To despair at dd12 eating habits?

Except there are other indicators it may be an ND issue - not just food.

I realise OP is talking about more than the odd meal but what I’m trying to say is trying to satisfy her child every single meal is impossible so she should cut herself some slack.
I had a family meal last night and pretty much everything served I couldn’t eat. I went to bed hungry. Sometimes that’s okay

Agree with most of the advice here (the good bits!). Don’t pressure her or go Victorian parent. It will not work.

Agree with letting her eat the safe foods and gradually introducing other stuff with minimal remarks and fuss. Also agree with vitamins.

On the snacks I’d also recommend basically not having the really junky ones in the house. We just don’t buy sweets, crisps and and biscuits. Stuff the kids get from parties usually suffices and I will make a crumble or a cake at the weekend. We also have crackers, breadsticks, cheese, nuts, dried fruit, toast etc the kids can have basically whenever they want (not 5 mins before dinner!). But this appeoach has to be for everyone, not just her.

Oh and it’s not your fault. I have 4 kids ranging from “will genuinely eat everything” to “would eat doughnuts and cheese sandwiches every day if allowed”. Birthed/ weaned/ brought up exactly the same!

I meant sometimes what we want or fancy isn’t available. Or there’s not enough of it etc. Sometimes it’s ok to have a sub standard meal and we survive!

Let her have the meals she wants, she isn't doing it to be Awkward it's likely making her really stressed at mealtimes.
I would cheer fully ask her each week what she would like, gently explain about nutrition and then just get on with it, she will be stressed enough outside of her home, let her feel safe in it with her safe people ie you, if it makes you feel better give her a gummy multi vit, and go with it.
Please be kind, it's hard enough trying to fit in this world, I know from bitter experience, be her safe person, not her adversary.

Your DD does sound ND to me and I would 100% include all these food issues in the forms and information you provide as part of her assessment.

However, whether she is or isn't, ARFID aside, it sounds like this is a challenge and you are right to be thinking about what small things you can do to improve. I have a fussy eater who is NT but who does have various intolerances that have contributed to this and so we have a few things we are working on.

1. I have discussed overall health with her and how important it is to try new things, be diverse. It has been slow but she is learning to at least TRY things. In most cases, she won't then eat them, but she learns they're not terrible and tries again the next time. I even had her eating small salads with olive oil and balsamic vinegar for a while there!
2. She eats a LOT of spaghetti bolognaise and hidden-veg-tomato pasta because that way I can get the balance of meat/veg/pasta right AND up her nutrition. I made bolognaise for the family yesterday and froze 3 additional portions for her for days we're having other things. She probably has this at least twice a week.
3. The few veggies she will eat by themselves - carrots, corn, broccoli - make an appearance at any meal that is NOT pasta based.
4. Can you find something higher in protein that she WILL eat that is a better snack option than bread/sweets? eg, in this house, between DD and DS (he's not fussy - just hungry ALL THE TIME), we get through quite a lot of things that can be put in the airfryer. So for DS that is crumbed/battered frozen fish portions or high quality fish fingers, or pre-made frozen fishcakes. And for both of them it's crumbed chicken steaks (chicken kiev without the garlic butter!).
5. On that note - really boring protein can be helpful. Cooked chicken breasts, sliced. Ham (ignore people who tell you it's likely to kill your children), or even sliced beef etc. Biltong! Cheese.
6. I up fruit variety by putting it in her lunch box. Might not work at secondary. the other way is to create fruit smoothies or fruit smoothie bowls.
7. Actually (and this is a trick I haven't used enough but need to). Find influencers she likes who occassionally do food, or food influencers aimed at her sort of age. I'm doing this a bit more with DS to get him to move away from fish/chicken in air fryer. In DD's case, it's what has led to smoothie bowls with a few teaspoons of granola occassionally, and it's also allowed us to create chicken burgers with avocado as a meal option, or for snacks/lunch boxes.

My DD sounds very similar to yours. Nearly 12 and very picky. She recently started eating potatoes, and I was so over the moon!

Even if they have sensory issues (which I’m convinced that my DD does), I have found that a balance between catering to their desires and gently encouraging other food is the best way to go. It’s a very tricky balance to strike!

i serve everything in separate bowls on the table. If sensory issues are a problem, even encouraging them to lick the food, without swallowing it, to acclimatise to the flavour, has been recommended to me by a health professional. This can take away the scariness of having to swallow it. Obviously the ultimate goal is swallowing it in the future. but it seems like painfully slow baby steps is the way to go for long-term acceptance of a wider range of food.

I’m 49 and I have never learnt that I can’t have what I want at every meal.

if I don’t like it, I don’t eat it.

the good thing about being an adult is that no-one feels able to apply any pressure!

