My nephew 11 has always been a very fussy eater. He is getting better as he gets older. At family dinners, he would only eat fruit and maybe a dinner roll. Sometimes his mom would bring him campbells soup. My parents are wonderful cooks and would make stuff like turkey breast, hamburgers, ham, mashed potatoes (grandpa's famous), fresh green beans or salad, fresh fruit, veggie tray (he would eat some of that) and usually some kind of bread at each meal. Nothing super fancy just good and nutricious. My dear nephew would not eat squat. My mother thinks its because he is spoiled but I do not think that is it. My BS now 16 used to be bothered by some textures and would rip the tags out of shirts and end up wrecking the shirt. I think my nephew has the same time of troule with tastes and textures. I guess I would try to find simple stuff she likes and just make that for her and not put yourself out too much about her not eating. You could try involving her in the grocery shopping and meal prep and that may help get her interested in more foods. My BD7 likes soup, fruit, and raw veggies with dip. She is not big on hamburgers so I make her a chicken sandwich or chicken nuggets.

Keep trying but don't put yourself out too much. You have enough on your plate - no pun intended.

She lives with BM and their norm is to eat out....constantly. BM hates to cook and when she does it's generally pasta without sauce, hamburger helper (occasionally) and lettuce salad (nothing else in it).
We have had plenty of battles over food since she was 3. She has grown accustomed to our rule of eating what is made for her (and the other 5 of us)or no snack between meals or dessert. I try to cook to accomodate everyone's taste...I cook a lot of pasta dishes....plus I try to get input from the kids when they're here EOW what they might like the NEXT time they're here. It's makes it less of a hassle.
We try to stress to the kids to improve their tastes by trying whatever is made for them plus we let them them know that to show good manners, they should eat whatever is cooked for them

"SOME PEOPLE WEREN'T MEANT TO HAVE CHILDREN"

I have never seen our SD eat a vegetable and she claims her mom doesn't care - ok maybe she doesn't. DH finally flat out asked her, are you 'regular' and she says she is? But now she is 16 she is trying more stuff.

I used to be picky as a kid and the older I got the more I ate. It is a pain though and I don't know why mom put up with it. I tried to avoid cooking for SD but now just do and she works around it, whatever.

My grandmother would say, maybe you should 'dose' her!! (laxative) That was her cure for grumpiness, etc.!

"In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer." -Albert Camus

My SD15 is a terrible eater. Let me give you an example. Last week I bought frozen pizza (I like to have one on hand just in case), pizza rolls (they were on sale) and lean pockets at the grocery store. That's pretty much the only processed food I bought. I look in the freezer this morning to get a lean pocket for lunch and guess what... They're all gone. Plus the pizza and pizza roles.

SD eats pizza, cheese, chocolate, and pop. That's about it. Rarely vegetables, except corn. Last night she had so much butter on her corn her dad made a comment. The day before she put so much salt on her potatos he asked, "What's that white stuff?"

My problem is that BDs 4 and 1 see SD eating junk and want to know why they can't too.

father deal with it.

My SS drinks cola for breakfast-----I NEVER GAVE MY KIDS THAT FOR BREAKFAST. This is not my child. I have no say & don't want any. Everyone parent's differently.

I have made suggestions in the past & believe me, PEOPLE JUST PARENT DIFFERENTLY----------suggestions are really not helpful when people don't want to hear it. This child is not MY responsibility.

raising bio kids too, that is a completely different situation. Oh my gosh, that must be sooooo hard!

When my kids were growing up, I did not buy ANY soft drinks. They are now 27, 28 & 29 and have never had cavities.

BM can't cook so they eat out almost every night so when he comes here he picks at the home cooked food. I talked to a parent aide about this and she said what we are doing is what we should keep doing....THAT is...he has 20 minutes to eat his food, if the plate isn't empty when his time is up than he's done and he gets THAT for the next meal. He'll end up being hungry enough to eat it sooner or later. I'm so sick of the "i'm entitled to everything" attitude....grrrr

Food issues can be a power play , and the dinner table the Theater of War. I always believed that homeostasis would kick in eventually--eventually the kid will eat because they get hungry. It's a biological imperative. So I never forced food on my BD (now 12). If she turned up her nose at dinner, then she starved. But she had to sit there at the table with us anyway.

Funny how that stopped the power games almost immediately. She's developed into a good eater who will try just about anything.

Enter the teen stepbrats. They had literally been raised on cola and processed food their entire lives. Never drank milk, ate veggies, or took vitamins. None of them every ate with us and they hated the food we served. Instead, the bough McDonald's every day (no joke), and supplemented that with Wonder Bread, cola, and Gatorade. My BD thought their eating habits were disgusting.

Now that they've moved out and are on their own, they are surprised to be getting FAT. They have no concept about nutrition. They have serious problems with their teeth, and no doubt the girls will be crippled with brittle bones as they get older.

Sad story, but I guess my point is that the battle at the dinner table may not be worth all the added stress for you. The stepkids may see themselves in the power position and use the food to drive you nuts. Disengage! Kids learn how to eat from their family-of-origin, and there may not be much you can do to change that.

We had a "Food Intervention" with my two youngest SD - 8 and 4 last summer. We pulled out food charts and everything. It lasted 2 hours. Lots of tears from the 8 year old. The 4 year old had no clue what was happening.

My DH goes off to make dinner, that he's going to make them eat. The dinner is this pasta in butter (not red sauce or anything like it)and grilled chicken breasts.

