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?!?

I used to think that too - then we had DD2. Over the years she’s both dropped centiles on height and dropped even more on weight.

i try to feed her healthy and nutritious food, but it can take 2 hours to get through one meal (which she won’t eat all of anyway). Or I can feed her chicken nuggets and chips. Some days, I just don’t have the fight in me.

DS would eat absolutely anything at that age. I think people make silly excuses oh he must have Arfid. I very much doubt it. If you give them crap food from an early age they will only eat crap food.
Dsis has brought her DS up on super healthy food, as a result he doesn't ask for chocolate or crisps because he's never had any. He's 2 and a half.

If he has sensory issues about food and wasn't offered the food he feels safe with he would just refuse to eat. It's not true that every child will eat what they are offered of they are hungry enough

Can I please ask you, as it’s hard to obviously ask a child in the same way, how this condition manifests/effects you.

I am genuinely interested. Is there some kind of fear about the food?what is it that makes one food ok and one not? I would like to understand more. Do you get bored and frustrated with it? Or is it that you’re happy sticking with said foods. I have one child who I would say is a really fussy eater but at one stage was starting to worry it was something more- hence my questions.

I have one child who is now 8, incredibly fussy eater, would go days without eating. I personally avoid quavers etc on a regular basis because they're so easy to chew it can make it challenging to move on to other textures. And you have to keep offering new foods even if they don't eat it. It's so difficult, however I would have been really upset if someone said something to me as it's such a struggle on a daily basis. He is better at 8, but diet is still limited compared to siblings. I would ask if you are okay offer the treats you have as an extra.

Yes, massively unreasonable. If you have a child who will eat healthy home cooked nutritious foods, then I can tell you with certainty that this is due to good luck rather than some superior patenting on your behalf.

Many many parents start out with the best of intentions. Many Many children refuse the foods their parents want them to eat. Flat out, repeatedly and for a long time. Until in desperation that their child is hungry and in danger of becoming malnourished and underweight, they try anything.

And if beige food works and keeps their child a healthy weight and provides nourishment, albeit not the best, they go for the least worst option. Of my three children I had one like your nephew and two who ate healthily. I take no more blame for my restricted eater than I do praise for my healthy eaters. As it happens, they're all adults now, all equally the pictures of health.

It must be very worrying for the parents knowing children aren’t getting natural vitamins and minerals for a healthy body. I know we all like different things, but it is the strangest thing.

Are people with this aversion worried about their own long term health, and when they have children themselves do you go the extra mile to expose your child to a variety of foods to try and avoid a beige diet for the child?

This post isn’t about adults at university, who have the ability and money to buy their own food and make their own choices. She’s talking about a 3 year old child whose eating habits are completely at the mercy of their parents. The only way this 3 year old is getting food to eat is because the parents are buying it. So what she is saying is if the child’s parents never bought them beige food, the child wouldn’t know what it tasted like and therefore wouldn’t ask or make demands for it.

I agree with the OP.

I would have had your attitude when I just had DS1, who ate anything I offered him from his forst spoonful of baby rice. I had a friend who I thought was ridiculous taking her own biscuits to toddlers group because her DS wouldn't eat the ones provided. "If he's hungry, he'll eat".

Then I got DS2. It may well be true that if he was starving he'd eat, but he could hold out much longer than I was prepared to let my young child go without . And besides which he never was really hungry because there was always something he'd eat to take the edge off, even if it was only the bread not the whole sandwich etc.

You know that children with food issues would rather starve than eat something they don't like, right?

As in, would go day after day without eating and make themselves ill.

If you weren't aware of that, do a search about ARFID.

But you feel free to deny someone elses child food because it makes your child want crisps. How about just saying no to just your child?

I always used to make my kids homemade breaded chicken. They went to my dad's one night and he gave them birds eye chicken dippers and now they won't touch mine any more!

It's impossible to completely control what your kids are exposed to. Some kids do have extreme aversions to certain foods. Some parents are lazy and have low standards. Most of us tick all three boxes to some extent 🤷‍♀️

🤣🤣🤣

Can anyone explain where Arfid came from?
I was a child in the 60’s and we all ate what we were given mainly because we were starving by meal times.
My DD with asd has always eaten a healthy diet because that is what she was offered.
So how/why have these conditions developed?

