How to get my 12yo to eat!

[BeingATwatItsABingThing]

My DD1 has just turned 12 and she is testing my patience with food. If it’s crisps, chocolate or sweets, she’ll try it no problems. Veg or fruit and you’d think we are feeding her dog shit.

I’ve made her a cheese sandwich with slices of cucumber in it. Cucumber has got to be one of the least offensive foods in the world and we’ve had tears, meltdowns, actual sobbing getting her to eat it.

She can’t go through life only eating beige food full of sugar. She will eat bolognese or chilli but only if the sauce has been fully blitzed until it’s smooth. Flavour isn’t the issue and it’s fully textures.

Ah! Anyone been through similar? We’ve done rewards for trying new things and tough love.

Has she always been like this or is it a new thing?

She used to eat everything happily and then she was really sick as a child - must have been 1 - and we couldn’t get her to eat anything that wasn’t lump-free from then. We’ve built up to where we are now.

She’ll eat:
pizza - cheese only
hotdogs
chicken nuggets
chips
cheese sandwiches
peanut butter sandwiches
plain pasta
pesto pasta
bolognese (smooth sauce)
chilli (smooth sauce)
Yorkshire puddings

Fruit/veg:
boiled carrots
sweetcorn
broccoli (very reluctantly)
apples
grapes
bananas

Have you heard of arfid?

Yes my DS has been like this since a toddler but it's likely connected to his ASD and hyposensitivity. I finally gave in around age 14 because he was at least covering all the food groups and we had bigger issues to deal with.

Yes, I have. I did wonder about it for a while. I don’t know if she meets the diagnosis though.

I flip flop between thinking that she’s fine because I’m able to get at least some fruit and veg into her and thinking we need to tackle this because she’s not getting the right nutrition. She’s tall and very very slim.

First of all most children with sensory food issues don't want to eat things together. Why make her eat a cheese and cucumber sandwich- why not offer the different components. A butter sandwich, cheese slices and cucumber slices on the side.

Also she sounds like she actually doesn't have too bad a diet - eating broccoli and carrots is amazing... Maybe some of it is a bit too processed so try and get her to help make her own chicken nuggets. Then slowly move on to trying chicken without the batter/breadcrumbs.

Also multivitamins are important....have you seen the ads for EllaOla.

Also blitzing Bolognese and chilli is great because you can hide veggies in it....loads of carrot, celery and mushrooms?

I just find it quite sad because the rest of our family are really into eating out and trying new things but our youngest just can't. I worry about how it will limit their life experiences.

My DD was like this. It was totally texture. Found the solution was stir fried stuff with noodles. Offer her a roast dinner or a stew and she would starve.

She's not undernourished if she is tall. Malnourished kids don't get tall.

OP is writing contradictory things, her kid does actually eat F&Veg, says a latter post. The child's diet is not only beige and full of sugar.

You get to choose your battles. I wouldn't choose to battle over cucumber.

I’m autistic and there’s no way I could eat a cheese and cucumber sandwich. Cheese sandwich: yes, cucumber: yes but the cucumber makes the bread soggy and it’s just a no from me. If you’re worried about her weight, just let her eat the cheese sandwich, it has protein and carbs and to be fair, cucumber is mostly just water.

This is my autistic dd age 12 always been a nightmare to feed and I am convinced she has ARFID.

I did wonder if my child had it as she was at the time meeting the criteria, including weight loss. But it seems to be a stress issue and texture related.

The dietian said as long as she is fulfilling different food groups don’t worry. So my daughter eats a range of different proteins at the time so he said focus on any areas where she isn’t get her requirements. At the moment the big concern for us is fluid intake and calcium so I’m making lots of milly cups of tea.

Try some crunchy snacks like rice cakes and bread sticks.

I was very very slim at her age too. I had awful things like crunchy nut cornflakes with golden syrup, mixed fruit and milk and mighty white bread sandwiches with cheese and salad.

Have you tried taking her shopping with you to choose her own food?

I used to gorge on crisps and chocolate too but this was back in the day when you mostly walked everywhere - no free travel for teens!

Would she eat cheese on crackers or rice cakes? How about cheese spreads like laughing cow or seriously strong cheddar? What about dips like hummus or guacamole? You can homemake both of those. Could you try cooking with her so she can see what goes into meals and she can then make adjustments accordingly.

Tbf that’s not as bad as I was expecting

The only thing I’d say is give her vitamins if she doesn’t eat much fruit and veg, or Danone drinks. I used to get lots of cold sores and styes as a teenager and I swear it’s because I wasn’t getting enough nutrients from fruit and veggies.

That diet isn’t catastrophically bad - she is eating some veg, and there is a bit of variety with the main meals. Better than autistic 12yo DS - his sum total intake of veg is peas. Nothing else. If it’s a purely texture thing, then can she have veg blended into the bolognese/chilli sauce? And give her a good multivitamin.

Don’t make meals a battle, and don’t listen to folks who say “if she’s hungry she’ll eat” in attempts to get her eating things she can’t manage. With DS, he gets his safe foods while we eat something else (I batch cook his pasta/macaroni cheese/etc). We never try to persuade him to eat what we are having, but I get him to help cooking by grating cheese, cutting stuff up, and recently he has asked to try a few different things, so now we have a couple of new foods on the safe list. all done without pressure, tears or stress.

Offering some hope as a previously fussy child/teen. I had an extremely limited diet. I hated the process of eating. I used to dream about someone inventing a pill that had a full day's nutrition in it. The amount of pressure I was under to eat was awful. It didn't make me eat, it made me hide my not eating whenever possible. It made family relationships strained. And at no point was I told off about it. I just felt the gentle coaxing as overwhelming pressure. I felt I was in the wrong, that I was bad, disappointing etc.

Anyway I went to uni, obviously there was no pressure on me to eat at all and as friends took turns to cook different things for the group, turns out I started enjoying things I thought I hated - pizza, chicken, pork, fish, vegetables, salad, anything involving mince... I started eating it all. I'll eat anything now. There are very few things I don't like much, and nothing that I'd outright refuse to eat if I was served it.

So I guess from my experience, try to reduce the pressure, coaxing, arguments, bribing etc. You can't force another person to eat. Your job is to provide decent food. Your DCs job is to eat what they're able to

She likes a cheese sandwich and she often puts foods together when she doesn’t want to eat one of them as much. She’ll eat her carrot with a chicken nugget or put the sweetcorn on her pizza. I thought she’d prefer that.

I am very much someone who likes to eat my food one component at a time so I don’t mind if she does that.

She has a chewy vitamin each day.

Yes, we blitz it with tonnes of veg in.

My DD would definitely go hungry rather than eat something she doesn’t love.

She does eat some but not exactly wide variety. My point was more that she is completely unwilling to try anything outside of her quite limited selection. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.

She’ll have cheese on crackers and rice cakes with butter/peanut butter. She will eat stronger cheddars but prefers milder. Definitely wouldn’t eat hummus or guacamole.

I might try and get her cooking. She did it at school but she wouldn’t eat anything she’d made.