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    Joined: Sep 2013
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    I would definitely run it past his therapist to make sure it doesn't cause any unplanned issues to stop forcing the trials of new foods. Does he actually eat red pepper, broccoli and rice? If so, that is pretty good for a child that age, at least in our household. (Yes, I read all the information about giving foods multiple times. It didn't really work for our kids. They liked them one of the first times they tried, or not for a year or more.) smile

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    I gave my kids deconstructed meals like you are describing for years. It's nice now that my kids are older & I don't need to most of the time. Although because of vegetable pickiness that includes me I often cook two vegetable options. I always tried to cook the same meal for everyone but would often provide kids meals like you describe. Honestly if your son is eating red pepper strips, broccoli & rice and a lean protean I think your son is probably eating healthier than MANY kids his age.

    I would back up on making him try the new things. My experience not just with my own kids is this really gets better as they get older as their palate & hunger expand. Young elementary kids are the most picky and this seems to be a common refrain amount parents of kids that age.

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    If presented with red pepper, broccoli, rice, and a protein, he'll eat at least some of the rice, at least one of the peppers, and maybe the broccoli. If the protein is tofu, he won't take a bite without a struggle. If the protein is a hot dog, he'll eat it no problem, and will eat it first.

    That meal is probably the most 'challenging' one in our rotation. It's not really representative. A typical week of dinners at our house might be: turkey burgers with apple slices (never a problem but it was at one time); grilled cheese and soup (refuses the soup and sometimes the sandwich); breaded whitefish, maple sugar-glazed baby carrots, and green beans (he gets fish sticks and he'll eat at least one; he's been starting to accept a small piece of homemade breaded fish; usually eats all the carrots; green beans a no-go); homemade chicken caesar salad (DS gets a marinated chicken sandwich on pretzel bread; he loves the bread but resists the 'Italian chicken'); tofu stir-fry (mentioned above); and one dinner that's either leftovers or dinner brought by my husband's parents--that usually means cheese pizza for DS.

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    We have two of those.
    I could have written platypus' post. It IS exhausting. We do all the nudging and careful introducing and racing to the bathroom, but I have been heard screaming in utter desperation "because I said so! It won't kill you! Now go!"

    With food, I have resorted to raw force. YMMV. In our case, DD had eaten herself into chronic constipation. Even daily triple dosages of laxatives wouldn't make her go for many days, and she would scream in pain. Her belly was so bloated she looked like 6 months pregnant. Ultrasound showed that her rectum was already pathologically distended, so she was in danger of not being able to actually excrete on her own even if she had been eating normally. She refused every single bit of fruit or vegetables, with the exception of the occasional banana. She would not drink juice, eat ice cream, butter on her bread, sauce on her pasta, nada. Refuse did not mean saying "I don't like it" after one taste, it meant throwing the food screaming around the room, and scream for hours until she fell asleep in exhaustion, We had to work up to her tolerating the food in the vicinity of her plate first, before we could even get started on the actual eating bit.

    Peds just shrugged and prescribed more laxatives. She was a perfectly normal cute well behaved child at ped visits. None of them ever tried to get her to eat a bite of apple sauce or carrot.

    I found the book "Cure your child with food" by Kelly Dorfman (horrible title for excellent book), consulted with the woman twice over the phone about her program for picky eaters for a horrendous price. Worth every penny. She was the one who pointed out to me that there must be sensory issues at play, which gave a me a whole lot of ideas. We actually went back to baby food first, the jars of puréed fruit and veggies she used to tolerate as a baby or young toddler when I was not around for breast-feeding, then pureeing home made vegetables, then steaming them until mushy and slicing them in tiny bits, then slightly larger bits etc. Over YEARS. And she HAD to try, or she would get nothing else.

