Let’s be clear on what a fussy eater is.
If your child has refused a meal now and then, they’re not a fussy eater—they just didn’t want whatever you’d dished up. If your child has been off food for a week, they’re not fussy—they’re probably feeling sick. If your child always refuses to eat broccoli, they’re not a fussy eater—they just don’t like the taste. I don’t like coriander. Doesn’t make me fussy, it just makes me right.
A fussy eater will refuse ALL food. It’s not an aversion to a handful of flavours, it’s ALL of them. Their list of acceptable foods can be counted on one hand. My son kicked and screamed when I tried to give him ice cream once. ICE CREAM.
A fussy eater WILL go hungry. They’ll happily starve themselves if it means not gagging down the food in front of them. So telling them ‘This is all that’s on offer, young man!’ makes no difference. When you say, ‘There’s nothing else until breakfast’ they don’t think, ‘Hmm, that’s a good thirteen hours of no food. I might get hungry tonight—better dig in!’
Parents of fussy eaters do all the things that parents of wonderful eaters think they’re so clever for doing. We offer a variety of healthy foods. We don’t give in and make second dinners. We don’t argue and yell and make dinner a battleground. But sometimes it doesn’t work, and it’s got nothing to do with the parent and everything to do with the child.
Some kids are simply wary of anything new. Some kids have serious sensory issues and providing a ‘wide variety of healthy foods’ isn’t going to change a frigging thing.
A fussy eater is a kid who refuses to venture beyond the beige diet for months. Maybe years. It’s not a phase—it’s a sustained campaign of hate against sustenance and it’s stressful AF. You worry your child isn’t eating enough and that they’re going to waste away on a diet of air and toothpaste. You overanalyse everything you’ve ever fed them and at what point you got it wrong. And it makes it bloody hard when people judge you for not ‘getting it right’ when all you do is TRY. Some children simply WON’T EAT.
And please don’t forget, those toddlers who just lurve sashimi and chicken pho? Yeah, plenty of those kids have turned into preschoolers who survive on a diet of nuggets and sauce. Because children are masters at changing their minds.