To all parents of fussy eaters….

Over the last few years, I’ve read a lot of articles about what do do with a fussy eater to encourage them to try new things, all of them offering advice on how to make your fussy eater less of a fussy eater.  As you might know, Master Frugal is quite possibly the fussiest eater on the planet and I’ve tried all sorts to try and encourage him to eat more.  I’ve tried a food reward chart (as made by Jen), I’ve tried making faced out of his food, I’ve told him he cant have desert if he doesn’t eat his tea – in fact I think I’ve tried everything.

Every now and again, he would try a tiny bit of something new but even if he liked it, it was very rare that we could add something to the limited list of foods he would actually eat.  This is a little boy who won’t eat anything potato based other than fries and to be honest, he’s not that keen on them.  He won’t eat meat other than sausages and then, only one specific type.  Planning meals is always a bit of a nightmare as I usually end up cooking a separate meal for him but this week I think we’ve turned a bit of a corner.

On Monday he asked me to buy those fish in breadcrumbs for his tea.  Mainly because you get a free cuddly teddy if you collect come tokens on the pack, but still, he actually ate them with hardly any face pulling!  When he finished them he said he would like to have them again for tea sometime

On Wednesday, he wandered into the kitchen with his nose in the air sniffing when I was cooking a pack of beef and vegetable  savoury rice and said he wanted to try it – which he did and absolutely loved it.  And tonight, when he saw his Dad eating chicken burgers in buns he asked if he could try one.  I made him one and I’m sat now watching him eat it without any hesitation.

As you can imagine, I have a huge smile on my face.

Despite trying every piece of advice ever given about fussy eaters, the thing that worked for me in the end was doing absolutely nothing.  I haven’t forced him, I haven’t rewarded him, I haven’t even tried to bribe him to try new things.  I’ve just let him get on with eating the food he will eat, even if I ended up cooking him something separate.

He’s come around to the idea of trying new things all on his own and he just seems much more open minded about it all – it’s like a switch clicked inside the food part of his brain 😉

Whatever it is, I just wanted to say that if you have a fussy eater, just do what feels right.  We’ve saved a lot of stress all around by just going with the flow.  Mealtimes should be a fun family time where you can all catch up on each other’s days – you don’t need to make the dining table into a battlefield.

They’ll come around in their own good time.