Food, should we or shouldn't we!?

[lovelyboy]

Hi all
I need advice please!
Me and my son had a fight last night because he has become so limmited in his foods that he wants to eat that he didnt want to eat what I made for supper....
He always ate the chicken I made....now suddenly he doesnt want to eat it anymore....He used to love fish fingers, now he wont touch it...not even sausage....He will now only eat it if it was barbequed on the fire.
He only wants to eat 2 minutes noodles, or chicken nugets or chicken patties for supper.....Ham and cheese for lunch and cereal for breakfast....He wil also eat eggs, some hamburgers, bacon and some potato wedges and certain type of fish. Thats it! I cant keep on making 2 sepperate menu's!
Oh and he will eat rusks and bread....and off caurse sweets!
He doesnt eat ANY veggies or fruit! He is becoming over weight!
What do I do....Do I leave him to starve until he eats what we eat?
Or do I say....ok some ASD kids has limited food what they are willing to eat and give him chicken nuggets every evening!
He wont settle for just trying one bite of something new! He is rigid in that thought!
How far do I allow his rigidity in this matter and how far do I need to push!?
Any suggestions.....Rewards and that kind of stuff wont work!
I just want to know if I must give in to this behaviour or must I be firm and say that he eats what we eat or he can go to bed hungry.....

[susiestar]

There are a lot of differing opinions on this. Personally, no fruits or veggies meant no sweets here. At one point I got them totally out of the house until the kids ate them regularly. Wiz was furious, and picked a lot of fights, but I didn't give in much.

Your son is almost 9. He is old enough to clean up after himself. Why not keep sweets/junk food to a minimum, make dinner and if he won't eat what is for dinner then he can make one of 2 things for himself and he must clean up after them completely - ALL the dishes and wiping up spills/microwave/toaster/whatever. My kids could make a sandwich, heat up leftovers from a previous night, or microwave something simple if they hated what I ate for dinner. Of course by 10 they were making dinner for the family once a week simply b/c I feel independence is healthy and it let them experience working hard to fix dinner and then having people refuse to eat it, make comments good and bad, etc......

I felt we had enough problems that fighting over what the kids ate wasn't a battle I usually wanted to fight. There were times where one of the kids would refuse to eat what we ate for weeks and I would get sick of it, or they all wanted to make something different every night and then I would insist they either eat what was for dinner or go hungry for a few weeks. Sometimes it just became a problem to have all 3 of them making something different every night, kwim? Mostly I didn't/don't get into what they eat simply b/c we have enough other things to battle. At least we did with Wiz.

As for trying new foods, I know Marg had some success with getting gfg3 to try new things, and her ideas seemed really great. I have also found that many kids will try things on pizza that they won't eat on anything else. Esp if you put the cheese on top of the veggies or whatever and they are chopped up fairly small.

There are also some books out about how to sneak veggies into foods, and I know several moms of spectrum kids who swear by this. For example you can make a great chocolate cake with tomato soup in it - and can sneak pureed veggies into all sorts of things. I think one book was titled something like Deceptively Delicious. Personally I have done this for myself b/c I DETEST the texture more than the taste of many veggies, and pureed and put into things I don't notice and I get the nutrients I need. I also use part applesauce or mashed banana for the liquid in pancakes, and other things like this, to increase the nutrient value of them.

FYI, if you mash bananas and freeze them in an ice cream freezer, or in a container in the freezer that you stir every 1/2 hr or so, it makes an amazing, creamy, rich ice cream. Nothing else needed, just bananas. As mostly I hate the taste of health food, saying this is great is saying something.

I have also found that involving kids in the cooking process, and in the choice of what is served for meals and in portion control, increases their willingness to try things. Not for every kid, of course, but it cannot hurt to try. You can also make your own mixes in very little time and it really increases the nutrient value and decreases the unhealthy things in the food you serve your family. I can suggest some recipes and books if you are interested. Plus it is cheaper than buying mixes in the store, amazingly enough.

