My 12 year old son hardly eats - desperate for any advice!

[mysonhardlyeats]

My son has always been a very poor eater and over his life has dropped from the over the 25th centile to the 2nd.

He has remained a very poor eater his whole life, and is extremely small and slim.

He is very particular about he eats, often refuses to try new foods ( he says it 'hurts his mouth' to eat things he does not like the taste of and seems to have a real fear of a ' bad taste'). Despite being particular about what he eats, he also goes off food from eating them too much, which is challenging with a child who also won't try new foods.

He is now 12 and his already poor eating has got worse in the last 6 months and he is losing weight ( not just dropping centiles). For example his eating over the last few days has typically been - a couple of mouthfuls of dry cornflakes, no snack, no lunch, a few mouthfuls of dinner and half a chocolate eclair. He says he is just not hungry, At other times he says he is hungry but does not want to eat. He hates being so small. and says he does not know why he cannot eat. He says he hates being weird for not being able to eat.

A paediatrician has ruled out a physical cause and he is under a paediatric dietician but they have not been much use - they keep giving him weird tasting supplements which he refuses as they taste weird ( they do, I have tried them).

Has anyone got any advice? I am desperate. Has anyone tried drugs to increase appetite? We would told he would not meet the criteria for AFRID and there is no AFRID service where we live anyway.

are you talking to real doctors? I would ask for second opinion.

Yes, two paediatricians and two paediatric dieticians. The current paediatric dietician ( only seen her once) is very young and inexperienced though and I am not happy about that but not sure what we can do about it,

It's possible he is vitamin deficient and that is making his appetite lower. I would take doctors advice and try to convince him to eat them and ask how long he has to eat/take this supplements.

He just won't take them. If we could make him eat things he doesn't want to eat, we wouldn't be in this situation. He's a kid with extreme sensitivity to food and taste and their only solution is to give him weird tasting nutritional supplements. It just isnt' working.

Do you know if any particular vitamin deficiency could make him like this? I could maybe get him a jelly sweet type supplement then.

Quite a few different vitamin and mineral deficiencies can cause lack of appetite. Has he had bloods done recently to check for deficiencies? Does he take a multivitamin with a good range of things in it?

Oh, and a trick for nasty (or weird-tasting) medicine/supplements – if he likes chocolate/nutella/anything like that, get him to have a small piece immediately before the supplement. Chocolate coats the mouth, so he won't taste it as much. Chocolate, knock back the supplement like a shot (or get him to use a syringe, the goal is to get it back with minimal contact with his tongue), then more chocolate.

It sounds to me like you are in the range of any calories are good calories. He'll eat dry cornflakes. Would he eat the honey-nut ones? What does he have a few bites of at dinner? Can he have a few bites of that at other times? Are there ways you can increase the calories in those few bites (adding oil/cream/butter/cheese is the obvious first step, but not the only possibility)? Are there any drinks he likes that have calories?

Thanks for the tips on chocolate etc! I'll try that!

He had his bloods done for a range of things at least a year ago - maybe two now.. I'll check that with the Paediatrician and if they need to be redone. Something its making his eating even worse lately after all.

The cornflakes are honey nut ones. Its hard to get more calories into him with adding butter etc as he dislikes most of the things that they suggest for adding calories.

He doesn't drink milk or milkshakes. He used to like hot chocolate but he doesn't like that now - its one of the things he has gone off 🙄

The only calorie type drink he likes now is coca cola and I don't really want him drinking that as it will fill him up just with sugar and no nutrition.

But you are right, we are in the sphere of just getting him to eat, no matter what he eats. That's what the medics say too.

We do give him food six times a day - he said he would to eat little bits more often so we do that, at least on days he is not at school.

And we do give him a multi-vitamin, yes.

I can’t understand why he doesn’t meet the criteria for ARFID at all? That seems a bit odd. One of my DC has a diagnosis for it and isn’t as extreme as your DS.

Have any of the Paediatricians told you about the Birmingham Food Refusal Service?

Ooh thanks for this - i will look into this. TBH the paediatrican only mentioned it in passing as she thought it was a non-starter as they have no AFRID service in the Health board.

Seems like we are in a crap area for this type of support.

There’s no help for us locally for ARFID either. The only suggestion they gave us was to take her to the GP each week to get her weighed which sounded like a formula for promoting anorexia to me.

i think you can talk to Birmingham Food Refusal Service, I don’t think that you need a referral.

My DD is slightly different in that if she’s in control of what she eats she will eat so we had a drawer in the freezer full of things she liked, that she’s chosen, abd if she didn’t like what was on offer she cooked a meal for herself.

Thanks so much @BunnyRuddington I'll definitely get in touch with the Birmingham people to ask their advice!

How is your son doing? My daughter has become the same. She was fussy but then got poorly and now days she has no appetite whatsoever. She will eat small amounts but is now so thin and has no energy etc. I really hope your son has improved.