Am I dealing with fussy eating dc wrong

[narnia2025]

I am at point where I don’t know what to do with dc.they are incredibly fussy.
this is the only foods they eat
chips- have to be straight cut, can’t have skin on
nuggets- has to be birds eye and battered
fishfingers- has to be Birds Eye
pasta- has to be penne
meatballs- can’t be any other type of meat and pasta, sauce and meatball have to separated
sausages occasionally
broccoli
peas
blueberries can’t be mixed with anyhing
bread and butter can’t be toasted
cheerios
walkers crisps- has to be ready salted

at their dads they will basically be giving exactly what they want and are giving their own dinner per request.
I cook the family a meal which has atleast one thing I know they will eat but sometimes it is mixed in.it can take up to an hour for them to eat and mostly it’s just picking. I really don’t want to just give them the same foods as their siblings eat a great varried diet so don’t want to limit them and also worry that dc will not have enough nutrition. If I give in will they just never eat a normal diet. I feel like I’m at my wits end and getting stressed every mealtime. Has any parents dealt with this level and aibu to just keep giving them what we eat in hopes they will just start eating more.

Does your child show any other ASD traits?

I have two children with AFRID. AFRID children will not eat just because they are hungry, they will starve. If you have an AFRID child refusing to feed them what you know they can eat, or trying to force what you know they can’t eat is punishing them for something they cannot control. This isn’t a will not, it is a can not. The specialist advice I received, don’t turn meal times into a battle, these children are stressed enough around food as it is. Give them their food, and on a separate plate one item of other food. They can look at it, smell it, taste it if they want or they can just leave it be and settle into having it near them.

Is this some kind of psychological response to the stresses of being at their dad’s house vs yours, do you think?

OP, it's hard. My DS has got worse and worse the older he's got. When he did GCSEs I started cooking him a different meal to reduce stress and also my younger kids were getting more adventurous and we were all a bit bored. He's now nearly 20 and his diet has gradually got worse and worse and he's more good avoidable than ever eg. he used to eat chicken but now it has to be frozen ultra processed. I am glad I gave him 15 years of decent ish food, but it just shows that now he's older, he hasn't improved, just got worse. I think whenever you allow the 'eat whatever you want' it is likely his diet will become more and more restrictive. My DS's other problem is that he does get bored so things fall off the 'menu' and very few things find their way onto his list.

Have a dd with Arfid. I found this helpful. It is really hard though. My dd eneded up hospitalised through it.

Getting a balance is tricky . They used to say put the food in the middle with bowls so they can pick. Less overwhelming.

To me, this suggests it’s more about ‘control’ than a sensory issue. I was very fussy as a child (and still more fussy than average as an adult!) but it was definitely sensory - there are textures that just make me gag. I physically can’t eat them. It was worse as a child partly because I have gradually forced myself to tolerate things as I’ve grown up, but also partly because I was stubborn and my dad made a big fuss about it, so I dug my heals in. I wonder whether you’ve ended up a bit in the second camp - he’s digging his heels in a bit because you’ve made it into a bit of battle? Most pasta is similar enough on a sensory or taste level (especially your examples of penne or fusilli) so either this is extreme sensory issues or it’s him looking to control what he eats (that’s not a deliberate, calculated thing - he won’t know that’s what he’s doing, but he feels powerless in other ways and this is something he can control). I feel like it’s not extreme sensory issues because if he can tell the difference between penne and fusilli but is prepared to eat broccoli that would be quite unusual given the textures.

I've not read the whole thread but I've read OP's posts.

I have 2 autistic children and so much of what you have written is familiar to me. One of my children will refuse to eat a sandwich if it is not cut up in triangles. The other loves nothing more than plain pasta and peas for a meal. For one of them, they can't have veg on their plate so it has to go on a separate plate and sometimes they eat it and sometimes they don't. If butter hasn't melted properly into a piece of toast, they can't eat it until it has. And so on.

