My son is a picky eater, but he’s three and this is what they do at three years old apparently. His nursery key worker said, “he’s just at that age” when he refused to eat their offerings yet again – something he used to limit to just his dinner at home. It’s about control, Google says. So much of his life he has no control over, so when it comes to eating he can say no, and, it seems, he will.
When we first started weaning him, I was determined not to end up in this situation and for the most part when he was younger he was a good eater. He would eat pretty much anything I put in front of him, I always felt quite proud of myself – all the efforts I was putting in were obviously working. But something went wrong somewhere and now he basically eats the same three meals on rotation: eggs on toast, fish fingers, pesto pasta.
The trouble with those weaning books we read, or the nutritionists we follow on Instagram, is that they give us the illusion that we are able to control our children’s eating habits. They’ll say not to offer alternatives as this will only limit what they eat and prolong the fussy stage, but I would challenge them to say no to a screaming toddler at a time of day when you are literally at your wits end.
We have got to the stage now where the youngest child has started to become pickier himself and I am cooking three different meals every single night – something I vowed I would ever do. I have to ask my three year old clearly and succinctly every time I go to make dinner, which of the three meals he would like to eat that evening and then have a half an hour argument about how the snack cupboard is off limits, because it’s dinner time, only for me to surrender minutes later because I have had enough and they both resort to eating Rusks off the kitchen floor.
I was so keen for this not to happen to my children because apparently I was like this too, surviving my toddler years on only eggs with soldiers and cheesy Wotsits, and I feel like I have a strange relationship with food. Until I was a teenager, my diet was restricted to chips and chicken dippers, with vegetables varying from tinned garden peas, to tinned carrots and tinned spaghetti – it’s one of your five a day right? It was only when I left home and cooked for myself I could say I truly had something near to a balanced diet, but even then that was limited to what I could afford and how few times I am lured into the golden arches.
But I have started to care less about controlling my picky eaters and there are several reasons for this.
I was talking to my mother-in-law (well we aren’t married but you know) and explaining that I was trying to get a bit of variety into my sons’ diets – if they eat pasta three times a day, that wouldn’t be ideal so I wanted to switch it up with bread or crackers or something different. Obviously the boys had other ideas, but my mother-in-law is a very chilled out lady and she was saying how really what is the difference between all of those things. Pasta is flour and eggs, bread: flour, yeast, water, crackers: flour, water – you see where I am going with this?
Food refusal costs us a lot of money and frankly I could put a broccoli on their plates every day in the hope that the exposure will encourage them to eat, but I am sick of throwing food – and money – in the bin. This is probably bad, because if it’s not on their plate they can’t eat it, but all I am doing at the moment is filling the food waste bin to the point I can’t carry it every week and money is tight. I am determined to find a balance of offering vegetables and fruit into their diet without wasting as much food – this could be giving them choices, or they could eat off our plates, but I am no longer batch cooking a whole broccoli and portioning up onto their plates across the week as it just all goes in the bin.
I am making peace with ready meals and fish fingers. I always said I wouldn’t serve my kids fish fingers every night, but now I can see how it happens and I actually don’t think it’s a bad thing. Ultra-processed foods might be the new arch nemesis in the food world, with mum guilt attached to each serving, but I refuse to feel guilty about it anymore. Fish fingers and ready meals are a marvel because they limit food waste with longer shelf lives and they are ready when we need them to be. I always keep a pack of fish fingers in the freezer – just in case, and I invariably need them at least twice a week. I read an article by Laura Thomas in Can I Have Another Snack? recently, which made me feel less bad about fish fingers, because she basically said, well what is the alternative? I don’t have time to cook and debone a fish for them to eat so frankly if they can’t have fish fingers they won’t eat fish at all and actually it’s probably one of the more nutritious parts of their diet.
Ready meals were actually invented because we, mums, women of the household, wanted to go back to work after having a family and now because of research into diets and the need to be absolutely perfect all of the time, we are held to the standard of home-made food alongside working and busy days with the kids and actually it’s too much. It’s a standard we can’t all meet and frankly like Gloria Steinem says, women having it all doesn’t mean doing it all, we have to accept help and if we can’t afford an in-house chef, then Birdseye is our next best thing.
So join me, please, in shaking off the mum guilt for our picky eaters. Yes, it’s a stage they all go through and No, it’s not our fault but Fuck it – get some fish fingers on their plates, it doesn’t really matter. As long as they have eaten something, I have begun to remind myself.
As long as they have eaten something.
Yes! I have two boys and one is insanely picky, matching your words to a tee! (Pasta w butter. The lifeline!) we can’t spend our precious lives feeling guilty or wasting food. Amen!