Ok, question. DS, 5, is largely accepting of things we enjoy casually but don't really force on him. We like baseball, he likes baseball. We like Doctor Who, he likes Doctor Who. Etc. DH fires up Stop Making Sense to test a newly installed sound system on our TV, DS promptly becomes a Talking Heads fan.

But often, we have trouble with introducing him to new ideas. For example, getting him to read a new book. Saying 'Here's a new book, would you like to read it?' will almost always get a no. Hide the book in a pile of known and liked books and wait for him to find it? He'll pull it out and read it within hours of us hiding it. Sometimes minutes.

Other times, we take him to new places we think he might like, such as museums or play places. While there, he acts like he isn't enjoying himself--complaining, refusing to do or see things, etc., and then tells us as we're leaving, 'I want to come back in two months.'

Does anyone else experience things like this with their kids? If so, what other techniques work when introducing new ideas to your kids beyond what we do with our DS--signposting them, then making him interact with them (always a struggle on some level, often exhausting for us) or planting them in his environment and waiting for him to discover them (more effective, but not 100 percent, and only works for certain types of things)?

Bonus points if you have any ideas about how to get him to try new foods...

I have one for new foods. Gardening and/or garden markets. Our younger DS wouldn't touch a vegetable until his preschool started growing some in a new garden they established. It expanded his list considerably, including into chives (and then scallions) and raw broccoli, of all things.

Similar to ConnectingDots suggestion, sometimes you can get them to try things by getting them to help you cook. It definitely doesn't work all the time, though.

Ah, I have tried getting him to help me cook. He's enjoyed it every time. Unfortunately he only accepts the finished dish if it's already a meal he will eat. If there are unfamiliar/undesired things in it, helping cook it holds no truck with him when he sits down to eat it.

We don't have room for a garden at our home (apartment in a city with three windows total, all of which face an alley, so...), but I, my DH, and my MIL have all invited him to choose the individual vegetables we buy when we go to the grocery store/farmstand. Sometimes he even tries to eat them in the store! But when it comes time to actually sit down and eat them in a meal at home? Again, no dice. I'm going to keep doing this, but is a bit maddening. This is the sort of thing I mean when I say I spend a lot of my energy trying to outwit him.

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.

Yup. Sounds like DS17. And as an older teen this behavior is back BIG time. At this age he ones of those teens who think parents don't know anything. Except of course when he wants our advice. I went shopping with him Saturday & it was a practice in keeping my mouth shut until he asked for help. I'm struggling with trying to get him to look at universities outside a very narrow scope, and think I have at least gotten him to look online at a few more. (We went on a college tour over spring break that was a success.)

I've tried to do is pick my battles carefully. Only pushing the issue when I really think he will like something or something I think is really critical. I've done the hiding books in his room, or just leaving something out where he stumbled upon it. I've also let other adults suggest things rather than me when it's possible because he take the advice of other adults more than me sometimes. (Band instructor, school math teacher, etc.)

DS wasn't a particularly picky eater as a kid, but not hugely adventurous either. But at 13 when he started eating like he had a hollow leg he suddenly became more adventurous. He now eats the many of the spicy ethnic foods I like & loves trying new food. But most of that came not from me but going out with friends, food he was exposed to at camp, or when he has gone on school trips.

Yup, two insane eaters, and one indescribably resistant to *all* suggestion. Yes, it's exhausting. She's 9 now, and it's better in many ways, but the basic characteristic is deeply, deeply rooted. Any visible attempt to get her to go direction A will result in immediate resistance to the death - regardless of whether she actually wants A. In school, we have learned that it's critical she has a teacher well versed in the art of subtly nudging DD in the right direction from behind, without DD realizing what's up. One truly fabulous teacher was a bust for DD, as the teacher was simply too direct in telling DD what she needed to do, so DD would dig in her heels on principle, every time. sigh.

