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?!?

Yea…. I’d you don’t think too deeply into it. Their stomachs are tiny!

It also reminds me of a story my granny used to tell.

On their road, just after the war, there were a lot of children primary school age who ran around together. One of the parents was very vocal in telling the other parents how their dc never "even knew sugar existed" and that if you never gave it anything sweet then they'd never miss it, and what amazingly healthy children her dc were and didn't they all wish they'd done the same.
If they had a get-together they'd be standing over their dc saying "only eat XYZ - don't have a cake...."

Only thing was that these same dc were known for the minute they got into anyone else's house going into the kitchen and looking for any sweetened food and whinging for it non-stop. They were even caught just eating it straight from the sugar bowl - which as rationing was still in place made them very unpopular.

But the parents believed their dc never had anything sweet.

But this is different and sounds like you’re doing very well - I understand a limited diet. What would be worrying now, is to start offering very processed things, as these things are addictive and I’m sure it’s the flavour enhancers etc, as once he has tried them he may start to refuse the healthier options he once tolerated.

You opened up a can of worms there. I have very disordered eating and went from an underweight and sickly child to a fat teen/adult.
Mainly because my “good” foods are very carb based. I think I only ate homemade chips for the vast majority of 3 years at some point.

The thing with not really feeling hungry, is that the opposite is also kind of true, so if something is/was really nice I’d keep eating until it was all gone (rather than I was full) so I could keep getting the “nice” feedback.

Hunger wise, I can still go hours/days without food(particularly if in a very low mood) but now I get terrible heartburn when my stomach is very empty and it (physically)hurts when I drink , so if I can I try to eat something. If not, I’ll just have a Rennie or 3. Then I have days when I’m constantly hungry (even while I’m eating)and could eat all day . That’s when I tend to try new things .It’s all very fucked up I know.

People always say this but I can tell you from my own experience, as my kids have got older, I have of course let them try things and they have junk food occasionally - we talk about it and how it makes them feel after, and they can FEEL the difference. Because they’re old enough to understand this themselves and have the awareness, they rarely over indulge - and if they do, they very much regret it!

😂😂😂

Sure love, sure…

Thank you for being so honest with me, I really appreciate it and sorry if I’m being nosy. I think this is what I meant when I said we all experience it so differently, hearing the different stories of how people feel about food can potentially help others find a way of approaching the issue that works for them. And I don’t think of it as ‘fucked up’ - having a neurodivergent brain is a wild ride sometimes! I know someone else who is autistic who is anorexic and it’s hard because it’s not ARFID that has caused her anorexia but it is the autism.

I got my DD therapy for selective eating disorder when she was 4 and it helped so much. Some of the therapy was for us parents too. We made a photo book with pictures of food in it that we read together and we practiced a technique called food chaining. It wasn’t a quick process but by her teens, she eats most things. She is now diagnosed autistic though. Only eating beige food was one of the first signs, we just didn’t know it then.

It doesn’t. And no one has claimed it does. What tends to happen is that a child doesn’t wean from milk to solids properly and step one is your advised to reduce breast feeding or formula so they develop an appetite. You do this but it doesn’t quite transition and they become difficult with sleep and behaviour and don’t actually increase their food. They might play but that step from playing with food doesn’t seem to cross to actually eating it. But they will scoop up / eat things like bread sticks, pasta, rice etc. as time goes on you speak to the health visitor who will suggest creating meals with things you know they like alongside one new food. Then eventually you get to food chaining. My daughter would and still does eat bread sticks. Very hard and crunch. A quaver is actually part of that food chaining exercise. If memory serves me correctly it was:

bread sticks safe food. Try adding in:

a seeded bread stick
grissini
organic style bread stick
Veggie crisps

that what then moved on to crisp products that had something extra, like a flavour. Which included quavers and frazzles.

we were also told to try rice cakes which would include with yoghurt and chocolate.

we managed to introduce nothing. Although she did randomly once eat a hula hoop.

And here’s the thing , she didn’t stay 2 and a half.

She turned 4 /5/6 and the school staff asked me how did I get her to eat at home because they couldn’t at school.

She turned 11 and went on school residential and I warned staff she wouldn’t eat and they said all the kids eat and never had one that didn’t especially with all the activities. First thing the TA said when they came back is that she didn’t eat anything except breakfast.

