My daughter will only eat chicken nuggets and toast (basically)

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DD(4) is so limited on what she'll eat now.

It really does consist mostly of (in meal times):
Chicken nuggets
Chips
Toast
Chocolate spread sandwiches

Her snacks do vary, but in terms of meals, we have so little to work with.

It's really getting me down now and stressing me out! Meal times are such hard work. Knowing her diet is so poor is horrible. Having her never sit to eat tea with the rest of us (other DC are good eaters) is hard, but she never likes what we're eating. And I do feel it is embarrassing now - I never thought I'd end up with such a horrendous eater.

Has anyone been through this? And have any advice?

My son (6) is the same and has been for years. He's on the ASD pathway. A lot of his food issues seem to be sensory based - mainly on smell.

The only things he'll eat for dinner are chips, waffles or toast. His diet, on the whole, isn't much more varied. He will eat berries/oranges/grapes, chocolate and some types of sweets, crisps, dry Rice Krispies, sometimes a very specific kind of cereal bar.

Every time I've mentioned it to the GP, they haven't been worried at all.

My advice to you is not to stress about it. Make her the food she'll eat, even if it's the same things all the time and you have to make different meals for others. Yes it's a pain but there's less stress this way. Occasionally I'll offer other foods to my son and he will recoil in horror. One day he might try other things but for now I just give him what he likes. He would genuinely choose to starve if I didn't offer his "safe" foods.

I would ask your GP to refer for ARFID to be investigated.

My daughter was the same at that age. She has ARFID. I didn't know at the time but she too was diagnosed as having autism, in her teens. At 20 she still eats a limited diet but has improved to include some veg now. I had a great health visitor when she was wee who helped me to to look at what she ate over the course of a week rather than a day, to include additional vitamins and fruit juice, and to try to buy the healthiest version of whatever beige food she would eat. She still struggles with textures and smells but at least can go to a restaurant and usually find something she can eat.

Can she eat her food but at the table with the family?

That was my daughter. Still is my daughter.

She is 15 and ASD.

She went off nuggies last week for
The first time in 10 years.

I’ve been through it. It was awful. I felt like such a failure.

But it wasn’t my fault - or hers - because she was autistic.

Serve her safe food alongside a component you would like her to eat (in a ramekin on her plate or divided plate if food touching causes contamination stress for her)

Give a good daily multivitamin (there are good gummy sweet style ones or even sprays if she won't take usual type)

Encourage interest and learning about food- let her bake cakes, watch chefs cooking through restaurant windows if she isn't able to sit inside for family meals out yet (places like pizza express/wagamama can be good), collect items from shopping list in supermarket, go to PYO farms in summer

I used to work with dietitians and they told me that children who would only eat a very limited diet very seldom suffered any ill effects. They told me that these eating patterns were typically the result of the child seeking attention and that the most effective tactic was just not to react. I've never had to deal with it myself but it sounds likely.

Why can't she join you at the table even if she doesn't eat the same? Has she always been so restricted?

I used to hide more healthy stuff and lie my tits off. my "cheesy mash" for example was that colour because it had carrots mashed in.

If I had my time over I'd never have introduced them to crap in the first place. Biggest mistake I ever made, showing them that chips and chicken nuggets bloody existed.

Mine both have autism and the best advice I can give is give them what they'll eat along with a bit of what everyone else is having. Just on their plate or on a side plate or a tray like mine had those metal trays with lots of different segments (prison trays I used to call them) because they hated different foods touching each other. Don't make a big deal out of what they will and won't eat, find a daily multivitamin they'll take and try to get them to have a drink of milk every day.

Look at your own expectations and really think about why you think something needs to be done a certain way. eating together round the table is a good example of this. It sounds like a good thing to aim for, family time, bonding, social, blah blah blah but if your child has a lot of sensory issues like my youngest always has you're basically forcing them to sit down and be tortured every day. It's cruel and unnecessary. Maybe they need a different environment and if so that's fine.

My daughter was similar but would eat grapes and occasionally strawberries. I
had to make her different meals from the rest of us, but we all always ate together. I had one rule which was if I made something for us, she had to try a tiny bite. She always said it was horrid and stuck to her nuggets and smiley faces! I always made her try and always said your taste buds might change. 😁

The rest of us ate lots of vegetables and had a very varied diet. I did worry she would never grow to love vegetables, but hurrah at the grand old age of 16 she started trying things and decided she quite liked them after all. Like a PP she suddenly went off chicken nuggets at 15ish. She is now 18 and a half and a fully fledged vegetarian who cooks numerous complicated vegetarian meals! So don’t panic OP keep making meals relaxed, eat together and maybe try to get her to just try a bite now and then of other foods.