So I've always done a lot of the kinds of things you describe. I still don't tell her to go to the bathroom before a long drive, I just announce that I'm going (and that I will get there first - which launches a race to beat me there whilst I try to capture squealing evading child). I announce what I am doing a lot, without an invite, and often she then wants to jump in. She, too, loves to cook and never, ever touches the resulting food. She'll plan and produce whole meals for us, and never taste them. But if I put something on my plate and don't offer it at all, every now and then she'll actually ask for a taste. It's maddening and time-consuming to be constantly trying to lure and nudge someone like this. But a whole lot faster and easier than trying to drag her there by force!

So, I guess no magic answers here, sorry Skepchick. But I feel for you.

Grow-your-own veggies and helping to cook are great ideas. Here are a few more which may work sometimes:

- Have him help with grocery shopping and asking what he would like to choose to try this week, or what favorite he would like to have again. There can be natural variations in the flavors of foods, so it may take a few tastings until a person knows range of flavors to expect from a particular food.

- Arrange the foods on the plate in a smiley face, or triangle, or three circles like the outline of Mickey Mouse's head, or some other simple "artwork".

- When he tastes something, ask his opinion/experience of it, such as whether it reminds him of other foods. It can be very validating for a child to know they've been heard and understood, and that their viewpoint is valued.

- If he has a favorite food, help him try variations of that. Some kids love pizza, hot dogs, and macaroni and cheese. Even among these foods there are many varieties of ingredients and differing levels of nutrition.

- Do not require that he finish a new food which he has tasted. Teach a variety of polite responses rather than "YUCK" (such as, "I don't prefer X", "I'm not fond of X", "It's an acquired taste").

- If kids learn what a food should look like, smell like, and taste like, they will know when a food is spoiled and not good to eat. Unfortunately nearly every carton of fresh berries has at least one bad berry; It is good for kids to see what indicates that a food should not be eaten. Other foods such as sour milk or rancid nuts have an odor. Helping kids learn the appropriate descriptions for sour milk, moldy berries, or any other food which may be encountered which is not fresh and should not be consumed, is to their benefit.

We've done a few things that have helped greatly with our boys, who are both extraordinarily stubborn as well (especially DS6):

- What about bringing him to the library to pick his own books and then telling him he's limited to 10?

- When we go somewhere that we know DS6 will resist and we're flexible enough, we tell him that he has to stay for at least 30 minutes and then he can decide if he wants to leave. He's not even allowed to talk to us about leaving until 30 minutes are up.

- Sometimes, what they're looking for is control over their own environment. What about giving him a choice of a new museum or a new playground to visit?

- DS6 will usually need advance warning and a warm up period. What about telling him a few days in advance that you'll be going and talking about some of the things you'll see there? Maybe even find some pictures of the place and read up on it?

- What about promising his favourite activity when you get home? We tell DS6 that if he's really good while we're out, we'll play Lego with him when we get home. We even sometimes promise to pick up a small souvenir at the museum or science centre or whatever.

As for food, here are some ideas:

- Establish a rule that they have to try at least one bite of all new foods. That's it. We don't even suggest a second bite.

- If they are enthusiastic and have a real bite or two, they can have a few M&Ms or a bowl of ice cream or whatever for dessert. DS6 now loves avocado as a result of this trick!

- These smart kids will often respond really well to the explanation as to why it's so important that they eat lots of different foods - all the vitamins and minerals our bodies need, and all that.

- Books about picky eaters - Tales for Very Picky Eaters, The Picky Little Witch, Green Eggs and Ham, I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato, and How Martha Saved her Parents From Green Beans are some of our favourites. Of course, then you have to plant the books...

Wow, listing all of that and having used other techniques again, it really makes me realize how much work it has been at times!

Ok, good ideas here. I should try to leverage teachers and therapists a bit more than I do. I try to be very selective and sparing with that; maybe I should work that angle a bit more.

