Do you cook separate dinner for your kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No never. I might vary the way it’s prepared to suit tastes but we eat the same thing. For example we had spinach tortellini tonight in homemade Alfredo sauce. She doesn’t like vegetables mixed in but will eat them on the side. So I cooked the broccoli then put hers on the plate with the pasta, then mixed the broccoli in the pasta/sauce for my own because I like it like that.

+1
This is how I’ve always done it, one meal, sometimes a bit deconstructed.

+2 this is what I have always done also.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course not. When they were little and went to bed by 7pm they ate the previous night's leftovers for their earlier dinner at 5:30, but they were still eating the same thing we ate.

This is us. Kids are little and we enjoy cooking together and like eating later. They get leftovers the next day but it's still the same thing we ate. They're not picky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you cook separate adult and kid meals? Mine are 5 & 7. I try to make sure there is one thing at every meal they both will eat but I don’t cook them their own dinner. Sometimes that means they don’t eat much. Is this typical?

You’re a nut

[Anonymous]

No, never did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Big mistake to do this OP. Picky eaters are made, not born.

Do not become a short order cook for your kids.

Only believed by a parent who did not actually have a picky child...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Big mistake to do this OP. Picky eaters are made, not born.

Do not become a short order cook for your kids.

Did you read what OP does? I can’t tell if you are saying that what OP does is a big mistake, or that what the title says is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Big mistake to do this OP. Picky eaters are made, not born.

Do not become a short order cook for your kids.

Only believed by a parent who did not actually have a picky child...

I don't mean that anyone should become a short order cook but some kids do taste foods more/differently. I would not have believed it until I had one.

[Anonymous]

Lol no way. No special meals. Also never forced them to eat anything I made. I know there are kids out there with health/sensory issues who need special things made for them but my kids are not those kids, and a loving “you get what you get and you don’t get upset” was pretty central to most aspects of my parenting while they ( now 17 and 21) were growing up. Awesome kids, both like to cook, do not appear to have held this against me

[Anonymous]

I do this occasionally if I’m cooking something I know the kids will hate, like something extremely spicy. Most of the time I make something for everybody and everybody has to eat it, although if you only want the bread, that’s fine, but sometimes I just really want larb and they can have pasta.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Big mistake to do this OP. Picky eaters are made, not born.

Do not become a short order cook for your kids.

Only believed by a parent who did not actually have a picky child...

+1, people who think this way don't understand picky eating. They think it's like a kid saying they don't want to clean up their room, and that parents are just giving in instead of making them do it.

Real picky eating is like a kid who is afraid of cleaning their room because they worry something bad will happen if their clothes are in the hamper. Or a kid who wants to clean their room but their brain gets overwhelmed at the thought so even though they want to, they just don't. You can't "make" a picky eater eat a wider variety of foods. You can work to make food less scary and provide them with tools that will help them make food more approachable, but you can't just serve them spaghetti and tacos and stir fry every night until they give in and eat it. It won't happen (I know, I tried).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Big mistake to do this OP. Picky eaters are made, not born.

Do not become a short order cook for your kids.

Only believed by a parent who did not actually have a picky child...

+1, people who think this way don't understand picky eating. They think it's like a kid saying they don't want to clean up their room, and that parents are just giving in instead of making them do it.

Real picky eating is like a kid who is afraid of cleaning their room because they worry something bad will happen if their clothes are in the hamper. Or a kid who wants to clean their room but their brain gets overwhelmed at the thought so even though they want to, they just don't. You can't "make" a picky eater eat a wider variety of foods. You can work to make food less scary and provide them with tools that will help them make food more approachable, but you can't just serve them spaghetti and tacos and stir fry every night until they give in and eat it. It won't happen (I know, I tried).

We have one of those and let me tell you, family dinners were dreadful, miserable, meltdown-filled affairs under the satter model. Whether and how much? No and none to both questions unless it was one of maybe three foods served in a very particular way. But even I put this as an asterisk to almost every pp’s advice because for my other two kids it was absolutely start as you mean to go on (make one meal and expect they eat it with a few no nonsense modifications). Most kids are the rule and not the exception.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The pediatrician told me not to cook the kids a separate dinner so I don’t. A food psychologist talk that I went to also gave similar advice.

Sometimes I serve meals deconstructed where everyone can add what they want. Tonight I served a make your own taco bar and everyone picked their own toppings etc.

Yup. Anecdotal, but I spent evenings w/ grandma who did this (and served a lot of our family's traditional cultural food), grew up to be an extremely adventurous eater. Middle sister was in the middle and is middle of the road eating wise.

Youngest got babied by parents and got her own separate dinner; at age 25 she basically only eats PB&J, burgers, steak, fries, chicken nuggets, butter pasta, and cesar salad.

My preschooler has eaten what we've eaten since we started introducing solids. Sometimes it takes a few tries for little kids to get used to a new food, and I feel like so many parents give up the first time a kid spits something out. We keep it fun and low stakes and after a couple tries over the span of a few meals she's usually on board.

[Anonymous]

Sick sick sick

[Anonymous]

No. I have done so many things wrong as a parent, but that I rocked. They will eat anything.

[Anonymous]

We eat the same about 3x a week because that food is essentially boring and often fattening

Chicken/rice/veggie
Steak/potato/salad
Tacos
Etc


But I don’t really want to eat boring and fattening food all the time so I make special meals for me and my h and kids eat the basics.