My dd is 16 and for the last 9 months will only eat mash, peas, Yorkshire puddings and thin chicken gravy. The past week she will only have the mash and gravy. She goes off her preferred foods and it's so frustrating.

She loves chocolate (galaxy cookie crumble at the min) but she's been like this since she was little and I have suspected autism but drs just look blankly and don't say anything when I've mentioned it.

She has one meal a day during the week but at the weekend she might have the same meal twice a day. Her portions are tiny too. Things seemed to get worse after she had Covid as her smell and taste changed so her already limited food list got smaller.

Yes, that sounds like ARFID.

I have three autistic children and one has severe ARFID and one has a range of beige foods which he'll eat. DD eats anything.

She loves chocolate (galaxy cookie crumble at the min) but she's been like this since she was little and I have suspected autism but drs just look blankly and don't say anything when I've mentioned it.

Sometimes you need to push harder @MunchMunch. If you really believe your daughter could be autistic, at 16 she could probably do with the affirmation and self-understanding that comes with a diagnosis.

I agree that insisting that a child with ARFID sits at the table with the family is just pointless and benefits precisely no one.

My DS was like that at that age (he lived on chicken nuggets, garlic bread, chips and yogurts) but as an adult he eats everything and is a good cook with a healthy, varied diet. I cooked him what he would eat, put extra stuff on the plate and ignored him when he left it and then encouraged him to try stuff I was eating if he was interested. Weirdly if I was sat on the settee with a plate of something he would be quite interested in it whereas at the table it was just, no, not eating it. I don't think being fussy at that age signifies a 'condition' or a sign of being ND. My friends 5 year old lives on cheesy pasta and cheese sandwiches and is perfectly 'normal'.

This is my autistic sons diet too.

My autistic daughter is similar also. Very limited diet. She's actually vegetarian but doesn't eat vegetables. Luckily pulses are one of the few things she will eat. We spent years trying everything - she can sniff out hidden vegetables in milliseconds. It was only when she was diagnosed we realised there is literally nothing we can do about it. We still give her some of what we are having, which she can try if she wants (she inevitably doesn't want), but there are a few things she has tried this way. She is now 9 and fit and healthy despite the restricted diet. But yes, try and find a multivitamin gummy she will eat. It has been very, very stressful though. Holidays are difficult, finding somewhere she'll eat is a bit of a nightmare. So we've had to stick with self-catering/ camping.

My teenage DS will only eat a rotation of five evening meals. He ate better as a wee one but phased things out rather than eating anything new. He's growing like a weed, excelling at sport, and touch wood he's never ill.

I'm just waiting for him to be old enough to have a girlfriend who will laugh in the face of his pathetic diet. My own opinion doesn't make a dent and I've stopped fighting.

Insist she sits at the table, that’s a non negotiable in our house. And sorry but bin the chocolate spread. Get her involved in cooking and having small tastes with no pressure. And some tough love - her health is at serious risk otherwise.

My own DP was raised on fray bentos pies, pola cola and chocolate biscuits. He's a fine specimen of a man and eats a huge range of food now!

I spent years with ds sitting at family meals and trying to contain the chaos while he screamed, climbed, threw plates and generally lost his shit. We used to all the the same thing, screen free at the same time at the table. I got so utterly fed up of trying to get food in me while under so much stress ,it was horrible.
Now I make simple meals from a small selection of what anyone wil eat and while we are usually at the table we are all on separate screens and most of the time it's calm. I still get shit for feeding ds sometimes- getting the calories with low stress in is my priority . A breakthrough the other week was him asking me to move away from him while I was eating because he doesn't like the smell. He pretty obviously has autism but isn't diagnosed

@Jellycats4life
The problem for me is pin pointing her symptoms as I think she masks a lot of them but I've always felt something is "off" (which may not be the right word). She has MH/anxiety issues as well as smell/texture issues. She has no real friends at school so hates going in, thinks everyone at school hates her or talks about her but despite this she does well academically.

She says herself she thinks she's autistic but I feel like sometimes this gives her an excuse to be different or awkward but then I worry that she isn't acting up and that is her and she feels she can be her real self - such a minefield!

I'm just waiting for him to be old enough to have a girlfriend who will laugh in the face of his pathetic diet

My adult son has had several girlfriends but none had laughed at his pathetic diet.

I feel that there's a suggestion there that ARFID will magically stop if someone talks the person out of it, or ridicules them.

That's ableist talk.