If there are no magic answers, so be it. I'll just brace myself and carry on. It's also a bit heartening to hear that my kid isn't the only one who does stuff like this, and it is as exhausting as it seems.

Individual answers (sorry for the epic length, hope I'm hitting it all):

Early on (two years of age), we instituted the 'at least one bite of everything on your plate' rule and did leave things alone if he took a good-faith bite of a new food (as opposed to nibbling the tiniest possible micro-molecule etc). We continue with this. Even still, getting him to take that bite is often a 30- to 45-minute struggle. Seriously.

I tried artful arrangements of food a few years back, when he was around two--I got an alpha-numeric set of cake-decorator's tools to cut letters and numbers out of cold cuts and cheese slices. He would admire the letters, gleefully read the words I spelled with them, read off the cheese numbers, sometimes even rearrange them...but he would not eat them. At that point I abandoned the technique (cleaning those tiny metal molds was a complete PITA) but you raise a good point--maybe I'll have more success with the concept now that he is older.

As for dessert--we have instituted two sure things: a home-baked cookie on Wednesday (and he helps me bake them now, and he decorates them too) and his choice of dessert on Sunday. He gets these two weekly treats no matter how he behaved during the day, and no matter how well or poorly he eats. The notion here is to show him we keep our word and we carry through, whether it's about something he likes or something he doesn't. We want to be careful using food as rewards because my husband and are both very overweight. We use them, but we only give one food reward for every four non-food rewards (toys, Harry Potter chapters, supervised Wikipedia searches, etc) and are desperately looking to expand the non-food-reward options.

Also? This kid does not recognize the transitive property of food. For a long time, he would eat goldfish crackers, and he would eat pretzels, but he refused to eat pretzel goldfish crackers. I wish I was joking, but I am not. So, each iteration of a food is essentially a new food to him. For example, he now eats grilled cheese sandwiches (and boy it was work getting him to accept those), but last week he refused a grilled cheese sandwich he ordered at a restaurant because it had visible grill marks on it. (The ones he eats at home have no grill marks.) Only after a lot of coaxing did he deign to eat a quarter of it. The situation is utterly crazy-making at times.

If I ask DS what he thinks of a new food just after he tries it, he will, without fail, tell me he doesn't like it, even if it is clear by the look on his face that he likes it and just doesn't want to admit it. We deal with this by sticking to the 'try one bite of everything on your plate' rule, even for things he's tried and disliked before. (Research shows that kids need to try a food at least 15 times before they decide they like it.)

Sometimes we do give him choices of places to go, but it doesn't always work. If given a choice between a place he knows and one he doesn't, he picks the one he knows. If given a choice between two places he doesn't know, he will refuse both. We get around this by saying he's going to go to New Place on X date and signposting it and foreshadowing for a week ahead of time. (We will sometimes ask his ASD therapist to write what's called a Social Story, which is just that--a story that tells what will happen on the day.) That prep usually kills any initial refusal but he'll sometimes refuse to go on the day and we have to deal with that tantrum and get him over and past that. (sigh)

We have explained (always when we are calm) that it is important to eat a range of foods so he can grow up healthy and strong. He essentially agrees and understands but this evaporates when he's faced with his longtime enemy, string cheese, or the dreaded tofu snacks.

As for books! Will look into those titles, thank you. DS loves Green Eggs and Ham and has for ages, but its message has not sunk in. DS likes its wordplay far more than its ending. Even still--Mo Willems has the new world-beater on this topic: I Really Like Slop! DS LOVES LOVES LOVES it. We got it about a month ago. I hope its message will sink in... no luck yet.

And yeah, during all of this, we are working with him on politely expressing displeasure with food. In the last six months he became a rampant 'yuck'-er and 'ewww'-er. (Sigh again)

Ah! We have won the bathroom war, at least. Racing him there always works. (Whew!) So does telling him we won't leave the house until he's used it. He HAS internalized our belief that being late is not allowed. He's closing in on 450 days in a row getting out the door on time to go to school. Yay!