I'm not saying your son is autistic of course but the specificity of his food choices to me, as a lay person, sound more than just someone who is a bit fussy and doesn't like veg. For mine, some things it is about texture, others it is probably control linked up anxiety, others it's just rigidity and a need for sameness.

With my kids, they eat their safe food pretty much every meal but we try and expose them to different foods at the same time.

E.g. if we're having curry, one will have chicken and rice (separately) on a plate and curry sauce on the side to dip her chicken in. The other has plain rice and a samosa. Me and dad then have whatever curry we'd normally have and maybe add in a few sides. Then at meal time we'd ask if they wanted to try something on our plate. One always says no. The other will sometimes try. There's no pressure.

And I make sure they have a gummy vitamin everyday in the hope that helps!

I was a very fussy child.

I still have memories of when I was younger, gagging when people tried to encourage me to eat things I didn’t like. And the food just getting colder and colder as I tried to pick out all the bits I didn’t like.

I had a sudden change aged around 11-15 and got more and more adventurous. I eat a very wide range now, though, like a poster above, I still have a big aversion to “children’s” foods (or at least the 1980s version of them). I wouldn’t be able to eat things like spaghetti hoops, fishfingers, or those potato alphabet things if you offered me a fortune. I also remain unhappy about some foods “touching” though for others it’s fine.
For me it’s sometimes a problem when it affects the texture - not always though.

My children would probably be deemed fussy, but they seem pretty normal to me 😂. They do have lots of things they will eat, and that has expanded as they have grown older, but they also have lots of things they dislike.

I try to accommodate their preferences as much as possible, and for younger Dc a lot of that is about specific brands. I just buy the particular brands they like whenever I can.
Or we deliberately trial different brands “to see if they are as good as brand X” and if they aren’t, we don’t buy them again.

I would say start off from the assumption that your son can definitely smell, taste and feel in his mouth when brands are different, or pasta shapes are different or whatever.

Make sure he can rely on you to serve food how he likes, only then start very gently pushing the boundaries.
Writing the meal plan for the week up on the fridge might help.

so they don't even have soy milk or oat milk, right? Since you didn't mention them.

My friend's kid would only have dry cereal, too.

Tapas style picnics with a little of everything no forcing but some enthusiastic eating of eating new stuff by adults.

This is my 4 year old. Pasta (with a bit of cheese) and cucumber is her dinner every single day, no exaggeration. When did yours start to grow out of it?

Do research ARFID..

Im an adult with ARFID, raised with the 'eat it or go hungry' and the 'if you don't eat it it will be served to you at the next meal and the next until it goes visibly mouldy' attitude.

So I am an adult with ARFID now.

Things that help me now that your kiddo can't yet do - being able to buy my own food, being able to prep my own food.

Things that help now that can help your kid:

Offer all the food for a meal on the table at once - put it in seperate dishes or on separate plates if thats necessary, or on divided plates.

Make sure that there are several things he does like - and do not fuck about with that - if he says straight cut McCain chips, don't put out Morrisons own brand and make out they're the same, they are not to him and he knows.

Put a couple of new options out too, it can help to go with similar things to his current safe foods but DON'T push this too far or you can go the other way and put him off his safe foods.

He eats what he wants from the selection available.

You say absolutely fucking nothing, not a peep, not a whisper, zip it.. nada about it.

So no encouraging to try, no 'if you don't eat x you can't have y' (after all if you determined both X and Y were appropriate food nutritionally, why does it matter if he has one and not the other if the original plan was he have both?)... no 'SEEEEE it WAS nice after all'... absolutely nothing at all.

At the end of the meal, if he is still eating, clean up everyone elses stuff, go off and do whatever it is you were all doing - he can finish up or he can choose to leave it at the same time you all leave the table, but you won't all sit around waiting for him (because this puts pressure on him, not because you're punishing him to eat faster).

