven chips and away you go, happy child. A happy child maybe, but also a happy, ill-nourished child who’s being trained to know that if they make a fuss, the food they love and are used to will magically appear in front of them. What happened to the days when we all ate a fairly balanced, albeit maybe limited diet and everyone ate the same meal?

The mother of the family mentioned above was cooking 4 different meals every night in order to cater for her family. In these modern days when time is our most valuable resource, why would you even entertain that as an option? And please don’t tell me you have no choice, you always have a choice and sometimes the choice is that you go through the pain barrier with an upset child, but end up with a child who eats a well balanced and varied diet. I remember Nikita doing a tasting at her school when she was about 14, the idea was to introduce the children to new and unusual foods. The teachers were gobsmacked when Nikita tucked into every food including Avocado and Olives, the ones they were most dubious about the children trying!

I had rules with my children and they were enforced, I cooked one meal for everyone and everyone ate it whether they liked it or not. All of them had at least one meal a week that they didn’t like but with 6 meals a week they did like it didn’t feel like too much hardship, and, they didn’t know any different! They also had vegetables or salad with EVERY meal, they would always comment when at friends houses about why the spaghetti bolognese had no vegetables with it, to them that was normal!

They would ‘help’ me in the kitchen and, trust me, tripping over 7 small children wasn’t the best fun and I had to be extremely cautious when I turned around with something hot in my hands, but they got used to seeing the food prepared which took some of the fear away from foods they hadn’t seen before. They would help me try to grow tomatoes every year with little success but at least they got to see how a plant grows and produces food.

This was the way it was in our house, everyone sat around one table all eating the same food, complaints, yes, but I never, ever cooked something different for one of them because they didn’t like it.

I decided I needed to ask my kids what they thought about the way I approached food with them and this is what they said:-

MIRIE

“I’m so grateful you encouraged us to eat everything, the only thing I don’t like now is Raisins! You taught us that we had to try things and we had to eat what was put in front of us, no matter what, you weren’t going to make us anything different. You did, however, respect our sensory issues and always asked if we wanted our Bolognaise on top of the Spaghetti or next to it. You always put each individual salad item in different bowls and let us choose as long as we ate enough variety. We all ate together, we all ate the same thing, we were all in the same boat with regard to not liking every meal so it was ok.

LORIE

I remember hating Stir Fry and we always had the same meals on the same days so I knew Wednesday was going to be a bad dinner! However, Tuesday was Tortellini which was my favourite, some of us didn’t like both so it felt fair. Also, you respected my need to have my sauce in a different bowl and always put my beans next to my toast because I didn’t like them on top so you catered for our sensory needs whilst still making sure we all ate the same meal.

…and so it went on with every child I spoke to! 7 very different people with very different needs, all brought up the same and with the same outcome, they now eat pretty much anything apart from meat and fish (they were raised on a vegetarian diet). All of them had very different likes and dislikes, sensory issues and fads but I had one rule for all of them, I cooked one meal and one meal only, no filling up on other food after either. In our house, a rule was a rule and all of the children responded well to the rules (for the most part!).

Was it all plain sailing and happy ever after? Far from it, meltdowns were common but the rules stayed in place, I knew if I faltered once it was all lost forever, and the upside of fighting through the hard times was that as they got a little older life was so much easier than it would have been. Hard work for a while meant less hard in the future and healthy, well-fed children!

Children need boundaries, they thrive when they have boundaries and inevitably, once in a while they’ll push the boundary to see it’s still there. This is where you, as the parent, have the choice as to whether the boundary stays firmly in place, you cave in, or maybe it’s time for the boundary to be moved out a little way as your child gets older.

We are what we eat, good nutrition is what enables us to function properly as humans, without it we can’t think properly, have too little energy and can’t enjoy life to the full. Children who have been allowed to have very limited diets are not going to feel as energetic and happy as they could be which will impact on every area of their lives.

So, it’s a choice for you, the parent, to decide if you’re going to do whatever it takes to encourage your child to eat a varied diet or cave into their demands. You’re the boss, you’re the parent, you’re the leader and your child will follow your example, it’s up to you whether you put the effort in when they’re young and reap the benefits as they get older and, of course, the younger you start the easier it is.

Personally I’m extremely glad that I was a bit tough on my children and, ironically, now that they’re all adults, so are they!

FILM: ‘Kingdom of Us’ – Netflix

TED TALK: ‘Why my Autistic Children don’t need a Cure’ – Youtube

Book: ‘Unravelled’ – Amazon