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...

DS had oral dyspraxia and was neophobic when we weaned him.
To be fair, all toddlers are neophobic - it's a good way to survive, by not eating toxic plants etc.

Some friends of mine are using micro-portions but they haven't had much success with actually eating. Hopefully their DD will get past the "lick and smell" stage at some point.

In short, “no OP”. I don’t think the child parents should be prosecuted for his disabilities. I’m fairly unimpressed with you for spreading the ignorance, but I doubt you should be prosecuted either.

Fight what? No one wants to know. Pretty much all of us are fed up of fighting. We have to fight for everything, especially once they hear a diagnosis of autism you are on your own. There is nothing to fight because there is nothing there.

This.

You have an appointment where you get given a diagnosis and a leaflet. The one given to us was simply titled "autism" and was 3-4 pages explaining what autism is, how autism is diagnosed, and that was it. Utterly useless. After your appointment and your meeting they send you on your way, discharged. If you want further help or support you need to seek it out yourself via books, the internet, and charities/support groups if there are any in your locality. Lord help you if your child needs any follow up care or ongoing support, funding has been cut to the bone and then cut some more so what little support does exist is often at the end of a very long waiting list and not always fit for purpose.

One of my DC has a restricted diet with only around 10-12 foods that he will eat including chicken dippers, cornflakes, apples, and plain pasta.

It is not down to fussy eating, poor parenting, lack of choices, or stubbornness.

He WILL literally starve himself if no acceptable foods are available.

As well as acceptable foods, they must be prepared and presented in a specific way. For example, the chicken dippers must be Birds Eye and he knows if they're not (Birds Eye are softest/least fibrous), the cornflakes must be in whole milk and must be left to go totally soggy before eating, the pasta must be fusilli only, apples the red ones only and the softer kind not crisp/crunchy. He has to have specific bowls/plates/cups, specific cutlery, the food must be arranged on his plate with none of it touching.

If any of it is wrong by his standards then you can't just correct the offending item, the whole meal is ruined and he won't eat any of it. It is exhausting keeping on top of it all, making sure he has a multivitamin each day - we're lucky and he will have a vitamin right now but as he gets older who knows if he will still comply? - trying to calm him down if it isn't right. We have tried to introduce new foods following the advice of the dietician by putting them on his plate alongside safe foods, this resulted in every meal containing a new food to be entirely rejected as its presence on the plate ruined the rest (and they're not even "new" foods, they're the foods the rest of the family eat so not entirely alien to him). We tried putting the new foods in a separate dish alongside his safe plate and he would end up in hysterics refusing to come to the table. For the time being he is only eating safe foods as he needed a break from the stress of it.

Anyone on this thread saying that this boy's parents could have done more, that they are to blame, that they should have force fed him, and so on haven't gotten the first clue what it is they are talking about and it shows.

OP you have absolutely no idea and are definitely BU.

I take it the ignorant views on here are from those who have no experience of eating and feeding difficulties, disorders, autism or sensory issues. Please educate yourself before casting the net of blaming the parents.

If the parents had not cooperated with the treatment plan, the doctors would have informed the relevant authorities.

Parenting a child with these kind of difficulties is harder than you can ever appreciate.

I for one am sick and tired of being blamed for my sons difficulties by ill informed people and it doesn't help what is already a very challenging situation. By all means enquire to understand and then form your views but don't jump to the conclusion of blaming the parents. It helps no one.

5zeds I really wish there was more money available to help parents of children with additional needs. We would appreciate some support and advice but there seems to be very little if any in our area. We are hoping for a referral to help with the eating but Ds has other stuff going on too and we have already been told that he does not meet the thresholds for support.

I have re read the posts from other parents in my position. My DC is now an older teen. I just wish MN had been around when they were younger because I wouldnt have felt so bloody useless. My DC has not been diagnosed with autism or any other condition. apparently they are a super taster with incredibly sensitive sense of taste - can distinguish between water from home, grandparents homes, aunts homes etc. also knows if something is the wrong brand and recently gave up cocoa pops because the recipe had changed (who knew?) I too am fed up of judgey people - every time we eat out and we ask for the food to be presented in a certain way my DC gets "the look". I hope this case raises the whole profile of what quite a lot of us have to live with every single day.

Oh, and it cuts both ways too. Another of my children, also autistic, has the opposite issue and doesn't recognise hunger or fullness in the same way a NT child does. Add in the sensory satisfaction gained from chewing and swallowing and you have a child who will attempt to eat anything whether it is food or not and is on that fine line between 'puppy fat' and plain old 'fat'. You get judged to fuck for that too because your child is either the chubby child eating everything in sight or is the child loudly complaining that they're hungry, please can they have some food, when they only ate less than half an hour previously. You get told to limit their portions (we do), let them learn to self-regulate as they won't eat to the point of being sick (he will), prioritise healthy foods (we do), feed the poor hungry child, don't give him food issues by making him think food is forbidden.

@EssentialHummus, where do you live if you sell your house? How do you keep your child in the same school, or under the same services when rent is usually more than mortgage? That's if you have a house, with equity, to start with.

You're coming up with 'solutions' that just wouldn't work.

The child stopped eating, so they gave him what he would eat, probably with the hope that he'd improve. Especially as the HCPs didn't react in an alarming way and the feats expressed by the parents were more than likely dismissed.

@Sarahjconnor
That is one way of introducing new foods. desensitizing so to speak. combined with medication and cognitive therapy.

It can't be rushed or pushed.

If things get too bad and they've become malnourished, ill, the only thing you can do is have them admitted to hospital like you would with a suicide patient.

In hospital we absolutely will put in a line, intubate, etc. Sometimes we have to hold them down/restrain them to do it. Sometimes people with serious injuries can be quite aggressive.

