Wow. Soo much I wanna say.
Background:
I have multiple life-threatening food allergies, and spent extended periods of time in hospital for asthma as a child. (enough I got all nostalgic seeing a kid at the hospital library with her in-hospital tutor, I did most of a couple or three years that way ;)).
My son has one mild non-IgE mediated allergy (yup, non-IgE, still a true allergy, just a different kind, rashes and blood oh my, oh my, but a different timing, and little chance of true anaphalaxis, but don't get me started on THAT. Key point: does not show up _consistently_ on skin prick tests, if he has others, they will be impossible to id except through challanges) Oh, and he has brittle asthma, he may not get true anaphalaxis, but anaphylactic asthma, yes, entirely possible
My son has two (count 'em) OTHER medical conditions which shouldn't, but possibly could cause discomfort when eating. Neither is generally considered significant, but there's that little "but" in there. And, there's two (FCOL)
So... I'm pretty convinced by the argument that REAL physiological issues can lead to food aversions. Absolutely convinced that that is often the problem... and our case looks like it MUST be something real, after all, exactly how many possiblilities did I list up there for physiological causes?
Also important: my son is NOT a picky eater, he is a light eater, who has failed to gain weight/height in a way that meant we had to address the issue. He has always eaten a wide variety of foods, just one bite of each. That includes cookies and cake.
Erm... actually, there's one more possible physiological cause...
Longstanding habit.
As far as I can tell, once we hit a certain threshold of getting him to eat decent sized meals regularly, he suddenly wants to eat more. As if his stomach was simply not prepared to accept reasonable volumns of food at a sitting.
Getting him over the threshold happened when we started the power struggle. And we're definitly not out of the woods yet, but he's beginning to eat most meals by choice now, and is increasing the size of his meals by his own choice. This is awesome. He ate an entire taco for dinner tonight.
So, I can ALSO see why parents get into the power struggle. They tell you over and over that a kid won't starve themselves. They tell you that at the appointment IMMEDIATELY before the appointment in which they suddenly say "Your kid is starving himself" It's really, really, NOT TRUE. Most kids won't but some do, for a variety of reasons, and reasons asside, SOLUTIONS may involve a power struggle.
Life is more complex than "always trust the kid" or "they're just trying to get away with it." In our case, I suspect, there is a VERY HARD thing that our three year old has to learn to do NOW. I'm trying to respect how hard it is for him to stop doing other things to eat, and how hard it is or at least may be for him to actually swallow. I am NOT going to respect his efforts to exercise his preference to not eat over eating. I need him to eat. That's all there is to it.
(in case you're getting too worried, he has gained weight quite quickly since he started eating, so we even have a little room now for backsliding and having to restart,
