Do your HFA children make you feed them?

[hereidrawtheline]

My DS who is HFA/AS 2.6 is perfectly capable of feeding himself physically but he wont do it. He wants us to feed him still and he says "what's coming?" and we have to make up a story like "its an astronaut and he's looking for his spaceship" (the end thing the food is looking for is his tummy) It is the only way we can get him to eat any food that involves cutlery.

If you think he is just playing us like a fiddle please be gentle on me he really wont eat his food unless we do it. He does have physical coordination issues but I feel if he really tried he could manage a spoon at least a little more than what he is doing.

Is this pretty typical of ASD children? The specialist who DX him said it was but I wanted your opinions too.

Also he is very helpless. He doesnt try to do things he is totally capable of doing but want you to either do it or do it with him.

[5inthebed]

HIDTL, I have to feed my ds2 as well. Sometimes its the only way I can get him to eat! Doesnt go down well when we are eating out though

[lou031205]

Sorry, hereidrawtheline, I don't know on this one, but didn't want your post to go unanswered. As I have said before, DD doesn't have a dx of ASD, although I suspect one may come in the fullness of time in some shape or another.

Haiving said that, could you try half-way house? Sometimes, I say to DD, "I'll load it up, you stick it in". So I would put the food on the spoon and she would then take it and eat it.

DD can often say "I can't do it" if she isn't sure of something, but I don't know if that is normal for her/ their age or to do with the SN.

[luckylady74]

This probably happened with my as ds1 up to the age of 5 on and off - I think it was a combination of being stuck in a routine (as in he's loathe to give up any routine because that scares him ) and him wanting to eat faster than his co-ordination allowed and then he'd get bored too.
I allowed him to eat with his hands for a long time because his fine motor skills are poor and he's left handed.
I also encouraged him to be like his younger siblings.
He now eats very well with a fork on his own - cutting up his food is problematic, but we've come a long way.
I would say that 2.6 is very young and that my nt just turned 4 ds2 blethers on instead of eating, panics that he'll miss pudding, and then asks me to 'help'!

[amber32002]

Will he eat things that don't involve cutlery, or eat other food if he can use his finger rather than cutlery? If so, that would suggest perhaps he's actually not coping with the feel of the cutlery in his mouth and is using the interaction with you to 'get him through it', to distract his attention from its hardness/coldness/whatever.

Do you face him and use eye contact during meals? That in itself might be a very stressful things for a child/person with an ASD, and again they might be using a familiar game as a way to cope with the sensory overload from that too.

What happens if it's finger food and it's you sitting next to him quietly and not looking directly at him?