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 know this is page 32 - so all that is left are people arguing, but for some academic context.

Approximations for AFRID are between 0.5% of Children (Conservative) to 5%

The level of parents who self-report as having fussy or picky Children (worldwide) ranges from 10% to 60% depending on the study.

AFRID rates go up to approximately 20%-70% for Children who are ASD, or have other eating disorders or mental health issues, especially anxiety.

--

So the reasonable position is:

1. If you see a fussy child, but don't know the details, don't presume. Especially if that child has other ND factors.

But equally:

1. Yes it is true that the majority of 'fussy' (the literature is not consistent with what this exactly means), are not AFRID, and with appropriate methods could improve their diet.

There is some truth to both sides of this debate.

Yes, eating issues exist and in some cases they can't be solved by "traditional" parenting methods. And Yes, luck plays a part in it, it is not all parenting. And some parents just get unlucky, do everything right, and nothing works, and they just do the best they can.

But also.

Yes, there is the potential for parents who have not been able to foster good eating habits, to group their situation in with a serious medical condition to avoid it being their or their child's fault. The majority of fussy children, do not have AFRID and are not Autistic, and could eat more, in the right circumstances.

Given that you rarely know the full situation though, again, it is best not to presume which one of those situations is happening.

Yeah as a picky eater myself I thought I'd avoid it in our DS, but he's a real person and makes his own choices.
He has a preference for red foods, strawberry, tomatoes, red grapes but I realise this is more about consistent colour and shape than flavours.

I try to cut things he likes into different shapes so he gets used to variety, and I try to offer something different at every meal, but kiwi is not a winner at breakfast.
Definitely more picky if feeling poorly and that's often the first indicator he's ill, so I don't force ...and he'd rather starve than eat something he doesn't want.
Interestingly regards sweets etc, I'm a sugar monster so we do have sweets in, if he asks for a sweet, we allow one but always provide other food at the same time and he'll often leave the sweet to have the other food, but if I say no, you have to eat (good food) he'll just refuse to eat. Take the pressure away and he makes better choices.

You’re suggesting people ignore medical advice and risk their children’s health. Are you that arrogant?

Not nutritionists. Dieticians. They are distinctly different.

He will eat eventually, it's that simple she just needs to hold off, it is simple.

How long for?

So again, you would take the one thing in their diet that is utterly essential and try to replace it? Why? And what if the outcome is the same as with every other you’ve tried to chain and you then lose it and the meal replacements are lost? Curious - do you have any experience at all with this? As a doctor? Psychiatrist? Psychologist? Dietician? Eating disorder nurse? Anything at all that gives you any authority to give advice which contradicts the advice of those professionals? Do you even know what food chaining is? How it works? The possible impact?

How long for? You know they don’t always eat right until a safe food is offered right?

Tried food chaining? Yes. We lost her breakfast cereal through it.. When food chaining was started we had a list of 17 foods she would - all crunchy beige, no crisps mind you as they aren’t hard enough for her, within 6 months of food chaining activities being introduced she had lose 5 of those foods. She had also lost enough weight to warrant urgent intervention. She was at that time still drinking formula milk. We were then, once weight stabilised, advised to reduced milk and see if increased appetite led to increase calorie intake. Back to weight loss. That was the point we had long term support put in place and they started to develop a long term plan for feeding support. She was underweight and deficient in pretty much all nutrients due to the reduction in the formula milk. The decision was made to replace formula with meal replacements. Because of the significant concern she wouldn’t tolerate them which would have led to a feeding tube we had to do this slowly with really close supervision. Her formula was served in 200ml servings. We were instructed to remove 5ml of formula and add 5 ml of meal replacement. If she noticed bin immediately and make a new one without the meal replacement. No discussion no insistence it’s fine. After 3 days of accepting no argument reduce formal by 5ml and add another 5 ml of meal replacements. And repeat. It took us EIGHT months to complete this. And we did it because the meal replacement contains every thing she needs. It is the most essential part of her diet.

So, again, explain to me why on earth I’m repeating this exercise so that we can phase out the meal replacements and introduced your weird concoction that contains hardly any of what she needs and has blended fruit and ice cream in it?!

Will you also be my advocate when they right refer me to a social worker for neglect because what you’re suggesting is.

Also to add for fun, the formula was added at 4 months because she wasn’t tolerating / gaining weight on breast feeding along. These feeding difficulties existed forever.

I’d try giving her something else obviously, but it wouldn’t be a can of coke!

And yet somehow , some people believe that doing all this is taking the easy way out, lazy parenting. Make it make sense.

I thought questioning people’s parenting abilities was about 90% of what mumsnet is about? Other 10% is ‘should I leave him?’

Who said anything about coke?

In fact , DD won’t drink any fizzy drinks at all due to the texture .

Why have you gone for the extreme and not actually answered her question. If they stopped drinking water and milk what would you do?

Because rather than actually engage in the discussion they’re choosing to make leaps so they can judge.

Because she doesn't actually know what she'd do, so she's gone for the extreme to try and ridicule.

No she clearly doesn't.

telling people with an arfid child to just wait until they eat whats offered or shove a different shake in front of them (😂) is akin to telling an anorexic to just eat more

I was just using coke as a drink example equivalent to quavers. In reality I would try diluted juice, blended smoothies, homemade milkshakes, mint tea. My point is, young children can only eat what we give them so unless they’re introduced to junk food by us, they don’t even know that that is the only food they can eat. Unfortunately we live in a society where we are surrounded by it and it’s very hard to avoid. The kid with arfid that lives in a rural Icelandic village is not eating only quavers!

And plenty of people would consider those options the equivalent to quavers and crap and you a lazy, pandering parent for not giving them just water and milk.

There but for the grace of God go I, and all that.

No they aren’t. But they also aren’t eating a lamb shank with a serving of creamed spinach.

And every single one of those options would get you the same criticism you're levelling at parents feeding their child Quavers!

In what world is a homemade blended juice drink the dietary equivalent to a packet of quavers???

yup, its a pigeon chess response

I'm not saying it is. I'm saying if you came on here and said your toddler only drank squash, smoothies and milkshakes, you'd be roundly criticised for the amount of sugar in their diet, how much you're damaging their teeth and told that smoothies are awful because you get rid of the benefits of eating the fruit whole.

You're quite happy to dish out criticism to everyone else but you haven't actually given an answer of what you'd do differently that wouldn't be just as open to criticism by others.