Do not try to hide foods in other foods - this is a really quick way to put someone off a safe food.
Do not comment - at all. I really can't emphasise this enough, even if your comments are intended kindly, to be encouraging, to praise him for trying etc, they are not going to help.

When someone with ARFID tries something new and doesn't gag or instantly refuse it...

And someone helpfully says 'see, its not so bad/see, its nice really'... what the person with the food issue hears is this:

'You're imagining these issues, you're silly and your opinion doesn't matter, you're wrong, look how wrong you were...'

Very quickly even a 'well done' or 'you're awesome for trying that' can come carry the same meaning.

See if he'd be interested in doing a Super Taster test - its just a paper strip you touch to your tongue, super tasters will taste it really strongly (bitter, like ear wax!), normal tasters will taste it fairly faintly and non-tasters will barely detect a thing, if at all.

Im a super taster... in a family of non-tasters. The things I was detecting in foods they hadn't a clue were there!

For most ARFID sufferers, both texture and taste are an issue - I've got issues with food being too dry too, likely due to a hiatus hernia, ditto with things being in large pieces or taking large bites (which I was encouraged to do as a kid to get down things I didn't like quickly). We tend to be very quick to identify how something will feel and taste simply by looking at it -we're not always right in that, but that link is very very strong for us!

This is more than being fussy. It sounds like ARFID.

My son is 8 with Autism, he eats a restrictive diet. He hits all his food groups so even though he is limited, its pretty balanced.

My son doesnt like hot food except from a very limited few things, though even then, he eats them cold. My son doesnt eat any potatoes at all.

I had to let go of what i thought was nice for him, family meals, family takeaways, Christmas dinner. Because actually, for him, this wasnt a nice experience. Imagine being given something you dont like for dinner every day. Its miserable, even with the best intentions.

Its a good idea to take all pressure away, just give them the safe food. Let them get comfortable with knowing their food is safe. You need to build this level of trust before even thinking about doing anything else.

I get plates for my son that are seperated into sections. This means i can add a "try it" food, without the whole plate then being rejected. As just that section is refused without it being "contaminated".

We have ended up in A&E multiple times when he has been ill, because he refuses to eat and drink anything when he is ill.

You need to shelf the guilt. Its serving no purpose and helping no one. My son had a cheese sandwich for lunch everyday for a year and a half. He goes to an AP that has a private chef who makes lovely, fresh hot lunches. And every time my son orders...... a cheese sandwich.

I dealt with far worse than this and have now reached a point where my DS can go to most places and find something acceptable on the menu. When he was small he only ate potato waffles. Nothing else at all. We ended up referred to a dietician who suggested essentially what I think is now known as division of responsibility. I gave him potato waffles and a tiny helping on a separate plate of something very similar I think it was alpha bites or something like that. Tiny helping and no drama, either they eat it or not. No cajoling or nagging, just a straightforward "I made some alphabites today, I'll put some on the table if you want to see them". Hopefully see evolves to try. If it works after a few tries keep at it until you have two reliable foods. Then maybe try chips. The idea is that the transition is very gradual. In our case we gradually made it to frozen roasties and then homemade. Diet purists will throw up their hands in horror but McDonalds fries and happy meal toys led to chicken nuggets which gradually led to fishfingers and onto non battered chicken. This is a long long haul taking months or even years, it is not a quick fix. It involves "unhealthy" options - chocolate powder to get milk in for example. It involves creativity - make a food diorama with chicken dinosaurs, call food different names (DS would not eat omelette at first but if I added a dash of soy sauce and called it Chinese pancake he was fine?), anything at all to maintain interest as long as there is no pressure. I think if a child is truly a difficult eater it is not spoiling, pandering or whatever to do what it takes to get them to eat. Feel no guilt and serve what they will eat while you gradually work on expanding the range. And tell anyone commenting to mind their own unless they wish to offer a constructive solution.

Yes to letting go of expectations. This can be so difficult with well meaning family and friends who just don't understand and make a "lovely" meal for your child despite you asking for microchips or something and then get upset when it is left.