My family have eating issues

[Eatinggood]

Can someone please help me with my children eating issues - mainly we’re really unhealthy. My daughter has ARFID which has meant I give her younger sibling same food as easier for me. I feel like a really crap parent and I want to do better please can someone help me? I’ve put below an average weekday and weekend menu we have

weekend-
breakfast - toast with scrambled eggs or a croissant
lunch - pasta with chicken nugget (my ARFID daughter only eats certain foods in rotation)
dinner
dinner - rice and sweetcorn with salmon slices heated in up in frying pan. She will not touch a salmon fillet or any other salmon brand it has to be Tesco smoked salmon slices the ones you put in sandwiches OR McDonald’s
Snacks - occasionally apple but mostly just crisps, chocolates and sweets

weekday -
breakfast - daughter has coco pops and younger sibling has multigrain hoops
lunch - I make my DD roast chicken sandwich for lunch to take to school but she rarely eats it but tells me she wants this. In younger years she had a cheese sandwich but was put off by someone telling her cheese is rotten and mouldy milk.
dinner - chicken breaded with pasta and sweetcorn
snack - usual crap but I force an apple which both eat a few slices on

Younger sibling my din eats school dinners and really enjoys them. I tried making his usual like chicken curry but he hates it and told me school dinners are better! He will gladly eat the pasta and chicken nuggets

another thing DD cannot have food touching so has a toddler plate or I give her a big plate but make sure nothing touches. DD is aged 11 and younger sibling is 7. DD gets really upset if her food is touching. Restaurants are a nightmare as the chicken nugget may not be to her liking and she does not like pizza

we have occasionally walked out of restaurants as she would get really upset seeing her food close to each other. She doesn’t do this anymore but just refuses to eat if anything in touching. Have been to GP and filled out lots of forms they think it’s autism with sensory issues.

@Eatinggood bless you
the problem with ARFID is children have their “safe” food but from my good friends experience - seeing other family members eating other things can in a way help as they become curious.

If it was me, I’d give my daughter whatever she wanted that she considered a “safe” food BUT I’d give anyone else a “normal” selection of food but use serving dishes so set up the table with everything on platters or in dishes (whatever you have) and then encourage everyone to put on their plates what they want and hopefully DD will see things she wants to try and fancies, not on their plates but giving the choice to put it on there (or not) and then maybe in time her menu will vary a little more.

Another thing I have heard of people doing is getting their children involved in the meal prep so setting the table and helping prepare the food so that this becomes a stable part of a routine and mealtimes become a family event not on peoples knees but at a table and time to be together.

I hope it improves for you.

I think just always having other foods to try is a good idea. Feeding the non arfid one the very plain foods is easy but in the long run it probably won't help.

You want them to see you eating different things, see them prepared, let them help cook. Try not to make it so disliked foods are hidden and never eaten by others.

I've finally found a cake my arfid loved one likes. After 20 years. How can someone dislike cake? I always kept making things and eventually if they try a bite it might turn into a new acceptable food. But it certainly takes patience.

That is actually a pretty good diet for someone with AFRID. Add some different veg and fruit for the younger child. That's not a lot of extra effort, you can still do the same meal but with some extras for the child who will eat it.

I read somewhere that children with issues like ARFID or just very fussy eaters need to see a new food on their plate about 10 times before there is any suggestion that they try it. And in very small quantities too, eg 3 or 4 peas on the plate at every dinner for a fortnight, no comment , no pressure, just there.
I tried this with DS1 ( now adult, not diagnosed with anything but possibly displaying some signs of autism - he thinks he is), and it did work to some extent. He ate a very restricted diet until he was about 10 or 11, but now as an adult will try most things.
I remember clearly how ecstatic I was the day he decided he would eat pizza and we could actually go out to a restaurant or get a takeaway and all enjoy it!

As far as fruit and veg is concerned, I'd give it to the DC chopped up ready on a plate as soon as they got in from school, when they were usually starving, before they had access to anything else. Or even just put some grapes in a bowl and leave them in from of them. DS1 did drink homemade smoothies when he was refusing most other things, so that helped: banana, some kind of berries ( frozen work well) and milk was my go-to.

Patience is your friend.

My dd has grown out of arfid. It was hard work from age 4 to 14. It’s often very important that food has the same texture, flavour, colour every time - that is why they get stuck on “safe” upf ready made food and why restaurants are difficult.

I remember dd going through a phase of refusing to eat any food that had brown on it in case it was dirty. It was hellish! And then any food with “green bits in” (aka herbs). Fortunately that only lasted a relatively short amount of time.

I humoured it for the most part - tried to stay patient, gentle put mini portions of new food on her plate, got her involved in cooking, etc. it didn’t help at all.

One year I grew fruit and veg and when we harvested it dd was horrified because it has been “rained on, and bugs might crawl out”.

We didn’t eat out in restaurants much, and we always self catered on holiday.

The key is - they cannot help their feelings. They find the unsafe food utterly revolting, they literally cannot force it down.