My step daughters do that gagging bit. When my DH made them eat pasta. SD8 had 12 pieces of pasta that were twirly noodles that were about 2 inches long each. Picture it? Ok. So he gives that to SD8 first. She takes a bite about 1/2 the size of pea and she starts gagging. Coughing and red faced, the whole bit. I sat across the table from her eating my dinner and I said, "You throw up, you sit in it." She stopped RIGHT THERE and the redness went away and she stopped gagging. Meanwhile SD12 is sitting by SD4 when she asks for a chicken breast to eat. She sees that the pasta is OBVIOUSLY poisioned since SD8 gagged on it. So she's eating the chicken. Then DH gets up and goes to SD4 with a bowl of pasta. Same thing! Gags etc. I told her the exact same thing about sitting in her own vomit and she stopped RIGHT THEN! They pull this trick anything they have to eat something they don't like. Their MOM falls for it. I do not.

So an hour later, SD8 finally finished her 12 pieces. There was a lot of talking and negotiating that went no where. SD4 ate when he made her, of his own hand, but she ate.

SD12 is easy peasy to feed. She'll try anything once practically.

SD8&4 on the other hand will NOT try new things and throw the biggest fit. They get HIGHLY breaded food all the time. Ugh...and pancakes with chocolate milk for breakfast. The thought scares me. They will only eat certain BRANDS of food. At least now they will drink water. That's new.

My DH is thinking of reporting BM to child neglect becasue it's BAD when they don't eat a SINGLE veggie or fruit. SD8 has started waking up with back pain. She's already like 120 lbs, her knees are bowing out funny from the weight...she's emotionally a wreck because of the mixed signals. It's a mess. So I'm all for it. BM said there is nothing you can do. She's always been picky. Actually, no she wasn't when he lived with them and he cooked. They only eat what takes their BM 2 minutes in the microwave to cook. She's just lazy and getting fat herself. And no wonder. I can't even hang out with that diet when we see them seasonally. I'd gain 50 ls too!

One that that cracks me up is, if we go to Cici's (a pizza buffet place) SD8 can eat like a large by herself. When she's at home, she's full after 5 fish sticks. Yeah RIGHT! I told her to finish them when she only ate like 4 and said she was full...here came the tears. Ugh.

She cries at the drop of a hat if you talk about food. I told her she'd probably need therapy when she was older. OF COURSE she told her mom that RIGHT away...so Bm comes up to me, but talking to my DH and says "Why is that Fat Ass telling MY daughter she needs therapy." It was highly amusing let me tell you. I'm over weight a bit, yes, but I'm healthy. I've been checked. I eat pretty well, I'm just squishy! I've held at this weight, albeit not a good weight, for the past 10 years. I can still wear the clothes i wore in high school. I'm sorta proud of that! HA!

But yes. SD8 will need therapy when she's older. This is really messing her up.

SD4 can be forced to eat better. We've done it. She ate beef teryaki and didn't gag one bit. It's a matter of WANTING to change them. We had the girls last week and SD4 said she wasn't hungry when we'd stopped at McDonald's (one of the only approved eating places) and she was given a chicken nugget kids meal. I told her she wouldn't get the toy untl she ate. She ate! Ugh. Then she got the toy. But see, we told her what to do, she did it, all was happy. It's teh 8 year old that is the hardest to "fix".

i typed too much.

My husband has an old stash of MRE's out in the garage. Anyone who wants some, you're welcome to them.

♥ Georgia ♥

"Good men don't just happen. They have to be created by us women." (from ROSEANNE)

Dh's son thinks it's his God-given right to be fed NY strip every night. Since we don't ever have his first choice, he picks through entire dinners that I've made, often skipping the "filler" - bread and butter, veggies, salad, etc. And what really irks me is that he will eat french fries, tots, and baked potatoes but will not eat mashed potatoes. WTF is that? An hour after dinner, he's in the kitchen eating chips, pop tarts, microwave popcorn, ice cream, etc. It drives me batty.

Thanks Grace. I see that you understand where I am coming from even if I stated the "obvious".

My husband bought one of those tubs of chocolate chip cookie dough from a fundraiser. I opened it to make cookies and found that about a third of it was gone. Husband said, "Oh, I told SD she could have some." What is your definition of some? I made two dozen cookies and now the dough is gone. I think the tub is supposed to make five dozen cookies.

I've got to say that's a little ridiculous!

My stepson has ASD. He is very sensitive to textures. He loves pasta but will not look at it if it has any kind of sauce or cheese. He loves nuggets and such. I can't get him to look at a veggie except cucumbers. I do the one bite rule. It takes several tries to actually have an ASD child palate a new taste. Children with Aspargers have similar symptoms. Aspargers does not get diagnosed as easily as Autism although there are many traits that are shared. There is the tags in the shirts that cause issues, the not looking you in the eyes, the general confusion over emotions.

My bio is PICKY and eats ALOT. He is a teenager. He will eat every 20 minutes some days. Bio used to gag when I forced him to eat peas. I talked to the doctor.... he told me I can stress myself out or I could give son a multivitamin and let him choose how to eat.

I am not saying I cooked differently for him, he would either eat what I fixed or he'd be hungry. Granted I did (and still do esp with SS's ASD) fix things to people's tastes. I can't do casseroles or one dish meals of any kind, but we can have BBQ and baked chicken (gotta love tinfoil) baked potatoes, pasta, and salad. It doesn't take any more energy to bake the two different kind of chicken and baked potatoes all at once. The salad is a quick fix as is the pasta. With this method I have introduced baked potoaoes to SS and he LOVES them now.