    I vividly recall the day when, after she was happily eating pre-sliced steamed carrots and declaring she liked then, we put a WHOLE steamed carrot on her plate the first time, for her to slice bits off with her fork (everything still being steamed to almost mush). She threw the carrot screaming around the room and hid behind the sofa. I wedged my chair between the table and the sofa and told her I would not let her out without eating that carrot because I knew she was going to like it. She was shaking and sobbing when she finally came up to me after twenty minutes or so, to take her first panicky bite. Then she ate up the carrot, told me "I liked it!" And happily ran off to play? Me? You could have fed me to the dogs after these kinds of confrontations.

    So, instead of forcing medication down our child's throat, she will go hungry if she does not finish up her vegetables and fruit on her plate first. Any type of vegetables now - after all, if you complain about everything anyway, you can as well eat the asparagus and complain about it. No, no ham and no potatoes until it's gone. No dessert either and no snack until dinner.

    People will tell you you are creating an eating disorder. Dorfman says to respond "I am curing an eating disorder". People whose kids are of the "they have to have one bite and then they can tell new they don't like it" garden variety pickiness and eat at least one type of fruit or vegetable have no idea what people like us even talk about.

    Last edited by Tigerle; 06/01/16 01:39 AM.
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    For those of you who have the "won't even take a bite" variety of kid, we had a rule for a while that anything healthy (no carbs, only vegetables or protein) could be eaten with chocolate.
    Seriously. She put chocolate on vegetables and chocolate on meat. The size of the chocolate piece could be no bigger than the size of the regular food, and if she wanted to have another bit of chocolate, it came with another bit of red pepper or sauerkraut or whatever it was. Sauerkraut with chocolate is actually quite interesting, I've tried it.
    No, they will not eat half chocolate meals forever, I promise. It just helps with the trying. At some point, you can scale back the chocolate.
    Wrapping every bit of vegetable in organic bologna slices was another compromise that worked in our house. It was having to be so vigilant about stopping them from unwrapping it that made that one exhausting.
    BTW, I do have one normal eater, DS3 who eats almost everything. He will yell "I don't want asparagus!" in imitation of DD5, and two minutes later he'll be happily eating it.
    Food wise and parenting wise, these two kids inhabit different worlds.

    Last edited by Tigerle; 06/01/16 01:41 AM.
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    Originally Posted by Skepchick
    To be clear--DS has been a neophobe around food pretty much from the instant we tried transitioning him from baby food to actual food. It's the main reason he merited EI services way back when. But I'm always casting around to see if there's something I might have missed that I could try. This kid, man. If there was an Olympic Stubbornness team, he could be stubborn for his country.


    I'll field the team for our country, and we can pit them against one another!

    Seriously, I am glad for you that you were taken seriously and got services - no one ever took me seriously, until I phoned Dorfman. The ped told me I did not have a food problem, but a parenting problem. No kidding, ma'am.
    But I believe you have an ASD diagnosis as well? In our case, DD always looked like this perfect kid at any appointment, no one saw the food berserker except for us and her DCP. Ha, they told us when we first dropped her off "you'll see, she'll eat with us and all the other kids!" with condescending smiles. Then, one month later, they came to us in desperation: "please please tell us what this kid actually will eat?!" - "well, nothing", I said. "I told you so."
    We had buy in from them after that and they helped us with enforcing the vegetables first rule. It was great when they came up, elated, at pick up: "DD did not eat the vegetables, but today she tolerated them on her plate" and months later "DD has had THREE pieces of CAULIFLOWER today!" and we went woohoo! together.

    Last edited by Tigerle; 06/01/16 01:25 AM.
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    Just keep at it with trying the new foods. If a five year old will eat stuff like red peppers, you are on the right track. I know that two of my three would not have even touched a pepper at that age.

    Eldest, now 20, ate almost everything from a very young age. Middle kid did not want to transition from baby food (smooth texture) to regular food. We pushed the issue, and she did transition. She had some food pickiness, but that seemed normal for her age and she is no longer picky. She is now 18 and still has texture issues. She is not so opposed to one certain texture, but foods that mix two textures. At age 18, she can hide the texture issues and I doubt that anyone outside of the family knows about the texture issues. (She also had clothes issues, and still has some but can hide that too. Was resistant to change, especially at a young age.)