I wonder what would happen if you stopped asking/making him try new foods? Maybe there's something about having control that is the attractive part for him. Just a random thought.

Is he in school yet? We did find that our picky eaters (and both have been, although the younger one is far more so) improved in willingness to try new things after they saw children their own ages eating or doing those things.

You are not alone! In fact, reading about your DS makes me realize that our DS has made some progress. So take heart, it does get better!

We try not to discuss it. We remind him of the rule and we remind him that there will be a consequence if he doesn't eat it. Maybe no Wikipedia searches that evening? I realize that we should try to use positive reinforcement where possible, but you also have to do what you have to do. We remind him that there are rules and they have to be respected. Once it's established, it becomes part of the routine. Of course, I recognize that it can take a loooong time to get there.

I get that one, for sure. We also use sticker charts at the end of which there is a bigger reward. Pokémon cards work well in our household.

Have you ever heard of Superflex? He has helped us through a lot of situations! You just need to google search. And also, the book Your Fantastic Elastic Brain really helped.

Good luck! We're in the same boat and it always helps to share these tips and tricks. Even if just one of them helps...

Actually, this really backfired for us. After a while, both boys came home saying "I don't like olives." "I don't like hummus." "I don't like dates." Needless to say, we found that one quite frustrating!

That's an interesting idea about backing off making him try new foods. I'll float it with his ASD therapists and see what they think. Maybe I frame it as getting a summer break from trying new things. I'd still want to nudge him to continue to work with foods we've introduced but he hasn't yet accepted. I also feel it's important to put a firm end date on the break. Thank you!

He has been in public school since fall of 2013. The good news and bad news: peer pressure has virtually no effect on him in general, and no effect at all when it comes to food. When he started pre-K I sent bags of pre-cut apples (Crunch Pak brand) to school with him in his backpack to share when the kids had breakfast. (I wanted to make sure there was another breakfast option for fruit/veg beyond orange juice.) When I asked at the end of the year how that had gone, his teacher told me he had gone the whole school year being the only kid in the class who refused to eat them. (He does eat them now, no problem. I'm not exactly sure what got him to change his mind. It might have been getting apple slices in Wendy's kids' meals.)

As for consequences for not honoring the one-bite rule: That's another problem. This kid doesn't have much in the way of currency. I could try linking the three Wiki searches to it, yes, that's an idea.

Have not heard of Superflex or Fantastic Elastic brain--will look into those, thanks!

Oh! Meant to say---glad things have gotten better, but when? When did they get better for you all? Just curious.

Re: trying new food-make a plate of it for yourself or someone else and he will immediately want it Works for us! Be prepared for ups and downs--my DS will eat the same thing for a week and then not want it again for six months (and then he'll be appalled that you don't have it on hand!).

Unfortunately, making a plate of whatever-it-is-new-food for myself does not make him want the food. He'll ask what it is I'm eating, but he'll only ask for a taste if it's ice cream or something that looks like potato chips, crackers, popcorn, that sort of thing. (Pout)

That said? Once he has accepted a food, he rarely turns his back on it. It only falls out of favor with him if I stop serving it on a regular basis.

Sorry to keep belaboring the thread but I felt it important to say--when I send a batch of challenge foods off for his ASD therapist to use in sessions at his afternoon day care, I make sure there are things in there he might like: chocolate-covered blueberries, different flavors of Goldfish, and watermelon gummy rings are in there with hummus dip and mandarin orange cups and tofu snacks and the like. Same deal when putting new foods on his plate at home. He gets credit for trying new foods, period, full stop. One of his most famous refusals is peanut M&Ms. LOVES plain. Fought many attempts to get him to try peanut. Finally did. I think he liked them but won't admit it, because of the peanuts.

