Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Recognizing Hunger

I'm not sure if this is the correct forum for posting this question, but I'll give it a shot. My son's coping abilities diminish severely when he's hungry. The problem is, he often doesn't recognize when he's hungry. Dh and I can identify it by the behavior, and then we give him food, and immediately he's happy again. It's his number one trigger for a meltdown. How can we help him to regulate his own body's needs? I give him lots of healthy snacks throughout the day. We always start out the day with some sort of fruit, grain, and protein. It's worse when he's going through a growing spurt b/c he needs more food and eats a lot more. It's just that many times, I'm the one who has to say, "hey, are you hungry?" When it gets to the point of a meltdown, he sometimes doesn't even know if he's hungry when I ask him. If you've had a similar experience, I'd appreciate any hints for what might work. Thank you!

I think that's typical of any child. And if they're not hungry, they may just be tired and in need of a good rest.

There is some thought that reactive hypoglycemia is more common among gifted children. I don't have an easy answer other than prevention with regular snack and meal times. We found it helps quite a bit to always have some portable snacks in the backpack and car.

That very well could be true, considering the brain uses a lot of calories in it's work. But I wouldn't expect a gifted child to be any more aware than a normal child of the feeling of needing fuel, or rest. Considering how intense some of these gifted kids are, and how focused they can be on things, they may be less aware of their bodies saying, "HEY, FEED ME", haha.

Thank you both for your opinions and info. I just looked up "reactive hypoglycemia in gifted children" and it certainly fits. Wouldn't it be nice if I could resolve the meltdowns and intense behavior with diet change and frequent snacks? I'm not holding my breath, but it's worth a shot. I think I will talk to the pediatrician about it just in case. The behavior is severe, and when he hits the point of no return there's no reasoning with him, but literally seconds to minutes after eating, he's a different kid. We've always thought it was strange, these extreme mood changes related to food. We thought he'd eventually learn to recognize when he needed food, and this would be resolved. Not so far! Anyway, thanks again. It's worth checking into.

Here's a good blog I found with lots of info and others with similar experience if anyone is interested.

http://www.reactivehypoglycemia.info/articles/reactive-hypoglycemia-in-highly-gifted-children/

Funny you say that! We always attributed it to his hypersensitivities (hypersensitive to feeling hungry with typical overreaaction).

I'm getting more reluctant to using the words, 'over sensitive' or 'hypersensitive', or 'over reaction'. It's just who GS10 is, he's not 'over' or 'hyper' about anything that may be labeled as a negative. He's very intense, a good thing; he's very sensitive, a good thing; he's very emotional, a good thing.

GS had his first meeting with his team for Destination Imagination. There are 5 kids on the team, from the 3 different elementary's in our district, all fifth graders. All 5 are in the gifted class in their schools. GS is the only one from his school on the team, so he didn't know any of the others. 3 are from one school, 1 from the third school It was fantastic to watch this group of kids, (all who might be labled as 'hyper' or 'over') bond and feed off each others energies and ideas.

It is great you are figuring this out and hopefully it cut back on the meltdowns.

Another thing that helped here was having more good fat in the diet. Kids need more fat that adults. Fish oil supplements and protein based snacks seem to help keep blood sugar more stable for longer.

Thank u for the tips! This isn't the first time we've suspected hypoglycemia, but I've never heard of REACTIVE hypoglycemia. I had a roommate in college who was hypoglycemic and turned into the devil when she didn't eat or if she ate ANY sugar. I see it with ds if he doesn't eat, but not so much with sugar consumption. We r pretty good about limiting sugar, though. Thanks again! We'll definitely be investigating further.

This is interesting... I still forget to eat!