She turned 13 and went skiing with the school to Italy (buffet style food, lots of crap, sweets and processed stuff as well as healthy offerings)and ate nothing except bread and pineapple at dinner and chips once on pizza night at a restaurant. Her form tutor was so concerned she emailed me. She lost 2 kgs in that week.

The thing is, she is millions times better than she was then and that took a lot of time, effort and work (and yeah, sometimes processed food) to get there. It would’ve been a lot easier to let her not eat because it’s fine, her tummy was small. 🙄

In my original comment I did state that my comment omitted children with SEND needs, there’s clearly something else at play here, with her eating. So, not sure what else I can say. She clearly has disorder around food.

Yea, google the size of a toddlers stomach and how much you are recommended to plate up. 👌

Diluted milk - good God - do you not like your children?

I think you are probably right actually - like most things, its a spectrum, and there will be contributory factors.

I very much think I'd be a lot better if I had not experienced quite a lot of both mental and phyiscal abuse linked to food/eating/meal times.

I also suspect that if my Mum had done baby led weaning, let me touch food, poke it, explore it, and really crucially, let me spit it out if I didn't like it... things would be better.

But I can only suspect... I'll never know.

I also have a hiatus hernia which I've always had as far as they can tell (from my history), which affects swallowing and feeling full and so on.

And a lot of other sensory issues.

@MumWifeOther

I'll try again as you're still not getting it.

At what point would you start to offer anything you could get hold of that a child might eat?

When they're losing weight? When they're suffering malnutrition and Drs are starting to get panicky?

Would you be force feeding? What if they won't eat bread, potatos, bread sticks, won't drink water...

Sit and watch your child starve to death?

I knew someone that had struggles feeding her child…he would just not eat. Sensory issue…

Be sympathetic. If someone tells you they struggle, maybe don’t think you are doing better coz you are better but just because you do not have the same issue to deal with.

Right, thank you for explaining.

but again I think you’re highlighting the issue - why are we introducing crisps? I think this is terrible advice.

I would rather stick with the limited safe and healthier options rather than introducing more processed things with artificial flavours and enhancers because I do believe that these have powerful and addictive effects on the brain. I can see how easily these would become preferred to someone who already has trouble eating.

This has really been all my point ever was.

But you say that like thats easy.

The kids with SEND do not have a wee sticker on them letting you know this from birth!

You don't know there is a problem until there are symptoms you can quantify that are outside the normal development stages and have been consistent/getting worse for YEARS.

Its just not that easy to say 'this kid is ND, do xyz' and 'this kid is NT and just being fussy, send them to bed with no dinner once or twice and you'll fix it'.

She does not have any SEND needs as far as we know, but it’s always a consideration.

because all the options that are NOT crisps have been exhausted?

Would you rather stick to that if your child is failure to thrive territory and cannot maintain their body weight let alone gain weight in line with their increasing height?

Just for your own Information age 11 and she relies on prescribed meal replacement shakes for nutrients. She is under weight and our entire existence is around getting her to eat sufficient calories. Quavers are a no not because they’re bad but because they aren’t high enough in calories. That said based on her current restrictions I would be ecstatic if she ate a quaver.

Ok, but what from pp explained, there are a few tolerated foods. Why deter from things to introduce something less healthy and more addictive that may well replace the few better options that were already there?

I bet it’s more than a little bag of baby crisps A DAY!

I know because before that she’d have a slice/half of toast , fruit , yogurt and maybe some cheese for breakfast, some omelette for lunch(one egg) and grilled chicken and two spoonfuls of mash for dinner for example. She wouldn’t always finish it all but it counted as 3 meals a day.Plus snacks sometimes . I don’t quite understand why you’re being so stubborn, if I started a thread staring I’m feeding my toddler only a bag of crisps a day everyone would say I’m starving her , but you keep insisting it was more than enough. I don’t get it. 🤷‍♀️

Because the idea is to expand the child's pallet. So it goes from breadsticks, to seeded breadsticks, to flavoured breadsticks, to crisps - then hopefully you move on from crisps to something else entirely. The idea isn't to just stick at crisps - they're supposed to be the stepping stone.

No you haven't, you've asked pointed questions and said how your children would never eat crisps at 3. Well that's great for you, people have explained how it's happened and we are obviously not as great parents as you.

So you've decided that potatoes, rice, pasta etc are NOT "beige foods"? Right.