My 6 year old wont eat anything but pizza and chicken nuggets, HELP!!

[moimoog]

Since his little brother was born, 4 and a half years ago my 6 year olds eating habits have gotten worst. He wont eat any veg or meat, he will sometimes eat fruit like grapes, apples and oranges, he does drink alot of milk, but he wont even try to eat the same food as the rest of the family, what can I do to make him eat a little healthier/ or varied diet?

Thanks Jimjams-I have it already and its great for reassurance, but like you we find the strategies dont really work with DS! He will quite happily help to prepare food-and then equally happily refuse to eat it. And if we try to put, say, one pea on his plate he will have hysterics-and at best we will have to transfer the other food to a clean plate, at worst he wont eat any of it!
Although he was underweight last year after his peiod of total food refusal (not surprisingly!) he has put the weight back on and more besides, so although slim, he no longer looks skinny. He is also quite tall for his age so they obviously get enough nutrition somehow!

What would happen if you had no chicken nuggets or pizza in the house? OK he wouldn't eat for a day and then? Go on, someone with a fussy eater try it. I bet you they would eat in the end.

Lonelumum-Jimjams DS and mine are both autistic and Im afraid the normal rules just do not apply. They just will not eat foods other than the ones they have decided they will tolerate (and in my DSs case that is not chicken nuggets or pizza, but things like bread, cheese and ham).

I have a very fussy eater, and it is hell to try and get him to eat. I know how frustrating it can be when people say 'he won't starve himself' when I have seen him starve himself!

What I try and do is have foods he likes and new foods on the table so that he can serve himself, and occasionally he does try something new. We've introduced things like shepherds pie this way (prior to this he wouldn't eat meat at all!), and now I can put veg in shepherd's pie. He ate his first pasta sauce the other day because we were in pizza hut, and he really wanted the 'lunch buffet' that we were having, but all the pasta had sauce on it, so he managed to eat it (he won't normally eat 'mixtures' of food - i.e. will eat plain pasta with cheese on the side.) Pizza is a no go food for him as it is too complicated!

Can you try and always offer him fruit at a set time - say when he gets home from school, along with a TV programme?

LonelyMum ds1 sometimes doesn't eat for a day (for example if we go out for the day- he won't eat in unfamiliar circumstances). If he does this I generally try to get a gluten free rusk into him at bed time. If he really won;t eat he wakes up the next day and spends the day throwing up (no sugars in blood = ketones = nausea) usually takes 3 days to recover, and he can't keep down plain water. We have to start with sugared water and then try and slowly move back onto food.

Yesterday at school he ate some crisps and a biscuit. They are trying to get him onto school dinners. He also has lots of opportunities to eat at school- tbh a big part of his curriculum is to improve his eating (both what he will eat, and where he will eat).

He has very limited langauge so I can't reason with him. If he won;t eat, he won't eat. Just like i can't actually make him go into places he doesn't want to go. Or I can't make him walk on the moors etc.

Oh sorry, I didn't know your children were autistic and I wasn't really aiming my suggestion at you anyway, I was only answering moimoog. Yes, with autistic children, I am sure there are issues to consider, of course.

I just know that my children have all had periods of being fussy eaters - still are to some extent - and when I have hardened my heart and not given in to their fussiness, the results have surprised me. Eg once, dd refused to eat her lunch and I had had enough of her so I did what my mother would have done: sent her to bed and reheated the dinner at tea time. Well, not only did she eat it as mild as a lamb, but she also ate a normal sized tea on top! I have to say, that surpised me.

I do think that as parents we are very emotionally involved with our children and are worried about them not eating or about having confrontations with them but if an outsider came in, they would not be emotionally involved and would get different results, hence the success of Supernanny (partly). If we could all harden ourselves occasionally, perhaps we would be surprised by the results.

But we have school involved in the eating issue as well- so we do have an unemotional agent working on it! Eating and food is a big part of the school curriculuim (it's life skills so very important). Autism is different because there are usually sensory issues involved as well. I know that ds1 could not tolerate anything slimy/gooey (casserole for example- he can't touch that stuff without shuddering- let alone eat it) and I am working backwards in reintroducing foods he once ate. Also he will eat foods one day- then reject all of the sudeen with no warning. About 18 months ago he used to eat apples with a passion- 3 a day on average - then overnight - rejected. Now if I offer an apple to him he shudders. Ditto with yoghurts- although I did my usual of comtinuing to offer occasionally and one day he did start eating them again.

I can't reintroduce foods at each mealtime as I doubt he would realise that he;d had it at lunch. He can remember things from before he was 2, but he can't necessarily remember with meaning. It's hard to explain, but I doubt his inner language is verbal- it's prob pictoral or maybe touch/smell based so a sense of time is not necessarily well established. Can;t remember what its called- episodic memory??? we;ll that's not working well.

I think if you have a standard fussy eater (ds2 is a bit like this- would prefer to eat crap) then there are things you can do, and you have plenty of ways you can encourage eating. But if you have children with very very limited diets there is often more going on - in autism there certainly is.

tortoiseshell-my DS stopped eating completely at one point last year. (This was before his diagnosis with autism ). I was beside myself with worry but was told by others that I was making too much fuss and got the usual "no child ever starves himself" line.
We have since been told by the child psychiatrist and paediatrician at the local CDC that we must take him to A and E if he ever does it to the same extent again. The pschiatrist said that he does, occasionally, have to put such children on a drip.

Oh no Jimjams again I have not made myself clear. I was again talking solely about children without special needs. I really am not qualified at all to comment about autistic children or any other special need.

But LM- I think children without SN can sometimes have an eating problem- especially if it has been going on for a long time, and that there is often more to the issue (probably sensory) than just being a bit firmer. TBH I think moimog's son's diet doesn't sound too bad, and probably the best approach would be to continually offer the same food (prob with an alternative), and make a big thing about how delicious it is...

Actually another thing I'd work on is sitting down (if he doesn't). DS1 eats better when he sits down- and I think part of the problem with strange places and eating is that he can't sit down as he hasn't examined every inch of the area he is in so he can't relax.

I think that's true jimjams, ds is totally NT, but is very like his autistic friend in his eating habits. BUT, the big difference I've found is that just sometimes he will try something new, whereas his friend absolutely won't. But ds will starve himself if he's in that sort of a phase.

ds1 will sometimes eat something new. At a party once he picked up a sausage and ate it- we all watched in silence- it wasn';t even gluten free but I didn't care. Hasn't eaten it again though. Or if he does take something new in his diet he seems to drop something established. Aaaagh@!

And eating with others. I am sure ds3, who is going through the fussy stage now, sometimes eats more than he would do otherwise because he is sitting at a table with his three siblings and mother and we are all eating.

Actually, I am a bit of a charlatan here because I have decided to adopt the complete opposite approach to the one I suggested earlier. Having fought and battled and worn myself out with my three older children, I decided ds3 could eat as much or as little as he liked and to some extent, what he liked, eg I still put veg on his plate, but if he leaves it, so be it. I am interested to see if that will make a difference in the long run.

I didn't say that earlier because it seemed to me moimoog was not content to just sit back and let her son dictate what he ate and how much. She seemed to want advice about improving his diet.