Do you agree with parent A or parent B?

[KitKat1985]

Right I'll try to write this impartially. DD1 is 4 and has autism. She is not really that interested in a lot of foods, and a very fussy eater, and subsequently is slim, almost bordering on the skinny side. Because she's not very interested in food, she tends to come to the table at meal times and eats for a bit and then wander off to the sofa or to her toys still nibbling food from her plate. Parent A keeps telling DD1 that she should eat at the table with us and her younger sister as it's polite and good manners, and also makes less mess. The problem is that DD1 tends to refuse to come back to the table and has a meltdown the more the issue is pushed, and then refuses to eat anymore at all either at the table or anywhere else. Parent B thinks in the grand scheme of things and wider context of DD1's autism the priority is for DD1 to eat and that it's better for her to eat on the sofa etc than not much at all, even though it's not ideal, and that parent A needs to relax about their 'only eating meals at the table' rule. Parent A thinks parent B is being soft and encouraging bad habits, and is fed up of cleaning food mess up from all over the house. Do you agree with parent A or parent B?

It depends on a lot of things and the child,my son is severely autistic and has learning disabilities,he won't eat.a conventional meal at a table ,I tend to give him a selection of dishes and let him help himself,people need to understand that autism is a spectrum and affects people differently , I don't why people who have no experience of autism bother to post .

Thank you WBCCOSR , I couldn't articulate what I wanted to say.

OP If you leave the gate open so to speak, your DD will find their way back to the table and may well just conform in their own time. My DS started paying attention to conforming at about 4.5 for the first time, which really surprised me, but wow did it help. He started to copy peers, and made some big leaps in development.
She may not, who knows, but making it a big deal isn't going to help.

A lot of children with ASD can't be 'taught', but they gradually pick up on things by observing consistent behaviour by others. This is why my DS eats well at school, and can line up etc. It is absolutely necessary at school for them to have rigid structures, or it would be chaos. Thankfully they're flexible where necessary with DS.
If we ran our home like a prison camp, I'm sure he'd conform a lot more to expected behaviour, but it would be miserable for him and us.

I hope I didn't offend anyone by having a rant jumping in when I don't have a DC with autism, but some of the more general, really disablist, comments on the thread really annoyed me.

Obviously, some issues can be "improved" by various approaches or therapies (eg my DC had speech therapy) but people making sweeping assumptions as though everyone is the same and everyone really can just "overcome" or "learn to overcome" any issues they have is ridiculous. Plus the awfulness of comments like no one should expect any special rules or shouldn't be pandered to makes a mockery of the whole concept of reasonable adjustments and the Equality Act.

Parent B

@WeBuiltCisCityOnSexistRoles

Not at all. You managed to articulate what I was too fooming to even try to say.

Thank you.

Thank you max

Love "fooming"!

Wow. Any adult human who knows about autism will say parent b.

My son is not underweight - thats a red herring- and i let him eat wherever he likes. He will come to the table for a bit usually but he is never expected to hang around. If we're in a restaurant and he has finished eating he chooses to go for a walk round the block (he is a teenager now).

You can't push your "usual" arbitrary expectations with ADS kids, they don't need to be fixed.

I'm a bit your battles kind of parent. I have 4 Childers in a small age range and two with ASD.

We have similar issues with one of ours. He's looks quite skinny but is on on the 20th centile for both weight and height. He has ADHD as well and is medicated for that which is where the weight issue is a problem as he is just over the weight they prescribe from and his weight does dip.

Similar issues, favourite food is raddish, wants to eat raddish, cucumber, raw onion, peppers etc all day everyday. None of which help the weight issue, his favourite sweets are polo mints so we are not winning at the high calorie food they encourage him to eat. We have the opposite problem from our other child with ASD in that he eats anything and everything, soil included. He doesn't stop eating although not overweight.

I just choose my battles, He can go days with no eating, he can make himself sick if he gets upset, he will just refuse food, so I just don't think it's worth it.