Because of training and experience, I can get anyone to take their medication and I'm always volunteered at home to give meds to the pets too.

So no, there are no easy solutions.

recently gave up cocoa pops because the recipe had changed

Oh yes, the much loved Muller corner yoghurts have now been ditched.

If he had a more varied diet until secondary school then it sounds more like an eating disorder to me. So maybe we shouldn't be so judgy...

@Punxsutawney don’t be conned by there’s not enough money, there IS enough money it’s just being spent on other things. Nothing much on offer here either.

Are at the coco pops. I once in an insane moment tried to swap Tesco’s own version for shreddies as they were more fortified....what mistake. My young man wouldn’t touch shreddies for two years. They were a fairly vital part of his diet.

Sorry but do you all know the child and the circumstances involved? I have a child who will only eat sausages chips white bread rich tea biscuits buttons Wotsits waffles and the rare apple or nuggets from mcdonalds. This is not because I'm a lazy crap parent but because he has an eating disorder since he was 2(now 9). I have seen dieticians and a dozen other specialists who suspect it is due to him being on the autistic spectrum as almost everything he eats is same colour. The only difference is my son was on iron for 4 years and we never missed a dose so for that part they are stupid. Don't judge people for what their child will eat ad you don't know the back ground. My child would be physically sick if a new food even touches his lips, its not always straight forward and the parents in cases like mine have enough trouble keeping their child eating enough to be alive without judgement.

Oh n as for vitamins etc some kids with asd like mine will not touch vitamins of any kind because they can taste the difference if its in something and then throw up. My paediatricians and dietician told me not to bother trying as any negative experience regarding the foods he does have by putting them in could stop him eating that food. It took 6 different iron medications to find a flavourless one we could use in his milk.

Ds only needed to see new recipe on a box to never touch the item again. He also had an aversion to the local co op so back then he would eat jaffa cakes. But he'd sniff the boxes first and if they smelled like the co op he wouldn't eat them. You could never fool him by putting them in a Sainsbury's bag or hiding them among boxes that had been bought elsewhere. He stopped eating Jaffa Cakes when they changed the writing on the box because he didn't like the J. It's really complex and difficult to understand and really difficult to alter. FWIW ds went to an autism specialist school and they had had a lot of success expanding the diets of their pupils. They worked tirelessly with ds but admitted that nothing worked for him and he was the most severely affected child they had had in school.

My DC lived on the pasta shapes in thomas the tank engine pasta for almost a year. but because they wouldnt eat wet food, painstakingly picked each one out, dried it and ate it. Every time they try a new food I literally punch the air and run round the garden with my t shirt over my head. Just recently ate a ham and cheese omlette. Literally none of us could believe it. so DC ate a second straight afterwards. Not sure how they will cope at Uni as wont eat curry, anything spicy, chinese food etc but hoping they get drunk and end up eating it if I am honest.

Neglect? Oh purlease!

Have you seen how many MN threads there are of fussy eaters. Children with anxiety and self harming.

I don't have either. My 2 x ds's eat almost everything and eat like a horse, and no anxiety or eating orders.

But I still have the common sense to have empathy. And I know it's not neglect!

The poor boy and his parents.
I just don't understand how it could've gotten this far without more medical intervention? Does anyone know about the legality of medical consent? I don't know enough about sectioning etc but I did think if you are deemed a risk to yourself or others, medication can be given without consent? Surely he was a risk to himself, doing irreparable damage? Have the family been let down or was there legally nothing that could be done in terms of medical assistance without his consent? Not that it helps now, the damage is done, poor boy. I feel for him and all parents battling with ARFIDS, you are doing a fab job in a difficult situation.

@Lowlandlucky So why isnt your DH going for custody then?

This thread is heartbreaking.

@AprilHeather I imagine by the time they realised how bad it was it was too late. The general advice seems to be either give the children whatever they eat or don't feed them their safe food and they'll eat when hungry. Nobody seems to feel it's that serious.

Nobody who said about force feeding has said how they would force someone not to vomit it up again yet.

It's not as simple as being prescribed supplements though and expecting that they will take them. Ds does now but as a child he would vomit up anything that he thought had anything in it. Much like he would vomit up a whole slice of toast if (part way through) he spotted a tiny bit that was cooked more or less than the acceptable shade.
Ds never feels hungry so if he isn't offered the food he eats he doesn't eat. If the food wasn't available then he would starve. In hospital they believed that without access to the food he would eat he would eventually eat something else. It falls down spectacularly when you have a child who is never hungry though and so has no reason to try anything else.

My DD had selective eating disorder when she was younger. I was lucky to have a brilliant GP who referred her for counselling in a very good specialist unit in St Thomas’s Hospital in London (which is also luckily in our borough). She went for 6 months and also had lots of additional support at primary school - again we are lucky her school is small and nurturing and excellent in supporting additional needs. She is still fairly fussy but is definitely cured. But it was a very fortunate set of circumstances that helped us get through it and those parents may very well not have had the same help or support to know what to do. It is a very hard thing to overcome, especially if you don’t address it early.

Very sad when people who have a normal, fussy child (a bit of a pain to convince to eat certain things or try new foods) thinks they have any idea of what it’s like to have a severely food averse child.

Some friends of ours ds has a similar diet and I’m trying to figure out how to reach out and reassure them because they must be terrified seeing this story.

Some friends of ours ds has a similar diet and I’m trying to figure out how to reach out and reassure them because they must be terrified seeing this story

Ive no idea why your friends son has a similar diet to the lad in the article but if its ASD related a book by the name of Cant Eat Wont Eat goes a long way to explaining things from the point of view of the person who's on the spectrum. I found it comforting as the mum of someone who lived on toast for years.