I put unreasonable - this is triggering for our family. Although I do realise it's our problem and not yours.
DGS will only eat dry toast, he's just decided he will no longer have Nutella on it because he became overwhelmed with the smell of chocolate when his classmates ripped open their Easter eggs which the teacher had bought for them before half term. His mum is trying to tempt him back to peanut butter which he used to have before he dropped it and changed to Nutella. He had up to half a dozen safe foods at one point which he has reduced for one reason or another - he would drop one food and replace it with another but that seems to have stopped.
He's averse to smells and textures. He had supplemental high calorie drinks prescribed but he will only drink water.
He used to eat Pom Bears but school recently did a healthy eating lesson where he was told that they were unhealthy so he won't touch them anymore - so that was a good source of his calories lost to him.
There's no wonder children end up with feeding tubes when people are so judgemental about children eating beige food, telling children that it's unhealthy. His school apologised profusely and listed what they should have done during the healthy eating lesson and they put up a packet of Pom Bears on the healthy foods side of the class display. Then there was a stream of angry parents complaining about it - so it was removed from the display and that made him feel bad all over again.
He will occasionally chew a thinly sliced piece of apple and spit it out. He can't swallow it because of the texture.
The rules for the type and texture of clothing he can tolerate are complicated as well.
We were told that him biting his nails, picking his skin, pulling threads out of clothing are all versions of his own kind of stimming. His mum buys socks every week to replace the ones which will no longer cover his feet as he pulls such huge holes in them. His teacher said that she knows exactly where he had been in school because of the trail of threads left behind - which we know about because it's the same everywhere he goes - reminds me of the Hansel and Gretal story.
He's 15kg and 5 and a half years old. His cousin is three months younger and on the smaller side for her age and she is 18.5kg.
He's been told about tube feeding at hospital appointments and he appears to want this as he says it would be good because he could stop eating. He doesn't understand the implications.
He doesn't enjoy eating because it overwhelms his senses.
It makes me really sad when people judge the parents for what their children eat. Unthinking adults have really reduced the amount of foods DGS will now eat. He nibbles a piece of cold dry toast for lunch. He used to have a whole slice of hot toast after school with a topping on and maybe ask for another - but now it's dry.
He also won't tolerate the iron medicine he's been prescribed despite his levels being very low. After his recent tonsillectomy he was prescribed a suppository form of pain killer which he refused to let anyone administer.
He ate perfectly normally until about 3 years of age - anything and everything.