Hi Jayne,
I agree that these are great ideas and I suspect they will work for many kids. I guess we can even say they worked for mine, who is finally eating a balanced diet at 13 years. We have grown foods at home and visited farms. He shops with me and helps me cook. We look through recipe books and plan menus. He gets excited about what we buy, what we grow and what we are cooking, but when he tries to eat it, he gags. He says he can hardly wait until he is old enough to be able to enjoy all the foods that we grow and buy.
He has sensory overexcitibilies. Here is one aspect of these.
They may also refuse to eat certain foods because of the texture, or they may love other foods for the same reason. In addition, they can be incredibly sensitive to minute differences in the chemical composition of foods, being able to tell the difference in even small changes in a recipe.
My DS is just so sensitive to subtle differences in flavor and texture that hiding a food in another food was impossible. At a potluck I grabbed some bread that had butter and a sprig of parsley on it. I took off the parsley before I gave it to him; he had not seen the parsley. He took a big bite of the bread and gagged. He said, "Yuck this has parsley in it." He was 4 years old. We have worked on this gradually, for years, trying to desensitize him and finally he is able to try new foods without throwing them up.
Every kid is different and while these techniques are good ideas. For kids with overexcitibilities the effects may take a really long time to show up. I remember getting so discouraged reading the magazines and books that had all these great ideas and recipes for kids that I knew wouldn't work. I felt like I must be doing something wrong. But I was doing OK. DS was moving in the right direction, just very very slowly!