Things are still in the process of getting better, because it's not all behind us. But we've made a great deal of progress in the last year and food is much less of an issue now than it used to be for DS6. That said, we still have some other challenges that bring me to tears from time to time (and I have posted about it on this forum!). And it goes in waves - we'll have a few weeks of "easy street" and then the drama rears its ugly head again.

About the food: Have you thought of slowing down your efforts? Is there a reason why he must eat tofu? Are you vegetarians? Because otherwise, you might want to wait and come back to it. It's quite an acquired taste, and you could perhaps wait a while. From what I understand, kids' taste buds do take some time to develop so you could come back to some of the more challenging foods later. And we're always told that you don't want your kids to develop an unhealthy relationship with foods.

And also, it sounds like there's a very broad spectrum - from tofu to watermelon gummies and Wendy's kids' meals. Maybe if you tried to slowly phase out some of the more sugary/junky foods, his palate would adapt to a different range of foods? This is in no way intended to be a criticism (hey, our kids get M&Ms and such), I'm just wondering if it would affect his overall eating habits.

In any case, good luck!

Interesting, thanks for that RRD. Glad you're having progress with him.

As for the tofu...we're starting to eat it ourselves, and the ultimate goal is giving DS the same meals that we eat. We realize that's a way-down-the-road goal. Right now he sometimes gets deconstructed meals--when DH and I have tofu stir fry, DS gets red pepper strips, rice, a piece of broccoli, and we alternate between giving him a chicken hot dog or asking him to eat tofu.

DH and I are now talking about giving DS some time off from trying new things, based on a suggestion upthread. We're working out the terms before running it past DS's ASD therapists.

As for why the spectrum of foods we have him try is broad--we'd like to expose him to a decent range of things while he is still young. Some of them are practical--we want him to get to like cheese so he'll accept a cheese sandwich if he forgets his lunch and needs to take the school's default lunch. That sort of thing.
Another aspect of practicality--we have to limit what he's offered to try at his afternoon center by what's shelf-stable and nut-free.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

I resemble that remark. Parenting DS6 has NEVER been simple. And I would never want to suggest to anyone else that I have a simple solution to their complex parenting challenges. Cause there just isn't one.

I have a personal rule that if I ever find the words "why don't you just..." coming out of my mouth, I stop, apologize for being an asshole, and leave.

I think our girls must be related!
In retrospect, I can tell she was picky from the get go. As an infant, she forced me into breast feeding every two hours, round the clock. The midwives suggested I try to put her on a schedule with longer breaks, 3 to 4 hours (DS9 had taken to a three hour schedule like a fish to water, and slept 6 hours at night from two months on, so I knew it should be doable), but there was NO WAY with DD. She insisted on those round the clock snacks for over a year. I could almost breast feed her in my sleep, simply shifting her round from one side to the other, going to sleep with her feeding. She tried to refuse her purées when we introduced them at 6 months, by 9 months she'd grudgingly accept them as long as i wasn't around and no nursing to be had. No one EVER managed to get that kid to take a bottle, by the way, not even with breast milk.
When she was nine months, I needed to go to work full time for a few weeks and DH had a hard time keeping her fed. We went to the seaside on a weekend, sat on a beach eating fries from a paper bag, 9 months old DD on my lap. I hadn't noticed how quiet she had gotten. When I looked down, she had her head in the paper bag, eating up the fries. It remained on of the few foods she'd eat for many months.

Almost a year later, we decided to work on ice cream - we were in Italy and I was so tired of the shocked and suspicious looks we got from people when she threw a screaming fit over being offered an ice cream cone. She was eating chocolate by that time (for some reason, that one was easy), so we ordered chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce and chocolate flakes on top. We started her on the flakes, that went well, then suggested trying a bit of ice cream with the sauce - All of it chocolate....she was very suspicious, but it was one of those "hey, they're right, I do like it!" experiences.

