To think just don’t offer them beige food?

[Ashlll]

Or am I spectacularly uneducated here? My sister has a 3 year old who apparently will only eat beige food and mostly crisps. She says it’s a sensory thing and we have to respect it when around him, for example when I took him and dd out last week I had to give him quavers rather than the snacks I had got for dd… which then made dd want quavers too! Same with water, he won’t drink it and it has to be juice.

I am not massively strict but did say to dsis just don’t buy these things then he won’t know he can ask for them… she says he just won’t eat or drink. I think this is ridiculous (I’ve not said this to her). AIBU?!?

Some real food is beige. The word "beige" in arfid terms just means boring and neutral coloured. It doesn't mean oven cooked and covered in fat. So "beige" in my house is:
Scrambled egg
Sliced chicken breast
Rice
Pasta
Brown bread

It's not chicken nuggets, fish fingers and chips.

It just means it's not spicy, flavourful, saucy, colourful.

Op you can’t take over his parenting and do the quavers when with her cousin really matter such a lot if you feed her as you prefer the rest of the time ?

It doesn’t seem to me a massive consequence for following what she has asked.

Your Dsis is unlikely to prefer he doesn’t eat well and may be going through a lot of stress with it.

We did have these issues 200 years ago but they weren't recognised as such.

It's widely believed that stories of changeling children were potentially ND children as the 'signs' of being a changeling are so similar (and one sign was a refusal of human food as they only wanted Fae food...) There were children who 'wasted away' or were 'sickly' or 'failed to thrive', children who were institutionalised would have been force fed. There's also the fact that for a lot of history, most ordinary people ate a very limited range of foods anyway and many of those were fairly bland to boot so having mashed turnip or some sort of pottage or potatoes (or whatever your safe food of choice is) every single day for infinity was not unusual.

I know. I’ve said all of that.

That’s fascinating.

I'd agree. Arfid is very, very difficult to get help for. It is often regarded as an autistic trait or "co-morbidity" and if you go to your GP with this they'll stick your child on the CAMHS waitlist for an autism diagnosis and you'll wait until your child starves to death. Most private child counsellors/psychologists know next to nothing about Arfid. There is a good Arfid CBT programme that has had positive results but trying to find someone regionally who delivers it is almost impossible. We ended up just trying to muddle along and do bits of the programme ourselves .... Which is obviously not ideal.

I imagine for many it’s too late to stop now but then I always think - why did you ever offer quavers in the first place!???

YABU. ARFID is becoming more widely known about thankfully.

There is one train of thought that suggests that the “beige” food is safe because it is predictable and always tastes the same, unlike fruit/veg which can vary based on season/ripeness.

My DD15 has a handful of safe foods, she tends to binge on one particular food for ages and then go off it. She will only eat when certain conditions are met. It is incredibly stressful and it is a thing.

It was a condition when I was born 60-odd years ago. It just hadn't been identified. Such ignorance.

I once worked with a child who wasn’t allowed ‘beige’ / ‘children’s food’ at all. The police were looking for them at least once a month when they kept running away from home in search for these foods that their friends were allowed but this child wasn’t. It was very sad.

With my children, I did the whole BLW, colourful foods, avoid sugar etc with mine. I now have one excellent eater and one who lost so much weight through food refusal (as in no weaning, first tastes at 18m, still only eats 2/3 safe foods) they were fed by NG tube. Would literally rather starve than eat. Parented the same. Official advice from several specialists saying feed them ANYTHING, no matter the sugar or nutritional content. Just get them to eat and drink.

I’m still in the Arfid situation, and I’m tearing my hair out at every meal time, every single day, but how I ever work back from that to get them to eat the ‘rainbow’ typed plate that is aspired to, I’ll never know. I don’t want this for my child or my family.

This wasn’t a choice. This was desperation to get my child to not starve. My friends and family do not understand it because they haven’t been in that position. The whole “just don’t give them beige foods” or “biscuit at breakfast?” judgement makes me feel like a failure and makes my life so much harder.

🤦‍♀️

Imagine reading the full thread before you post 🙄

My DD15 has a handful of safe foods, she tends to binge on one particular food for ages and then go off it. She will only eat when certain conditions are met. It is incredibly stressful and it is a thing.