I do know where your gfg is coming from though. I must confess that I am a FAR pickier eater than any of my kids. FAR pickier.

[InsaneCdn]

Forcing the issue makes it worse. At least... that's happened in every case I know about.

But I totally agree that you don't need to be cooking two completely separate menus.

Breakfast shouldn't be a problem by the sounds of it, so load that meal with all the high-nutrition elements, including eggs. Other than vitamin C, eggs are about the most complete "dietary supplement" known to man. In the developing world, an egg a day will actually be "prescribed" for a sickly child.

After that? Some combo of what's available (on the table - your menu) and what the kid can provide for himself, works.

And then... you ARE allowed to get creative.
Kids who won't eat veggies will sometimes eat frozen ones... still frozen. Same food value, but frozen veggies don't taste like veggies and don't have the texture of veggies. They taste... frozen. Works particularly well with peas, corn, and diced carrots. It would at least be "something".
You are allowed to "hide" one food within another - this is not the same as forcing him to eat it. Example: if the kid will "only" eat mac'n'cheese, you can add pureed veggies to the mix without the child knowing. White veggies (cooked cauliflower) and/or cheese-colored veggies (sweet potatoes, carrots) are necessary so they can't be "seen" - sorry, no way to hide broccoli!
You are even allowed to play games with food. I know a mom who would rave over a detested veggie, then leave one small piece on the edge of her plate (toward the picky eater who was beside her)... leave the table to "get something" while loudly proclaiming that "that piece had BETTER be there when I get back"... and lo and behold, the kid snitches it just to get a reaction. Manipulation? sort of, but in a healthy way... the kid still "chose" to eat it.

[susiestar]

Also make faces, animals, etc... out of food. OFten the novelty will get kids to eat. You can also mix pureed veggies into various dips and get kids to eat. My kids often would eat food with 'dip' that they wouldn't any other way. Dip was ranch dressing, barbeque sauce, tomato jelly, sorry, y'all call it ketchup (still is a fruit mixed with sugar into a sauce, imo), spaghetti sauce, etc....

If he likes dip, try fondue. You can mix a LOT of veggies into tomato sauce/spaghetti sauce and let him dip cheese and whatever into it.

Use his favorite color to fool him - add some food color and make the food the color he would like. Jess hated milk at one point but she LOVED blue moo juice. WHich was milk with a drop of blue food color in it. Cause it wasn't milk, it was moo juice ya know. I would get a half gallon of milk just for her and put the food color in it either while she was asleep or before I brought it home from the grocery (did it in the car) and she thought I bought it that way until about a year ago. That stage lasted a couplle of months, but she never caught on that I colored it before I brought it in until a year ago.

[MidwestMom]

This is complicated when a child is on the spectrum. Sonic was/is like this too, even as an adult. And you can't make an adult do anything he doesn't want to do. But as a wee one we tried REALLY HARD to get him to eat things that he didn't like. Often, the food repelled him. He usually threw up if we forced him to do it. We never did find a way to make him eat anything that he thought was "gross" and just like your son, he could love, say, tuna fish one day and say it was "gross" the next and throw it up when forced to "take a bite." Guess w hat happened the day we made him true a vegetable at a restaurant...haha!!!!

[DDD]

Sorry you are having this issue. Frankly I never had to cope with it except in a limited way. The only two rules that I ever made and enforced were these (1) everyone sits at the table together at dinner time..even if they are not hungry.(2) if anyone strongly dislikes what's on the menu then after clearance from Mom they can make what they choose to eat at dinner time. Cleanup mandatory.