A few months later, I had found the Dorfman book and we started her on her very first microscopic bit of mushy carrot. Five hours of screaming, and she never managed to swallow that day. Thankfully, while we have had lots of truly impressive choking and gagging fits, we never had barfing. Though Dorfman has a line for when that happens as well in her book (it Is apparently not so uncommon among the kids she sees, she has ASD kids as well): "oh dear, the food fell out. We will just have to try this again tomorrow". And then try this over again every day, with a microscopic bit of the same food. Apparently, it is her experience that somewhere within that time frame kids stop throwing up and manage to actually notice whether they like that food they were so afraid of or not.
I don't know how one would survive two weeks of barring at the dinner table, though.

How DID you end up feeding your daughter? You must have gotten to the point where her eating was a serious health risk, like we did.

Shockingly enough she has somehow survived on her very limited diet. She now eats most carb and dairy based foods. She'll eat certain fruits and veggies (not a huge variety but better than none). Meat is the biggest challenge - she's still very picky on that front. She will now eat some cookies, cake and ice cream but she's still suspicious of even slight variations of them.

She's always been tall for her age, she's not heavy but then again neither is her brother or cousins (she's actually pretty solid compared to two of her cousins). Cognitively she seems to be quite fine and she has energy galore. Ironically enough the only major illness she's had was salmonella that she contracted on vacation down south when she was 20 months old. Best we can tell she got it from the birds that landed on our table/glasses when we left it unattended. The only local food she ate that week was bread and water (we brought other stuff with us for her because we were worried she wouldn't eat anything there). The reason why we left our table so much - a month before the trip decided she was never going to wear diapers again and potty trained herself in a day so between her and her 3 year old brother we made a few trips to the bathroom during meals. She's a fun one Hopefully she can mostly harness her stubbornness for good rather than evil.

I feel for you on the BF part - neither of my kids would take a bottle. DD nursed constantly as well, I also became very good at sleeping while she ate. Love the story about the fries. DD's first crackers were ones that she stole from DH while sitting on his lap as well. I guess it had to be on her own terms (stolen).

Good luck! I really hope they all figure it out eventually.

I have been following this thread with interest- my now 14yo DS is very, very similar. We too had the gagging and barfing at the table when he was small, so much so that we backed off on forcing anything, just did a lot of (mostly unsuccessful) suggestion and modeling, cooking together, gardening, all that stuff.

I was about to write that things really improved as he got older- he is much more open to trying new things, though it is still uncommon that he actually likes them the first few times around. Eating with peers has definitely helped- he is on a team that likes to eat out, and they prefer Asian style restaurants- he has tried all sorts of things with his buddies that would never fly at home. And now that he's older, he has several vegetarian cookbooks and a couple on nutrition for vegetarians, as well as a few vegetarian friends at school, all of which have helped somewhat.

As I mentioned, I was about to say things improve, when I got to unpacking today's lunch- uneaten homemade pizza, uneaten homemade applesauce, water bottle untouched. He did manage to eat the berries and a fig bar and a yogurt- so that's a win in my book. Somehow he has managed to grow to 6 feet tall despite his limited choices, so I guess something is working.

Hang in there!

Wow - I'm really groking this thread! My kids are so much - all of this- I thought just my family was weird LOL!

DD11 - other than the nursing was a picky eater from the get go - hated all the baby cereals, baby food, pretty much everything. And we have tried everything - nothing works. Even brought in an OT and nutritionist who claimed to specialize in feeding issues. Well, all that money to confirm that she has sensory issues and a preference for "crunchable-meltable" textures. Good to know, but they were not able to offer a lot of useful suggestions.

The only things I've noticed so far that are helpful - trying different restaurants, especially buffet-style. For some reason she seems more relaxed and open to trying things when we eat out - and the buffet lets her try little bits of things to see if she likes it. I've been surprised at the different foods she'll order/try at a new restaurant.

Cooking with her - sometimes works, sometimes not. Often she'll have fun making the food, then try it, tell me it's 'good' and then not touch it again.