Same - I look back at how judgmental I was about other parents when I just had DD, for a lot of things tbh. Then DS arrived and I quickly realised it isn’t that easy.

DD even now is a very sensible high achieving 16 year old whose diet is amazing. But that is a lot on her. DS is still very much an adorable work in progress

I was an incredibly fussy eater and so is one of my kids. Both of us will not eat if we don't like what's on offer, so there has to be a certain amount of adaptation and making sure the right things are on offer. We make sure every meal is something he enjoys and if we're cooking something new we have his favourites cooked and ready to eat after he's explored the new food.

However, we have to be very careful we don't give too much junk food or my DS will only eat junk and refuse the 'safe' healthy food that he does actually enjoy. He's still allowed the occasional treat, but if he thinks he can hold out for junk and it'll come along soon that's all he'll have.

So without knowing the kid it's impossible to know and what's been tried it's impossible to know to be honest

My DS has been eating beige food for 10 years, he has never had anything wet, slimy, or rubber textured, doesn't eat chocolate either, only drinks water.
It feels horrible when people judge me as a parent. I am vegetarian, my plate is always colourful, he has a breakdown if I suggest trying something new.

Okay, so imagine if you only ever offer your child homemade and nutritious foods, and they just refuse to eat it - to the point that they get so lethargic and unwell that they can't function.

What do you do? Carry on giving them healthy, nutritious food knowing they won't eat it? Or try them on "beige food" so that they'll eat least eat something?

For some children parents try everything just to get the child to eat. Beige food is better than nothing and some children will refuse to eat.
Do you think it's better to let the child starve?

Yabvu

And beige food is more of a term. My autistic dd only eats 'safe foods' which includes rice and pasta. The food has to be the same - for example, she won't eat packet rice, it has to be rice that I made at home

She'll eat nuggets and meat - and I'm able to blend veg up and put it into pasta sauces and curries and stews over rice.

And I'm lucky!

Our dietitian said that she's dealing with kids who can't take in any nutrition at all, and will only eat one thing, such as crisps or Farley rusks.

Your sister is probably doing her very best to deal with a challenging and scary diagnosis, and food is the last thing on her mind. She'll be grateful that her child is eating at all.

Your post makes you sound judgemental, and you should make an effort to Google this child's diagnosis.

Haha, this was me too. Safe to say karma got me in the end and taught me a great lesson in humility!

Dome kids are picky by nature - no matter what you do they would rather starve, some havnt had access to a range of foods.
Talk to sister and ask if there is a middle ground. Would he take crackers or plain biscuits?

OP I used to be like you and think oh well if they are hungry they will eat.
Now I know even if my daughter is hungry she won’t eat unless it’s the right food.
she went 3 long days with no food and no water and wouldn’t even swallow her own saliva.
We took her to hospital and she was diagnosed with contamination OCD. She was 8!
they had to hold her down and sedate her as she wouldn’t let anyone near her, not even her dad or myself. She was terrified of food and people. Her sugar levels were so low they were worried she was going to have seizures
shes doing much better now and is medicated which has helped allot
if she skips a meal I don’t worry too much but when she skips 2 I start to think I will feed her whatever she wants. When she’s crying after not eating all day because “I’m so hungry mummy and I want to eat but I can’t eat” I’d give her a box of chocolates if I had too.

I don't think that's true. My friend's brother, in the early 70s lived on a diet entirely of mashed potato. GP told their mum that if the mash was made with utter and milk he was basically getting all the food groups he needed.

And an adult friend who would have been a child in the 70s still won't even try any veg at all.

My mother now in her 70s has always been a terribly fussy eater and the person with the worst food issues I know is in her 60s.

Totally this. Good username btw xx

No you didn’t ‘all’ eat what you were given, just the ones you knew did. My uncle, born in the late 50s was called a ‘fussy’ child, had a very limited diet and was very underweight. That has continued throughout his whole adult life. He is now diagnosed with autism and ARFID.