(although mil etc did get fed up but I’m bloody amazing at hiding the fact I didn’t eat any of her crappy food)

I have been the restricted 'fussy' child and I have 2 of them.
My youngest is on the pathway for a diagnosis, but eats very limited foods at home. The professionals have said 'give the same foods that they will eat, and a new food your eating on the separate plate and practice tolerating it on the table, not a suggestion it's even for them but to get it in their eye line nearby'.
My eldest isn't on the pathway and has improved, so will now eat some meals but it's taken 4/5 years of the occasional lick and plate tolerating before it was actually liked.

As a child I ate the same dinner everyday, now I eat a mixture of flavors but never different textures. I'll eat potatoes in a few flavors, but never as Mash for example.
Sometimes if I'm stressed I tend to eat the same foods on repeat again and I have only just curbed my habit of seeking out sweets when anxious.

The meal you've said about OP you say has a lot of healthy ingredients, that and broccoli with pasta is actually not a bad mix, ensure she eats an multivitamin though. We eat the ones like sweets, Savers have a good mixture of flavors. If she likes cheese then suggest cheese and crackers as a snack? Prepare snack pots in advance if she's seeking carbs.

Do set boundaries around dinner, you can set rules as long as they aren't going against what she can't cope with.
Get noise cancelling earphones, she has to eat with everyone and be polite. It will cause others to feel uncomfortable eating if she's sighing about them, and she isn't going to only ever eat dinner with family. She'll find herself in social situations when she's older where she'll need to have to coping mechanisms already in.place. Practicing this now may be hard for you both, but it will help her long term. Explain things to her at a different time so that even if she can't cope in the moment she is aware of the boundaries, and if it doesn't work some days it's okay there's always the next day.
Different strategies work for different people and without knowing her this may not be the best solution but figuring out how she sees things will help. My youngest is extremely logical so everything has to have a reason and a purpose.

why does she have to have ‘sensory issues’? Lots of people don’t like certain textures, tastes or the sound of chewing. It’s not unusual

My dd who is 16 is like this. There are days she will just want pasta. If she’s not eating what we’re eating I get her to cook it herself. I do discuss what we’re having for dinner before hand, generally the day before, so a) she knows what to expect and b) she can let me know what she won’t be having and will have to make her own.
How is she with lunches and breakfast?

Leave her be. She's 12 years old, so either going through puberty or about to go through it, and possibly autistic. That's enough for her to deal with without battling her parents over food.

I am autistic and your daughter sounds a lot like me at that age. My family took the view that the main thing was that I ate, which was the best thing they could have possibly done. Now I eat most things because their approach gave me the room to develop my relationship with food.

One thing that worked quite well for my previously picky children was to put serving dishes of food in the middle of the table and they could help themselves. So a big bowl of pasta, a big bowl of broccoli along with bolognese, a pasta sauce, a bowl of cheese, and some salad just sitting on the table with no requirement to eat any or all of it, seemed to loosen them up a bit.

My eldest DD was like this for years. Plain pasta, avocado, cucumber, yogurts, bread, cereal, cheese, ham, and about 6 foods she would always eat on a regular basis.

She is so much better now at aged 14 but it was literally a very limited palette and barely any variation.

I think being at high school with different lunch meals really helped, along with the fact she's just an adult sized person who needs more sustenance and variety.

It will be ok, OP. Solidarity, I understand. 💕

Teach her how to make a good tomato sauce, how to add veg, and let her own cooking / cook for the family.

ASD DD.. currently training to be a chef. I left her to it with her food, almost as she started high school. Got her to look up recipes, let me know what she fancied cooking, took her shopping, let her get in with it.

Just removed the pressure from meal times.

We are in a very similar position with DD 14 and are also awaiting ASD assessment.
She is a VERY fussy/picky and only really has 4/5 safe meals as such. The daily echo off

“what’s for tea”

Offer explanation of typical family night meal

“ok I’ll just make my own”

Is really frustrating.

DH is more lenient than me and is quite happy to cook separately for her and let her eat how and what she wants where I would like her to conform a little bit more so we could get some routine into meal times and variety into diet but I understand it’s likely linked to Autism and isn’t something she can control.

I think for me it’s the fact that she used to be able to eat and cope better with meal times, she would try more, understood the importance of fruit and veg in our diet as well as limiting things that weren’t as nutritious, she also used to be a lot more sporty and just healthier in general, in my head I just can’t comprehend that as you get older you become less bothered about these things rather than more.

She really only wants to eat plain pasta with cheese and brocolli, or instant noodles. She'll eat carabonara, bolognese and sometimes a basic chicken curry.