That made me smile mummy ds2 loves nothing better than a bag of green salad from the supermarket ,which would be great if he wasn't so tiny and underweight his paediatrician and dietician have both recommended a high calorie diet, he has a lot of ice cream ! Are joys of autism.

@MAXnot73
I'm not sure what to say to you. Nuance doesn't always come through in a Mumsnet post.
Yes, I taught severely autistic primary aged children for 20 years. I was successful, empathetic and flexible in my approach, and, to be frank, though it sounds big headed (I'm only saying this for context) the parents loved me and frequently asked for their children to remain in my class beyond the 2 years standard period, because their children made so much progress and were so much happier at school. New parents would ask the head if their children would be in my class because I had a great reputation at the local autism parents' group (though I'd never been there).
Relieving their anxieties (both children and parents) was my main aim, and the rest grew from that.

I'm recently retired, but parents of some of the children still keep in touch and frequently say what a difference I made to their children's and their families' lives.
I had the best job in the world.

I apologise if I've worded things clumsily on here. I originally only came on to advise the OP to get some help from school to work on a programme to help her child remain at the table (and eat better)
I'll bow out now.

Parent B. Autism runs in my family. So does disordered eating.

Eating disorders are particularly common amongst people on the spectrum, so I have worked very hard on not letting food be a battleground.

I originally only came on to advise the OP to get some help from school to work on a programme to help her child remain at the table (and eat better)

In our case we agreed with ds's LD CAMH worker and dietician who said to try to avoid getting the school involved in helping ds with his eating....after they made out he was eating all sorts of adventurous foods when we tried school dinners ('today Hazeyboy ate all his cottage pie...' say what?!)....made comments about the fortified drinks prescribed for him, that stopped him drinking them.....moved him from the table he shared with his classmates from the Complex Needs resources base to a mainstream classed table, because it was 'more inclusive'....and made such a fuss about eating sandwiches befire his yoghurt pouch, that he would roll them into balls and squash them into his pockets to avoid eating them. But according to their report to the paed for his ASD assessment...."Hazeyboy has no problems at school with joining his peers in the lunch hall and eating a variety of foods".

the come abck to the table parent is a fucking dick head.

pick your battles. what is most important? eating or sitting at the table.

do continute to work on sitting at the table, but do this with rewards for any of the time they sit there. praise, telling them they are good at it, or backwards chaining. (they sit the last two minutes? building up more time.)

your child has a disability. concentrate on what the most important life skill is.

ds eats where he will eat. often other posters who are having difficulty getting their kid to eat are horrified that he eats in front of a screen.

works for us though and makes life enjoyable not a battle for at least part of the time.

sometimes he does not want to eat. sometimes putting the food down where he can pick at it if he wants works, sometime we just leave it til breakfast. (he likes eating it at breakfast) He has usually had plenty of snacks, a school lunch and gallons of bloody milk.

sometimes he is in a bad mood and threatens me with not eating anything.. fine I say, your choice. don't give me those smart alec answers is his reply. he usually eats.

we eat separately due to our sensory needs. we still manage to eat out in restuarants reasonably politely.

teeth cleaning on teh other hand... still a work in progress.

I agree with parent B. Autistic children don't respond to rules and discipline like 'normal' kids. Let her eat on the sofa. Fuck the mess.

Parent B is correct, IMO. It’s far more important that she eats.

I'd agree with parent B. Would toys at the table help her sit longer though?

I'm a TA working with children with autism and I've had a few where we've sat at a table in the classroom eating lunch while colouring or playing with lego. I had one boy who would only eat if he sat on the floor having a tea party, so that's what we did. Sometimes you have to pick your battles and food refusal is not something you want.

That's exactly how it should be @SadOtter ,last year my son used to get very anxious going into the hall at school to eat his dinner and he used to want his dessert first so they took him into the hall 10 minutes before everyone else and gave him his main course an d dessert together he would then eat both courses ,he would have a spoon of main ,spoon of dessert etc it's all about adapting to the child .

Ds eats his packed lunch in the office (his choice of location) as he refuses to enter the hall at all other than occasionally for assembly or PE