Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Food Issues

Our DS is tall and skinny. So skinny that the slim sizes bunch up around his waist when I stretch the adjustments to the max. Since he's tall, he has fallen between sizes. His waist is more of a five slim but his legs a seven.

Which leads me to the topic.

He is so picky about food and has been since he was eating out of a jar. I've followed all the suggestions that say to continue to offer a food that's been rejected, and eventually, the child will accept it.

Ha.

I'm embarrassed to say my son eats the same thing day after day for his school snack. Anything new (as in, not his status quo) comes back. The school must think we have atrocious eating habits around here!

He's getting protein, carbs, fiber and dairy; but the "players" are the same 'ol ones.

We can't seem to put our finger on what is driving this.

I need help. Any suggestions? Should we just relax and be "child-led" on this?

FWIW: He has no issues with animal products or colors/textures and doesn't complain about mixing things together. Oh, and we DO limit junk food...but aren't fanatic about that. He tends to eat every three hours.

Sounds exactly like our DS7! Sorry, we haven't found anything that has helped the situation.

My DS6 is a fussy eater, and always has been. We tend to follow child led eating. When I was a child I had to eat whatever was put in front of me- it was torture. All force feeding did was create a hatred of certain foods My son only likes five different vegetables, so he eats a lot of them, spread between lunch and dinner. He eats one piece of fruit a day (I rather he eat veggies than fruit). I have explained about the healthy food pyramid, so is pretty good at making healthy choices. He also doesn't enjoy most red meat products, so he eats fish and chicken.

He didn't have any junk food until he was nearly four; and now he only has it about five times a year. He has never had any soda (I believe Americans call it). The same will go for my 15 month old.

We found that a "child-led" plan for our DS10 (2E, Asperger's) became narrower and narrower, eventually a same-dinner-every-night compulsion that was limiting and unworkable. In our experience, it is possible (though not fun) to work on this problem.

At our house anxiety about food goes up and down in parallel with stress and anxiety in other areas. However, we have made huge progress in this area.

I reached the point where I really got tired of dealing with the food. We changed the rules: he had to eat what we eat for dinner. We set a minimum number of bites he HAD to eat before being excused from the table, and a higher number he could eat to win a reward (at first this was YouTube videos, but it changed over time and has long been phased out as unnecessary). Every time he took a bite that was difficult for him, we made a big positive fuss (high fives, big smiles, adoring comments).

We had yelling, crying, complaining, and hateful comments at the table, but he ate. And has continued to eat. Now the range of acceptable food is larger; he still gets anxious or eats too slowly with unfamiliar foods, but he is eating them, and the range is continuing to increase. He surprises us with comments. ("I like tacos." !!!!) We are going to *restaurants* now, with pleasure. What a change. After we worked on dinner, we worked on related issues with lunch, especially going through the lunch line at school and tolerating the school cheeseburger that is not just like the cheeseburger at home. It worked.

Critical to our success was that we really worked on flexibility in play and in other activities first, before tackling the food problem. He needed to learn that flexibility first, or I think our dinner work would have failed completely. And because his ABA therapy program taught him to obey instructions and hang in there for a reward, we were able to follow through on the food issue.

I do think that solving the food problem is important, because it limits a person's social world to not be able to eat in restaurants, or be invited to dinner and know they might not be able to eat what’s there. It is part of the overall project of raising a person who can be flexible enough to participate joyfully in whatever comes along in his life.

For our other kid (long story), we have had some success with a feeding clinic, where they specialize in behavior modification around food. That's another perfectly valid way to go. If it's anxiety, the overall behavior change will support changing the food behavior, and it may be better to tackle the overall problem of being flexible across the board first.

DeeDee

My D is 18... and still an incredibly picky eater. We haven't really gone down a specific "child led" plan, although I infrequently serve food she doesn't like. Sometimes she just has to cope -- for example, she doesn't like spaghetti sauce, so I let her just eat some of the noodles without it and some garlic bread. I try to serve a salad I know she will eat with it (there is ONE kind, and they changed the texture of the dressing recently so even that one is dicey) or carrot sticks or some cut up fruit. I have stopped buying full fat ice cream (there is half fat & juice bars in the freezer for dessert if she wants them). I am not sure what she will eat in college next year, trying not to think too much about it. I doubt she will actually starve. She may have to get to the point in life where she has some health problems due to diet before she decides to work on it herself. Like many other things in her life, she will only seek to improve it when SHE decides she wants to. We haven't had any luck in rushing her much on other topics, this one is no different. Wish I could tell you it all gets better in the teen years, but not really in our case.

I will say she has taken to eating a few surprising things over the years. She likes grapefruit and tandoori chicken and turkey bratwurst. Who knew? So I guess serving a lot of different foods did allow us to find a few (in the multitude) that I could keep in the rotation.

That's a good point, intparent: trying many different kinds of meals allows an opportunity of finding a favourite. I would ask my son to try a bite, but if he doesn't want it I won't force him to eat it.

Also, when I do find a meal that he likes I add extra vegies to it. Homemade hamburgers gets added avocado (on top of the usual salad). Vegetarian lasagne gets pureed vegies added to an already vegie packed meal. (I am vegetarian so I have a lot of vegie meals as it is. Sometimes he chooses to have my vegie sausages or schnitzels, which adds extra to his diet)

My kids have food intolerances, the youngest is the most severe. The eldest (aspie) was an exceptionally picky eater, total refusal of solids until 2.5yrs and then very carefully guided to a fairly decent diet and some reasonable manners by 8.5 yrs. At whixh point we put the whole family on he elimination diet when trying it for the youngest, and low and behold the eldest lost all the foods she'd never wanted to eat in the first place. Making her food is a pain in the proverbial, getting her to eat is no longer quite so hard... And she has less tummy pain, gets sick less and behaves better.

I do think that solving the food problem is important, because it limits a person's social world to not be able to eat in restaurants, or be invited to dinner and know they might not be able to eat what’s there. It is part of the overall project of raising a person who can be flexible enough to participate joyfully in whatever comes along in his life.

That is COMPLETELY true.

I also think that there are some kids who are simply immovable, too, though. My DD hates vegetables, and it doesn't matter how many ways we tell her that they are: a) safest, b) easiest, and c) the healthiest choices that she can POSSIBLY make with respect to food (and they are-- processed anything is higher risk by far), she'll go after carbs and processed meat/cheese every time instead.

At nearly 14, I don't see us really budging her on this one. I'm waiting until I can dance around her and tell her "I told you so! I told you SO!" when she develops the early signs of scurvy. That's probably not going to be my proudest moment as a mom, but I may do it anyway given all the grief she's given me over the years.

In terms of getting her to eat over that 6 year period - no power struggles ever. Especually at the beginning we passed no comment on how much she ate beyond "Wow you were hungry today!" if she ate well. As she got older and more reasonable we made progress to enforcing having a taste of new things (and earned her trust that we never made her eat more if she didn't like it) or eating at least a few bites if foods we knew to be acceptable to her (yes you MUST eat some carrot today). We offered primarily foods that there was some hope in hell she might eat and always had something on offer she WOULD eat. We rarely offered food that was clearly never going to be eaten (except in addition to safe foods).

Solving the food problem is important, but I don't believe having to do so for social purposes. You don't have to eat out, and I will never eat the mushrooms someone serves me at their house.

Nor should I have to. As an adult, I have had a certain person try to force me to eat mushrooms, they cut it up into tiny pieces and tried to disguise it. I could taste it, and I was furious that this person tried to exert control over me. Meanwhile, they are vegan, and I am supposed to respect their choices and not secretly add dairy. I now don't eat at their house.