The issues were different at my house. Those time periods (length of time varying from a couple days to a couple of weeks) usually were for attention or to avoid family or whatever?? None had a serious problem. Otoh, lol, sitting at the dining table watching everyone else eat and chit chat wasn't fun and usually soon the empty plate before them would have a celery stick or something just because they were bored. The mandate to decide prior to dinner cut into their afternoon freedom and took away the drama from meal time. Hope you find the "right" answer. Hugs DDD

[TeDo]

I wholeheartedly agree with the "don't battle" ideology. Gfg1 is horrible with eating. His diet consists of maybe 5 things for awhile and then it changes to a few other things and he no longer "likes" the other 5 anymore. He goes in phases. I taught him how to use the microwave many years ago and usually make extra for him to warm up. I have always let him eat whatever he will eat and we don't really keep sweets or junk food in the house. Because I worry about his dietary needs, gfg1 takes calcium supplements and a multivitamin every day. My philosophy is that as long as he eats healthy food, I don't care what it is and no one 10-20 years down the road is gonna care either.

[aeroeng]

GFG in training is also a very very picky eater and only eats chicken nuggets, max and cheese, cheese only pizza, and salmon (but only with a lot of catchup, yuk!). He will eat carrots, and corn but only if it is fresh and still on the cob.

I found an article that stated that very picky eating is now a new eating disorder. It is not like anorexia because they don't have the body image issues and frequently are heave, they just limit what they eat. Usually to relatively bland foods. One possible reason was that maybe food taste differently to them. That flavor might just tastes bad to them. Texture and consistency can also be a problem. I keep reading the article with bated breath waiting for what actions I could take. They never provided any. They said many out grow it and do learn to eat better when grown, but not all of them.

We don't fight the issue. GFG in Training has been trained on how to make his own foods, and has been for several years. I also always show him the nutrition information to encourage better choices, but I don't fight the bad ones. He will eat ham if sliced very thin. So we make sure to have salmon, ham, carrots and catchup around. I also make sure he eats a multivitamin each day. We also keep the sweets around the house to a minumum. But, you would be supprized at how easy it is to get candy from school, friends and other places. He is also overweight, but is slimming down a little. My mom is very judgmental regarding this she thinks it is terrible and last Thanksgiving was a nightmare. But I still need to do whats best for my son, and I don't believe that a high level of punishment would help.

[recoveringenabler]

My younger sister only ate creamed corn, hotdogs, cereal, mac and cheese, cheese only pizza and bread growing up. She was thin. She is a thin adult woman, however, now she eats everything. My brother was the same, ate an extremely limited diet and grew up to eat everything. My parents, like many of you, did not push the issue and they grew out of it on their own. I do know some adults who are that limited too. I like the way DDD handled it in her home, it sounds to me like a plan that would take the 'charge' out of the issue.

[StepTo2]

My kids don't like beans - as in, bean soup or refried beans.

I love them... Being from the border.

So, I make them. Beans go into chili (blech, my version of chili is beanless, but whatever it takes). Refried, I make alongside tacos... And a bunch of them get mixed in with the seasoned taco meat.

SHHH. Don't tell them.

Pureed carrots in spaghetti sauce... I did once have Jett tell me he would NEVER eat tomatoes, but adored spaghetti sauce and ketchup. I just smiled.

In fact... You can sneak peas, cauliflower, and broccoli, pureed, into tomato sauces and chili. And I make zucchini bread... Kids HATE squash but inhale zucchini bread. Go figure. Spinach goes into lasagne...

Jett doesn't like most fruit - bananas and sometimes apples. I sneak other fruit into "banana" smoothies.

I am one who DOES insist on the 2-bite rule, and I won't make a separate dinner. A while back, I made enchiladas - and I made a special batch for Jett, with cheese/cream sauce, no onions... He made a snarky comment about how next time I would just have to make him something else. DH went OFF. Told Jett to shut his trap and then (more nicely) told me I'd not be making Jett different food EVER AGAIN. OK. Easier for me!

DH also loves to make kielbasa and sauerkraut. And he's awesome at it. Jett hates sauerkraut. I compromise when I make it, and rinse it lightly... DH refuses to. A couple of months ago Jett actually threw a fit... And DH was superstressed at the time and threw Jett's plate into the back yard, told him when he got hungry to go out there and eat... If the dog left anything. I've not seen DH do that before or since. I've also not heard Jett complain about food since... He eats it and then he knows he can have other stuff.