I'm definitely guilty of going through phases, it used to drive my mum insane.

I guess they didn’t think the child would become reliant on them?! How many of us have offered a toddler a crisp? I know I have.

Yes. We all quietly and in our own heads jump for joy when a new food is added to the list only for an old faithful to become intolerable. Sometimes it has it's tine in the sun again but some are gone for good.

It does drive me insane tbf but I’ve just learnt that she can’t help it, I’m fortunate one food she does like is broccoli. It’s more her eating environment stuff that worries me more! She can sometimes not eat in front of people or if she knows have guests coming over she won’t eat that day.

Yep.

One of my current "safe foods" is Idaho packet mash, with Tesco frozen mixed vegetables and Tesco gravy. It has to be those brands and I have to be the one that makes it so I get all the ratios right. I've eaten it most days for a fortnight.

But I know I'll go off it, like I did when it was my "safe food" a few years ago. I'll try it one day, gag or feel sick and that will be "it" for months, only for it to replaced by some other specific food or combination.

I'm lucky in that I can tolerate certain healthy foods so I'm nowhere near as restrictive as many others, but I'm still very fussy in terms of texture.

I'm really bad for eating in public and especially at other people's houses - I think it's because if I'm at home and something triggers me (to gag or vomit) I know it doesn't matter.

until you have a beige child or beige phase you won’t know, when you have one you’ll know, most snap out of it eventually 😂

I’d just keep quiet if I were you and let her make her own decisions about her own child - until you’ve walked in someone’s shoes etc
Ive been on restrictive threads on here for years - First 2 children ate everything and anything so child 3 saw 2 children plus 2 adults eating “ normally”. Child 3 turned his head away from the spoon aged 8 months and between then and the age of 18 ate about 8 foods in rotation, this was obviously pre ARFID being know about.
Birdseye chicken nuggets, plain white bread and butter, cucumber sticks, carrot sticks, certain thin sliced ham, frozen peas and cheesy wotsits. Plus large amounts of full fat milk. Not interested in food, didn’t want sweets or chocolate, would prefer to go without if these foods not offered or available.
Nothing ever diagnosed except a slightly narrower than usual throat, and apart from regularly occcuring constipation was rarely ill and played team and county sport from 6 years. Holidays away from home had to be carefully managed and I cried over this child’s eating on numerous occasions. And screamed and attempted to force feed to my eternal shame.
Ive already tried everything so well meaning advice was useless. He eventually increased his choices when he lived away at university.
Anyone who said “ let him go hungry he will soon eat properly” etc just made things worse.
He is a very fit and healthy 34 year old now who has a reasonably wide range of meal choices and actually enjoys cooking.
So let it just be

You're not wrong in some ways. My daughter ate very healthy as a toddler then got super fussy when she was 3+. I got so fed-up with cooking her meals that she refused to eat I'm afraid I went down the chicken nugget, sausage, fish fingers route and now that sort of stuff is all she wants for dinner. I wish I hadn't now but it was out of tiredness and desperation.

I'm not worried though. My little sister ate nothing but egg and chips for TWO years as a young child (late 1980s). As an adult she's the least fussiest eater I know. When she goes travelling she eats all sorts of crazy stuff. I was also fussy as a child and lived on beige food and never ate any vegetables. Now as an adult I love cooking healthy meals and I love vegetables...maybe one day my daughter will eat my meals with me again!

I honestly think the less of a drama/ battle you have with children in regards to food, the better for their long-term relationship with food will be.

Got to love a parent who only ever feeds their kid chicken and carrots.

There are children out there who have additional needs like autism or arfid (some undiagnosed) which does include very restrictive eating, so in those cases a beige diet is all they will eat. There are other children who ‘prefer’ beige foods and perhaps haven’t been exposed (repeatedly) to a wide diet including fresh fruit and veg.

last week I had to give him quavers rather than the snacks I had got for dd… which then made dd want quavers too!

YABVU. Quavers are most excellent. Who WOULDN'T want them over inferior non-Quaver snacks?

Haha ok. Smugness is not a good look as someone has said