Gardening - worked OK when she was little, now she's afraid of bugs. (We have anxiety issues)

Sometimes we visit a farmer's market and I let the kids pick out fruits/veggies to try.

Once we participated in a mother-daughter group cooking class - I was astonished that she participated in and tried everything, including beating the eggs for a caesar salad dressing, which she then proceeded to eat!

For some reason, the things that work are expensive!

DS8 also has sensory issues, but kind of in the opposite way to DD - he's hypo-sensitive in a lot of ways, but does have a good appetite, so food isn't really an issue there.

Both kids have a resistance to parental suggestions. I discovered early on that _I_ could not teach them things - if I want them to learn something we have to contract that out (art, music, swimming lessons). If I have a suggestion for how something could be done better, I pass it on to their teachers and ask them to discuss with the child.

It's frustrating, especially when there are books or movies I'd like to share with them that I think they'll enjoy. Almost all my suggestions are rejected. My kids refused to watch any Star Wars movies for years (DS because it has the word 'War' in it). However with the new movie coming out, DS finally agreed to see the (original) first movie - DD came in while we were watching and stayed to watch - now they've seen them all, including the cartoon versions on Netflix.

Anyway, stay patient - I'm sure it gets better eventually- I'm still waiting...

The rigidity you describe is all very classic ASD behavior.


Yes, it is exhausting.

We forced the issue a lot (which is not standard "good parenting" and is also not popular with many ASD journalists either). This meant we carried a screaming toddler into the woods to go hiking (afraid of bears); we enforced the two-bite rule; we purposefully changed plans to something unexpected; we ran out of bread so that the "ends" of the loaf had to be consumed. We rode out a lot of tantrums but did not let DS's anxiety dictate our entire lifestyle. It got better.

I think that a person who is anxious about trying new things needs to learn through experience that new things are not typically harmful-- which means exposure to new things is the real fix. It worked for us, though it was absolutely no fun in the short and medium term.

My feeling is that if you don't work on it, you end up with an adult who still gets really anxious in restaurants and other situations where something unfamiliar is going on. (We have family members like this.) That's why we chose to invest in working on it, even though it was very trying.


Yep, BTDT. We rewarded with Youtube videos for some years--only IF the bites were done with no fuss. I think it was a worthwhile investment: DS can now cope in any kind of restaurant, though he will still always order the thing with the most familiar ingredients. I think this is an acceptable place to be, because it's functional.


We started with take-out, to minimize public fuss. (Then eventually you get there and the food looks familiar...)

IME having a choice isn't going to help much if what he's anxious about is everything (or everything unfamiliar). ASD makes a person's world smaller, principally through anxiety. We saw our job as parents as pushing to make the world bigger, over and over. Lots of exposure to lots of new things.

Eventually you get to the point where there are fewer things that surprise or freak out the person: they've seen Chinese restaurants before, they know there are several ways to drive home, they have read the required book and survived ...


That is as good a strategy as any. You may want to experiment to see whether the warning helps, or just gives him a longer time to be anxious. YMMV.

It is useful to work on various kinds of flexibility. The Floortime model involves engaged play, with the parent sometimes changing the course of the game. This is useful because it's a non-threatening arena in which to practice small instances of flexibility.

Every single time he chooses to be flexible (or even just copes) is a win and a brain-changing event. Even the tantrums are a learning occasion: this freaked you out, and yet you survived and nothing bad happened. That's learning (not fun for parents, but learning.)

DeeDee

Well, weirdly, things have changed for the better of late. Yesterday he asked me to schedule a dinner that he fiercely resisted once ('I want the roast chicken bits with the broccoli'--aka Mandarin orange chicken and broccoli).

He also tried rice cakes (offered by his therapist) last week and... went on to eat half the bag. Six of them. So I guess he likes rice cakes, then. Maybe we are turning a corner?