To be surprised this kid’s parents haven’t been prosecuted?

[AngeloMysterioso]

Teenage boy goes blind after being allowed to eat crap for the best part of a decade (BBC News link)

I mean surely this is tantamount to child abuse, or at the very least neglect? How does a parent allow this to happen? I mean you don’t have to be a nutritionist to know that chips, pringles and white bread aren’t exactly a balanced diet...

So if he lived in a country with no processed food available what would he eat? Doeas his disability means he can only eat processed food? Of course u dont care if vegs are organic, it was an example. Any way you re obviously upset and not going to answer my question , i will leave you alone. No need to be rude.

Sorry but I can understand the eating disorder. What I can't understand is a parent knowing heir child has various vitamin deficiencies at 14 and fails to make sure they are taking the supplements they need - and if they won't take them I would have been back at the GP to see whether those vitamins could be injected. B12 which causes sight loss definitely can. How could they just leave it! There is no way on earth I would have just left it for two years with my son eating crisps and chips ffs

I don't get MN a child is left alone for 10 mins and everyone screams neglect, this horrific thing happens and everyone is "don't blame the parents". Weird place.

He has ARFID. That isn't just being a picky eater.

Venger, if the child only ever had proper food available, what would their safe foods be? If no processed food was normally available and their use not widespread do u believe likely their safe food would be normal dishes? Or the nature of the disability means only processed food are accepted even if the child doesnt know them?

This child didn’t have ASD, he was a picky eater. He was told when he was 14 that if he didn’t continue his vitamins and change his diet what the consequences would be but didn’t care then. It says in the article that his parents tried to get him to change his diet. Now he has gone blind and can’t study his course this has all come out presumably because he is an adult who is now suing the NHS. Hope he loses

He has ARFID, a recognised eating disorder. Calling ARFID "picky eating" is minimising exactly how serious it is. ARFID often exists alongside other disorders such as OCD, anxiety, ASD, etc. and given this young man has ARFID it is highly likely he has other unreported or undiagnosed issues relating to it.

Trouble is at 14 they think they are invincible. It is also this age that a lot of child diabetics go 'off the rails' especially when they can see no tangible effects. So everyone was just 'making a fuss' and it was all going to be ok. Except obviously it wasn't.

My cousin is from India and for the first 16 years of his life wouldn’t eat anything except potatoes, roti or raw carrots. No processed food was available in India at the time, but the potatoes were cooked fresh with their skins on in butter , the roti flour was wholewheat and fortified, and the carrots were from doorstop sellers who picked them just hours prior to sale. So he got plenty of vitamins.

Teddybear this is exactly what im trying to say.

if the child only ever had proper food available, what would their safe foods be? If no processed food was normally available and their use not widespread do u believe likely their safe food would be normal dishes? Or the nature of the disability means only processed food are accepted even if the child doesnt know them?

DS hated solid food from the moment it was introduced and his diet was 90% breastmilk until he was around 18m-2yo. The only solid foods he would eat were plain porridge, mashed potato, and plain yoghurt. He was happy to try other foods and was offered a wide range but would have one taste/mouth and then throw it away in disgust, getting upset. We tried purees, BLW, homemade baby food, shop bought baby food, then when he was old enough started giving him whatever the rest of us were having. His safe foods came from the things he did eat.

Neither of my autistic teens are quite as severe in their restrictive eating as some here but both would rather go hungry than eat something not trusted.

Today, neither greggs nor sainsburys had the Tuna and cucumber sandwiches that DS1 likes for lunch. Coop had one but he refused it. He declined my offer to make one (last time he accepted was Christmas day when the shops were shut).

Usually, if I make a cake, if I don't hide some, DS1 will eat the lot. I tried a new recipe, today and he completely ignored it, despite the lack if lunch.

He's back to school, tomorrow and, unless there is a dessert he likes, will eat nothing for the 11 hours from breakfast until he gets home because he's decided school food is disgusting. It's not. It's a non-maintained specialist school and the food is really high quality.

Meantime, he's refused all recent vaccinations and is barely complying with his CAMHS appointments. I attended his last one alone and he hasn't had his stats done for his medication for over a year.

@itson I imagine that the food would either still be limited to a very short list of bland food and texture or they would starve to death. If my food wasn't available I would starve. It's nice of you to insinuate that it's all my mums fault though, despite her having 3 other children who eat normally. Most children will eat normally and then their brain will get stuck on a developmental change and this is the result. I have been trying to improve my diet for 11 years and now eat a total of 7 new foods. Total number of food items I eat is under 25 and none of it is fruit, the only vegetables are potatoes and romaine lettuce. I take a multivitamin because I forced myself to learn to swallow lumps so I could take medication. That took several years.

@MiniMum97 nobody will inject screaming hysterical teenagers unless they are sectioned. You wouldn't have a hope of getting the gp surgery to do it if the teenager objected.

A limited list of bland but whole foods is very different from a limited list of processed food its quite obvious. And im not blaming mothers(or fathers) im saying there needs to be much better research and a much stronger push against processed foods being given to kids generally

I think for many children with ASD and other sensory issues around food, processed foods offer something that is the same everytime they eat it. It will always look the same and most of the time taste the same. That makes it feel safe and familiar to eat. For Ds who lives his life around very rigid routines and behaviours then a limited diet of familiar, mostly processed foods has allowed him to at least stay reasonably well fed. Not anymore unfortunately as he has now started to restrict his already limited diet.

It's very easy to comment on these situations if you have not actually had experience of them. As mentioned children with sensory and other quite extreme food issue have quite often got lots of other difficulties going on in their lives. As a parent when you are going through these other difficulties your main aim is just to get your child to eat something, if it's processed food that other people may judge you for then so be it. Its difficult to explain how hard it can be at times.