    Youngest, age 11 (soon to turn 12), is a very picky eater. She will not eat vegetables and won't eat most fruits. Part of this was due to some medical issues as an infant/toddler, which included poor weight gain. The gastroenterologist said no veggie or fruit baby food, as these are low calorie. As a result, the kid now eats mainly meat, pasta, bread, etc. You would think she would be huge, but she is still 1st percentile BMI. Part is genetics but none of us really knows why she isn't heavier.

    As for the general trying new things, I suspect part of this is that the suggestions are coming from the parents. While my eldest has recently admitted that mom and dad were right about some things that she refused to listen to a few years ago, it will likely take until the kid is past the teens before this happens. And she will only admit that we were right about a few things...there are many more that she still refuses to admit. The most "fights" have been over batting. If dad tries to work with the two older ones on batting (softball), he doesn't know anything. If the batting coach (who charges $50/hr) says the same thing, they accept that advice. Youngest plays a sport he knows nothing about, so no batting squabbles with her.

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    Originally Posted by Tigerle
    People will tell you you are creating an eating disorder. Dorfman says to respond "I am curing an eating disorder". People whose kids are of the "they have to have one bite and then they can tell new they don't like it" garden variety pickiness and eat at least one type of fruit or vegetable have no idea what people like us even talk about.
    OMG, Tigerle, I am feeling so much sympathy for you! And I want to apologize if my post made you (or anyone else) in any way feel like I was being critical of forcing kids to eat. Over the course of the past 6 years, I've really resented other parents telling me that I must just be doing it wrong whenever I tell them that "regular parenting" often doesn't work with DS6. So I get it - sometimes, other parents have NO IDEA what you need to do to be a really good parent to your child. You sound like an amazing parent. grin

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    RRD, my post (my novel, ha) was in no way directed at you or anyone else, just general venting and sharing for those who understand how much energy these things drain out of us.
    I felt so alone IRL. No one got it. I do second guess my parenting all the time, but there was a point when I simply could not wrap my head round any more why it should be in any way preferable to force medication into my child rather than just vegetables.
    Have you noticed that people who are so convinced of their own parenting successes and others' parenting failures tend to have kids who, if you want them to do something, you just have to tell them to do it, and parenting simply becomes about telling your kid all the right things to do?

    Hah. Borrow mine for a day.

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    Originally Posted by Tigerle
    Have you noticed that people who are so convinced of their own parenting successes and others' parenting failures tend to have kids who, if you want them to do something, you just have to tell them to do it, and parenting simply becomes about telling your kid all the right things to do?

    Hah. Borrow mine for a day.
    lol - yup.

    DD is especially picky as well so we've had lots of advice over the years. The most common is to just make her eat what ever it is. This was a kid that as a baby refused anything other than breast milk until 9 months old. At 9 months old she grabbed a cracker from DH and started eating those but wouldn't try/eat anything else for a few more months. I'm not just talking healthy stuff - she wouldn't try cookies, cake, ice cream - nothing. At ~16 months a daycare worker photocopied her text book on picky eaters and slipped it into the bag. Ummm thanks but we've tried all of that.

    My usual response to the really pushy ones that have all of the answers and think that we just need to force her is to tell them about the time we did. After over an hour of drama DD finally put the microscopicly small piece of chicken in her mouth (we're talking teeny, teeny, teeny tiny) and them promptly barfed all over the dinner table. Yup. Good times.

    The biggest thing both of my kids have taught me is that I now really, really make an effort to not judge people. No one has a clue how to deal with my kids (including me sometimes haha) and I most likely don't have a clue how to deal with theirs. I once saw a bit from comedian Louis C.K. that went something like this - before I had kids I used to look at people in the grocery store and think "look at that crazy parent, that poor kid", now I look and think "that poor parent, what has the child done to make them so crazy" (I'm sure it was worded better so apologies for any butchering but you get the idea).

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