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...

I don't understand why this has not happened to MORE kids tbh. I mean, LOADS of kids eat a lot of crap.

Must be some underlying issue.. surely?

How do you force them?

I heard about this on the radio this morning and I just knew someone would blame the poor benighted parents.

My daughter is 13 and doesn't have an eating disorder. But she absolutely will not take medication, not in tablet form and not in liquid form. I can't make her. Should I hold her down and force it into her mouth causing her to choke? That's assault surely.

So suggesting that parents of a teenage boy with an eating disorder 'just make him take vitamin supplements' strikes me as a very naive suggestion.

My friends 19 year old son only eats turkey dinosaurs, Gregg's sausage rolls and asdas own brand curly fries. She sure as hell has tried everything to get him to try new things but he really would rather starve. Dieticians have been crap at suggesting anything other than the usual "smoothies and hidden veg" and he's been hospitalised and tube fed more than once. No one can force him to eat things he can't tolerate and I'd be horrified if this happened to him and someone tried to charge my friend with child abuse.

It's appalling.

And screams neglect from all angles tbh - parentally, socially and medically.

So many parents have to get nutrients into fussy children and manage it to a greater or lesser extent. But they manage it.

Right, and do those parents have kids with special needs? No, then you should shut the fuck up and stop talking about things you have no idea about. Having a fussy eater is a world away from having a child with special needs who has an extremely restricted diet. And as other people have pointed out, it's not easy to get help for children with such problems either.

Interestingly she also said that in some classes that the totality of kids with diagnosis of ADSD, Asperger, special needs and other conditions is totalling 25%. There is no doubt some who have clear needs, but she said some others are lacking any kind of structure at home, including crap diets and haven't even been toilet trained by the time they start primary school leaving teachers to sort them out

Ah, here we go, the old "I'm sure some kids really do have special needs but most are just badly parented."
Can't have a special needs thread without that nonsense. You're talking bullshit, you and your "friend." The range of special needs is huge, and some don't even have anything to do with behaviour. So saying 25% of kids have special needs is meaningless. Oh and FYI, it's ADHD. Not "ADSD."
Oh and some kids with special needs are developmentally delayed, which means they might not be toiley trained. Nothing to do with a lack of parenting.
Tell me, where did you and your friend get your medical degrees? What qualifies either of you to decide that a child doesn't really have special needs but has crap parents instead?

And screams neglect from all angles tbh - parentally, socially and medically.

No, it doesn't scream neglect from the parental angle. Read the report properly.

It’s the hospitalisation and tube feeding that’s then required if a child won’t eat.

Same with medication.
If your child had an illness and needed medication they have to have it. And yes by force if nessecary or by IV line if the parents can’t get them in in any other way.
If it’s a matter of life and death, or even blindness and sight then there is no choice in the matter.
A child does not have the ability to decide if it goes blind or not.

My husband has a very restricted diet, he's been to all manner of mental health sevices, dietians, etc. They have been no help. He lives on a diet of junk food, potatoes, and bread.

@violetmartini have you tried vegetable crisps?

B12 deficiency is usually treated with regular (and actually quite painful) injections. Maybe they had difficulties pinning down a 14 year old boy if he decided he didn’t want to be jabbed.

I think many people posting on this thread just don’t understand what restricted diet is.

And if he was seen to have Gillick competence, he’d have been able to refuse treatment. They’d have had to get him declared not of sound mind etc, I think, to treat him against his will.

There are other ways to get vitamins though... smoothies, fruit juices, even a decent multi-vit tablet...

The article you link to says he wouldn't comply with the treatment plan. Also that the multivitamins themselves are not enough, the need is to address the eating disorder.

Lucky old you that your mother had the capability to access resources and that those resources existed.

Good luck trying that now - my goddaughter ended up going through the private route as CAMHS had no capacity or skills in her area to treat eating disorders. She was lucky that her parents managed to find the money, otherwise she would have gone untreated until she was dying (which was the eligibility point).

You have no idea what these parents have tried or been through. Medics/SS most certainly will.

They have lost their son. I hope they are not on MN.

He is still alive

I have ARFID, it isn't just fussy eating. Most people with it are also supertasters so we can detect when people try and sneak things into our food. That then means that we will likely reject that food as no longer safe, restricting the diet further.

I have had therapy and can give an appearance of normal eating but it will never be normal. Trying a new food takes me weeks to work up to the idea, then even more weeks for each stage of licking it, holding it in my mouth, chewing and spitting it out and finally swallowing a tiny bit. That is amazing progress for me as I no longer have to work up to touching or smelling the food. It has taken me 11 years to get that far. Then it will take many months, up to a year, before I can eat without psyching myself up to it. I don't really enjoy the new food for several years, for example, I now will eat romaine lettuce but only after I have already got a different food in my mouth, I can't eat salad alone or I will be sick. I enjoy the salad with other things, but eating it alone will have me vomiting and refusing food for the rest of the day.

Not sure what you would expect the parent to do? My mum was told not to pander to me and I didn't eat for over a week. I would literally starve instead (also why the idea of less choice post Brexit is terrifying for me).

You can’t force medical treatment on a 17 year old. Even less so can you force compliance with said treatment.

Ds is 9 and autistic but before surgery for the feeding tube the consultant still made sure he was on board even though at that age I did still have control.

I think some people are well and truly over simplifying a very complex area. Probably because luckily for them they have never had to face the issues

He is still alive

Sorry you are quite right I was looking at two stories at once.

However I thought his prognosis was worse than blindness due to the damage to the nervous system?

Either way, demonising the parents with no insight into their situation is a particularly unpleasant bit of finger pointing on a parenting site.

@Woodlandwitch I have been force fed, I vomit it up instantly so I don't see how you could force me to keep it down?

I guess this thread just confirms my fears that people probably do judge us. Ds's issues around food are more than just fussy eating. I so wish my 15 year old lived his life like his peers, he doesn't though because his brain is wired slightly differently. There is very little help out there so we muddle our way through. I would be really upset though if someone accused us of neglect.

I would assume he would have needed sectioned to have forced treatment and he was eating something so maybe it wasn't seen as too serious.

For those who have children with arfid then there is a newly formed charity called arfid awareness UK and on Facebook they have a parent carers support group which is very useful s

YABU. Children with eating disorders can and will do anything to avoid intervention including ripping out feeding tubes and IV lines. I shan’t go into it on here but they can be sneaky and do all sorts of things even on one-to-one supervision. It’s their illness, it affects cognition.

I read the link in the OP. Who was giving him money to get a portion of chips from the chip shop each day? Who was buying Pringles? Who introduced these foods to begin with? Parents, presumably. I can understand that this / may be an eating disorder but then you as the parent need to fight and fight and fight for help, not watch as a progressive (i.e. over time) and preventable disease takes hold. If that means bloody force-feeding, I'd do it, assault charge or no assault charge. Sorry, reads very harshly but my role as a parent is to keep my child well.