I was v irritated by the news reports today saying 'experts warn parents about fussy eating'. No context and parents getting publicly blamed.

It's frightening watching your child refuse food to the point of starvation and feeling so helpless. My, now adult, DS turned a restricted selection of foods into a severely restricted intake of any food as anxiety took hold. He was nearly 18 before anyone suggested asd was in the mix...and this despite his DB having classic Aspergers. Granted he was/is nothing like his brother and the autism was very subtle, but it would have helped him immensely if there had been an effort to address his eating problems instead of putting him on anti depressants aged 12 and being seen by an ever changing series of psychiatrists. He had sussed out the psychiatrists before they sussed him after a few meetings!

His eating is much better now,relatively speaking,and his weight is just about OK, though he still has lots of rigid 'rules' about what and when he eats. Nothing spontaneously. He's acutely aware of how this has restricted his life and most of the improvement has been down to his determination, as help has been almost non existent. He was refused help by the eating disorders team as it wasn't anorexia or bulimia!
It's not something children just 'grow out of',sadly, and it isn't parents' fault.

itson you come across like an idiot on the thread but to be fair I was you before I had my DS and you won’t get it until you live it.

My DS was EBF to six months, then BLW along BF on demand. He really weaned himself, his first food was a sandwich he plucked out of my hands, bit, chewed and swallowed. He went from there to eat straightforward adult food. I always cooked from scratch, we live in a part of the world that has wonderful fresh food and have our own veggie garden and orchard (we even have apricots, plums, cherries, etc all off the tree). He ate all of these fresh plus all meats and fish. He had no sugar till 2yo just like my DD before him.

Until he didn’t. He started dropping foods, typical toddler I thought and stayed calm. Then he dropped too many foods, then things got weird and he only ate a handful of foods, which were very specific, so not pasta, but a special kind of pasta with no butter or cheese. There was no trauma, no illness, no mechanical problem, no obvious emotional distress, just a young child that started dropping centiles and would go days without eating. Live with that and see how you like it.

He now eats an odd collection. Meat is only commercial chicken nuggets but also snitzel that I make from scratch, why I don’t know. Endless tomatoes and cucumbers but also tonnes of hard candy - good, sugar is energy, he can’t make it through the day on 10 cucumbers (it’s really fun going shopping for him). Bread he loves, but it has to be white with NOTHING on it or in it, a spec of sesame and it is rejected.

BTW many women with HG during pregnancy can only tolerate processed food, do you think they should just get over themselves?

I have every sympathy will this boys family. My elder child simply would not eat after weaning. She would survive on 2 pieces of pasta a day. We were in despair. If I could I would have force fed her. We saw a psychologist, dietician etc who while nice enough were useless. She was referred to an eating clinic at a hospital. She only started eating properly in her late teens.

Itson- you seem to have quite a poor understanding of nutrition if you think a diet of unprocessed potatoes and bread is vastly superior to a diet of processed potatoes and bread.

I have photos of Ds when he was under 1 eating plates of olives and moussaka on holiday.

I was very much a “I will try to feed my child a homemade healthy diet” type mum and it worked until he was about 4.

Then things started to go downhill so too right in introduced foods that I may not have otherwise. I wanted him to eat.

His diet now consists of apples, strawberries, egg, buttons ice cream and crisps. Sometimes He will eat peas or a bowl of salad leaves.

But actually although most of it is traditionally “healthy” in our cases that’s a problem because those foods aren’t going to cause a child to gain weight.

hazey just seen your post. Thankfully Ds has taken to the tube very well. We didn’t do NG because we knew he wouldn’t tolerate that but before surgery we had some play therapy sessions and he was very good about it all because he knew why it was going in and that it would mean we didn’t need to keep pushing as much with food.

He hated the cannula because he wasn’t warned that would be there so ripped it out but was fine the tube!

That article is TERRIFYING.

I had always vaguely assumed that even people with very restricted diets would somehow instinctively manage to avoid restricting to the point where serious nutritional deficiencies could set in. Guess I was wrong!

I wonder how often this happens?

I gather the lad also refused vitamin supplements.

I guess in a world of 7 billion that anything can happen.

NZ story about other youths trying to avoid same fate. I guess it was only recognised 6 yrs ago as a condition so no wonder folk don't know about it.

I must admit I was very judgemental of someone I know, whose child eats only pombears and drinks coke, and weighs 11 kilos at 4 years old - otherwise neurotypical.
This thread has been an eye opener.

I heard this boy's consultant on the radio last night and she said 'it is imperative that parents seek help'.

My child has been under the care of disabled children services and camhs since he was about 6. We see a paediatrician about twice a year on average. They have all nodded about my concerns about his diet but because he isn't very underweight (just at the bottom of normal bmi), they aren't concerned. None of them have ever suggested multivitamins or testing him for vitamin deficiency.

We had the same problem Sirzy Ds will.eat a bag of mixed salad which would be great but very few calories!

I would just say t if you are not in the parents shoes, it’s difficult to judge. Chances are this child had multiple other behaviours as well that the parents were trying to sort. It can be utterly overwhelming. My DS with ASD has a very limited diet, luckily reasonably healthy as processed food was never in his diet at weaning. He is painfully thin though. My DM once brought chips over for him when he was a toddler as she was concerned he wasn’t eating enough after being ill. He refused them, but imagine if he hadn’t and then just insisted on eating just chips?
I have had countless stand offs with my DS about it, tried every tactic. Recently I found out that he’d been pretending to take his vit tablets but in fact throwing them away for possibly over a year. So, with the best will in the world, things can go badly wrong.