This is a long way off being the worst list of safe foods I have ever heard! She eats a green vegetable, she eats protein, she eats something with calcium in it and she eats bolognese with veg/lentils. Take your wins where you can find them! I would introduce gummy multivitamins if you think that might be possible. I mean they basically taste like sweets. And the only thing that is not a good meal out of those options is instant noodles just because they are so salty, so I'd probably try not to let her have those more than once a week. Could you branch out into some different flavours of instant noodles, perhaps and try a different one each week? Just thinking some new tastes that she likes may help her view food more positively.

Can you freeze portions of the food she likes ready to heat? That way the rest of the family can have something different (and maybe ask her to have a tiny portion on a side plate to try or not as she likes).

I would also limit snacks given that she is overweight, but when she is allowed one then it should be something she likes even if that is just carbs - just perhaps a smaller portion.

My son is a fussy eater he doesn’t have any SEN, but has sensory issues around food, won’t eat fruit, won’t eat gammon anymore as too chewy. I could go on. He’s always been like this and I just have to accommodate him. They get to an age where they have to make their food choices. He always has the chance to try and eat other foods but I’m not going to force him into things he doesn’t like. As he’s grown older he hardly eats sugared foods, just eats the min of foods he likes. So yes this is a good ten years of a lot of seperate dinners for him but I’ve never seen it as an issue.

This is what we did with DD2 - bit less organised but over years.

She still a fussy eater but eats a mostly normal diet - though TBH her older two siblings who once ate most things have also gotten more and more fussy with age.

My dd is a very fussy eater and I sympathise.

I tend to sneak nutrients in where I can. She likes a smoothie at breakfast so I buy frozen berries and she will make a smoothie for breakfast. I make soup once a week and blend it till smooth. She will cucumber and carrot sticks but hates cooked carrot will eat carrot soup. For my dd it's definitely sensory and to do with textures and smells. I find that she has often decided not to like something based on the colour, texture or smell. When she was younger I made chicken korma at home every week which she ate so we tried eating out at an Indian restaurant. The Korma came and it was a different colour with almond flakes on top. The rice had some seeds in. She wouldn't eat any of it. She will now try new versions of chicken korma so it is improving. She is just highly suspicious of food in general. I used despair at the "just expose them to it 10x" advice from the health visitors. 10 years later and we are still trying to consider a roast parsnip which looks very much like a roast potato....and in fact has been eaten by accident and not even noticed.

*32 steps - apologies - chunky fingers 😂

Nobody is suggesting OP starves her child. But ND or not , the child has to learn that we can’t always have what we want at every meal. So I agree with being relaxed about the pasta etc etc and not making meals a battle, but it’s not a big deal if sometimes the child doesn’t get a full meal as long as there’s a snack available. She’ll go to bed a bit hungry but not starving

I'll share what worked for my severely autistic son, who developed food aversion from the age of 10 months to around 8 years old. He's definitely not a connoisseur of foods these days but he has made so much progress that I no longer worry about his nutrition.

Introduce a new food - not at dinner time. Just a random time of the day. Make it casual. Have a small bit of the food on the plate. Say what it is. Get your child to look at the food, ask them to touch it. If they won't, don't stress. Try again later or the next day. Progress to them picking it up, getting used to how it feels etc. Ask them to smell it, touch it to their lips, pick it up. All with no pressure. Gotta stay chill! Last step is for them to taste it. This process can take weeks for one food.
My son has gone from a child who only ate jam sandwiches (!) to eating spag bol, fish and chips, roast chicken, even steak!

Please please be patient.

Your child isn't doing this to be awkward. It is often genuine anxiety and/or sensory issues. Imagine someone putting a plate of worms in front of you and telling you had to eat it or there's nothing else. That's the fear a lot of our nd kids have.

My son (2) has a paediatric feeding disorder, currently tube fed but having private feeding therapy to try to improve this.

have a look at the 12 steps to introducing new foods.

basically you start with tolerating a food on the table, then progress to poking with a fork, then finger etc etc all the way up to eating . You do this with EVERY food .

its a loooonnnggg process, I’ve been doing this for a year now and my son will currently taste 24 foods - from absolutely 0.

the key is to take the pressure off eating and make it about exploring, it’s hard and frustrating and I’ve cried many tears , but with persistence it’s doable xx

I commented with my perspective as someone with ADHD but as others have already said, it doesn’t matter if it’s a ND or general anxiety.

My niece isn’t ND but is quite an anxious child and a fussy eater, despite my sister offering new foods and restricting snacks. We started making pizzas with her; no tomato sauce and v few toppings on hers but she helped add them to pizzas for the rest of the family. Over time, she tried the tomato sauce and then some of the other toppings, increasing the range of food she eats.

Pressuring her wouldn’t have worked, even though she’s NT. It would just have caused her more anxiety and further entrenched her habits.