to think this food advice for 3 yo from paediatrician is ridiculous?

[JustCleo]

3 yo DD is going through the assessment process for autism at the moment. One of the many things she struggles with is food. She has never eaten hot food and will not touch it. She has a very limited range of foods which is reducing weekly because she gets fed up of the same things repeatedly. The only things she will eat are:

Cucumber
Peppers
Grapes
Pepperoni
Cheese
Crackers
Crisps
Cake

At her last paediatrician appointment I mentioned how her diet has become more restricted than previously (she used to have 4-5 more foods she'd eat) and the paediatrician didn't seem to think her diet was that bad. She said to give her cake and crisps more often to keep her weight and energy levels up Currently she has them 2-3 times per week maximum.

Aibu to think this is crap advice?

If anything was added to ds's food,he'd smell it before it left the kitchen,he sure as hell wouldn't eat it and then would no longer eat one of the few things that he finds acceptable because that would "contaminate" that item for ever more. It's really not as simple as mushing stuff up and sneaking things in.
Ds never eats the last of anything purely because he needs to know there is something in should he want it so if I was down to the last bar of dairy milk and he hadn't eaten all day he wouldn't eat that bar until there was a second bar in. It's really comple xand difficult and it's most definitely not faddy or fussy eating.

Eek, Insanity, is he OK with the 'new improved' Dairy Milk, or are you down to even fewer things now?

Lancelottie, he accepted the Dairy Milk recipe change without comment no idea why because he's never eaten Wotsits since they changed from Golden Wonder to Walkers or Jaffa Cakes since they changed the J on the box New and improved is usually gutting for me as it signals another thing off the list,that said change of packaging is equally problematic.

Dixie ds was like it from the off at one point dh travelled sixty miles to Sainsburys and back when we were on holiday to top up ds's supply of Sainsbury's Alphabetti spaghetti (he'd eaten the twelve cans I'd taken with us and wouldn't eat) He could spot the difference with the other brands we'd tried before even tasting them,it was the same with sausages and burgers although he doesn't eat either sausage or spaghetti any more..

Yes Dixie it started developing when dd2 was about 8, she is 13 now. Don't even think about repackaging in an emergency, she has a freaky ability to tell.

It is not hard to hide all sort of fruit & veg in cake.

It may not be hard to do that but it can be difficult to get a child with SEN to accept that food and can lead to refusal thus reducing their already restricted diet

The hiding it is the easy bit, the challenge is getting the child to actually eat it

Ds wouldn't even eat cake of the non vegetable laced variety so that would never be an option here. If he did eat cake he'd know with a glance or even a sniff from afar whether anything had been added that was outside of what he normally ate.

It might be relatively easily to fet the child to eat the cake unless he only eats a certain brand of prepackaged cake.

Courgettes, honey, and dates go very easily into cakes, for example.

Ds won't eat cake at all anymore since he had one with butter icing in where he could taste the butter.

He won't eat "dippy" eggs after living on them for a year because someone else made him one and it was a bit too runny.

I think until you have lived with it its hard to realise just what an impact it has!

Read the thread people!

The OP's child will only eat a specific shop bought branded cake
Likewise a specific brand of crackers, cheese etc.

Tampering with these foods has in the past caused even more restriction in the acceptable foods.

Has anyone else's child had a phase of the child vomiting the food back up if they thought there might be something "wrong" with it? We had phases for many years where ds would vomit if he thought he'd eaten something from the wrong shop,was the wrong colour (toast) had different packaging (no matter how well you tried to hide it)He never needed to stick his fingers down his throat just willed himself to vomit I think. It seems to have died a death thank goodness although perhaps I shouldn't mention it as most habits get another airing eventually

Ah sorry OP. Guilty as charged.

If you can't modify any of the foods he eats, what choice do you have but to give him more of them? What did you want the pediatrician to say?

DS1 has some weird rules about what he will and won't eat. Like DS2 he's a restricted, rather than a severely restricted eater. One small aspect of something's appearance is all it takes to put him off a food, though.

he also does the thing where he restricts himself to a few favoured foods, then becomes thoroughly bored with them. He used ot lvoe fish fingers and fried eggs. Not any more. He goes into a big rant when DS2 has a fried egg, in fact, as he's decided he hates the smell.

He decided last week that he doesn't like Maynards wine gums, any more. Completely randomly, of course.

I'm looking forward to the day he decides biscuits are boring. He has a bit of a biscuit obsession, at the moment, and there's hell to pay if he runs out.

Yes, we had the vomity thing. It was awful.

Yes, yes to
Tampering with these foods has in the past caused even more restriction in the acceptable foods

Biddypop I would really love that, yes please! (Did some on Early Bird and it explained why DS used to think kids brushing past him were hitting him, but not enough to be able to really put much in place.)

Regarding if it can / can't be a stand alone thing, a friend of mine in their 30's will only eat raw fruit and veg, any kind of junk food carbohydrate or other totally unadulterated carbohydrate, any kind of milk chocolate and the occasional cooked root veg. Nothing else. On the rare occasions I've been out with them to a restaurant they will order bread or chips and nothing else.

^ stupid me, forgot to mention, no SEN diagnosis but does get scared by loud noises so I thought general sensory issues???