So they need time, lots and lots of patience and support, to get over it.

One question : what are YOU eating? I made sure I always sat and ate with my kids, and that I ate adult normal food.

I practiced until I could make perfect breaded chicken from scratch the same every time - actually much nicer than the Tesco version. My dd still loves it! And so on with various recipes.

For food touching, I got mini side bowls - the kind you might put a little portion of rice or gravy/sauce in. If there was crispy food, any veggies went in the little bowls and sat next to the main plate.

And I slowly expanded her list of acceptable foods again. I did have periods of despair when she would remove foods from her safe list for unfathomable reasons and lose weight. She did have too much sugar but I didn’t want to let her weight fall too much. For a period of about four years, I made crepes for breakfast every single day because it was all she would eat!

But when she was 13 she started to explore new food and by 14 she could eat Chinese and Indian and now age 16 she eats normally, which feels miraculous.

Some of her friends are now fussier than she is!

Don’t feel guilty - just keep moving forward and stay patient, you won’t get it right all the time but you can make headway!

Agree with all of this. Great advice.

Whatever you are giving your DD it seems unfair that the younger child has to have such a bland diet. That's a very limited range of beige food and lacking in nutrients.
I have no idea about eating disorders but surely the rest of the family can eat normal food.

I am full of admiration of the patience shown by some of you. Well done.

Thinking about ARFID, is it known whether it is a feature of life in societies where children lead more strenuous lives or where food is scarce. Does it only occur those where the food norms are choice, variety and plenty?

I am, literally, wondering what lies behind it. In no way am I criticising or making light of having to cope with this for either children or adults.

However, I recall no examples of anything resembling it in fiction (which is where general readers gain their impressions of life, particularly historic or foreign life), or in the popular writings of 20th-century psychologists. It is possible children with it did not survive and were diagnosed with something else.

I send best wishes to those doing the best they can.

I saw on a thread here lots of parents suggesting their child with AFRID loves sushi but eats very little else. Could be worth a try.

@Gagagardener thats such an interesting observation - I have a similar situation to the OP with one DC who I suspect has ARGID (diagnosed ASD).

I think it’s always been around in the same way that ASD has been around, but a) food was plainer, which may have helped, and b) in the absence of alternatives it’s possible younger children would have been thin/poor immune systems and carried off by what are now curable diseases. I wonder if some of it would be covered under failure to thrive or delicacy?

I wish I had advice, but my DC is autistic and has ARFID and eats a much smaller variety of foods than yours 🫤. No eggs, no meat or fish, no dairy apart from one particular brand of cheese pizza. Only one brand of bread. Cucumber slices but only if they’re the right texture. Apples only they’re sliced and the peel is red enough. Won’t engage with any treatment or OT. Gets enough calories and takes a multivitamin but is presumably malnourished and anemic - will not submit to a blood test.

My DH is similar - will only really eat processed / packaged foods, no fish, meat eggs. Will eat lettuce and carrots but no cooked vegetables and no fruit.

I’ve honestly just given up. Everything about daily life is a battle and I can’t spend my entire life trying and failing to entice people to eat different things when this only results in aggression towards me.

I batch cook proper meals for myself.

It’s so fucking hard. I’ve made so many nutritionally balanced menus and meal plans over the years, and tried food chaining and all the rest of it, and it just results in more food in the bin & a child on hunger strike.

I agree with this. My DH was ‘sickly’ as a child - always in hospital with various infections.

Another reason we see ARFID now and didn’t in the 70s and 80s is that we don’t beat children anymore as a matter of course. Which is a good thing!

But I was spanked if I didn’t eat what I was given, and my cousins were beaten with a belt if they didn’t clean their plates within a certain timeframe. Mealtimes were extremely frightening and stressful. Two of my cousins ended up in inpatient ED clinics in adulthood when they finally had the autonomy to control what they ate.

I imagine families where nobody had serious eating issues to begin with didn’t have to resort to extreme punitive measures like these at mealtimes - but corporal punishment was acceptable and encouraged until relatively recently for kids who misbehaved.

For arfid that is really good.
there is honestly nothing wrong with using a separator plate. Most of the time dd only eats one item per meal.

often for restaurants dd eats before and then just gets a fancy drink and a dessert. We make sure to order enough to justify her seat and she gets the experience of dining out without the pressure of eating.

Are you asking for advice on how you can make the younger siblings diet better? What do you eat? rather than the younger child’s eating the same bland safe food of the child with arfid could they not have whatever you are cooking for yourself?
I would say my son has arfid as a child and I would add sauces and other veg to whatever he was having for my other child sometimes or just cook the one with arfid plain pasta with cheese whilst we ate something ‘weird’ (like a roast dinner!)
Rather than planning the meals around the child with arfid I would plan a good healthy meal for the rest of the family and think how it could be adapted for the one with arfid to be bland and dry, although I did find he actually liked really strong flavoured, spicy things, as long as they were dry