good diet for dd

[fairychronicle]

Hi my dd is 9 and has asd. her food range is quite limited and she does suffer a great deal from trapped wind. Just wondered if anyone had any thoughts for meals i could try. At th eminute she usually has toast for breakfast, ham, cheese bread and butter or crackers for lunch and then pasta or some sort of homemade pie, gammon and chips for dinner. These are her more favourite meals. Any help would be appreciated!

Hi Fairychronicle, I just wanted to say that I don't mean this harshly, but I'm sure you can see that your DDs diet is very poor. There is no mention of any fruit or veg, only very salty food and carbs.

The question is, what do you want to do about it? You obviously want to change it, but do you want to start by adding in additional healthier choices, or do you want to go hard core and serve up something like homemade veggie soup and give no alternative?

Perhaps it might be a good idea to speak to your HV or GP, as there are usually support groups and healthy eating/cooking sessions you could attend with your DD. You sound like a really good mum, I'm sure you can sort this out.

Best of luck.

thanks i appreciate what you are saying and know what to cook her but if youhave a child with asd youwould appreciate how difficult this could be.

As I say I am perfectly capable of cooking healthier and cook from scratch most nights its just getting a child with asd to eat it!

Would dd eat more options if she helps prepare it ?

I have a ds with asd and luckily he eats anything ...

Breadsticks and salsa sort of stuff ? Is it a texture thing/ taste/ colour ?

For fuck sake Gobacktosleep! What a waste of time your post is. Its just pointing out what the op already knows. You clearly haven't even registered that the op has said its her daughters asd that contributes to this problem.

Does she literally eat no fruit or veg?

Will she eat any fruit or veg at all? cooked or raw?

I don't know if this suggestion will be helpful, I have no experience of feeding DC with ASD but when mine were little and going through stages of being suspicious of new foods I used to give them separate little piles of the ingredients of whatever we were having, so, for eg. if I was doing spag bol they would have pasta with a little pile of cheese, a little pile of mince, little pile of peas, little pile of peppers (raw) etc. and as far as possible, not touching. It sounds a faff but they seemed to grow out of their faddiness a lot quicker than lots of their friends and have grown up to be voraceous omnivores.

Might be worth experimenting with different textures - e.g raw grated carrot instead of cooked carrot.

Could you get her involved in cooking with you?

Raw veg are good. Can you try her with 'bitter' salad leaves (red chicory, radicchio, roquet...) as these are good for wind. So is exercise, not eating too late, and appes/pears with the skins on. Mint tea is good for settling the tum. What about veg & barley soup? If you teach her how to make it (if she is interested in cooking) she may be more inclined to eat it.

If she helps choose and prepare the food, she may be more likely to eat it.

thanks everyone have tried and sometimes helping prepare works but most times not. Texture is important and she doesn't tend to eat much in a sauce so its hard to disguise that way. She wont touch any kind of salad veg. Broc, carrots occasionally and fruit , apples and bananas go in fads but few and far between. i think the trouble is she just has a complete blinker when it comes to anything classed as fruit and veg. She is being assessed for PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) so this makes life even harder!

We've been following the Tinsley House diet / supplements / exercises for 7 weeks now and so far, have had really good results. There are two books - Is That My Child? and The Brain Food Plan which goes into more detail on the diet and has a two week eating plan.

We ate quite well before but have upped our fish intake considerably, now have cooked breakfasts and cut down on carbs. Apparently craving carbs/ salt / sweet stuff is part of the problem for our children along with faddy / fussy eating. I thought ours would howl at the changes, but they have been incredible. I found it very daunting to start with, but after a few weeks it became second nature and I'm much more organised than I was

As Plenty says, we get them involved in the cooking and they have aprons, chefs hats etc. We've also given everything good names - the book talks about Rat Stew (ratatoulle) and we also have Oaty Oats, Yummy Chook toast (chicken pate) and Seedy Slice etc. I hide veg in everything - today we had lasagne with tons of grated carrots and leeks in the meat sauce and blitzed spinach in the cheese sauce (Popeye Sauce).

Most successful of all is Dinner Winner for whoever finishes anything first. We've made up a silly chant and they love it. Everyone who finishes is a dinner winner, but there is always a first place / gold medal. No treat, just glory and to chose their plates /cup colours at the next meal.

DS has always had terrible wind and reading lots about this on the Special Needs board I think he's probably reacting to either gluten or milk which is a pain. I'm going to ask the doc for a gluten blood test and see how we are getting on after a couple more months.

Happy to waffle on more if it helps Good luck!

Lots of people without PDA, ASD or whatever don't eat F+veg either. I know a lady who is about 60 and quite happy to have not eaten any of it all her adult life (she seems fairly healthy), even though she always made her own kids & grandchildren eat their f+Veg.

I think you can only do what you can do, OP. Perhaps a vitamin supplement if you're worried? My 4yo has a very limited diet, too, but I'm trying not to make an issue out of it.

Would she eat it if she grew it ? Perhaps start with cress, then progress to salad leaves ?

Will she eat gluten free breads/crackers? It might be worth trying as it might help with her wind.

Do you/ could you make the chips?

What would happen if you made carrot, parsnip, sweet potato and beetroot chips? Would she eat those?

Can you start with gammon, and maybe move to pork one day?

Or serve it with an egg? or pineapple ring. Would adding an item to the favourite meal help?

Sorry, no ideas about how to expand food groups for an ASD child, just thinking of ways of expanding what she currently eats.

Liking the idea of mint tea, if you think she would drink that?

Really sorry, I missed the ASD bit. Skim reading while feeding baby, apologies.

Sorry if i was harsh Gobacktosleep!

The Annabel Karmel book Feeding Your Baby and Toddler has lots of ideas on how to make healthy food look appealing and is full of family recipes as well as baby recipes. There is cannelloni which looks like people sleeping in a bed, pinwheel sandwiches, something else which looks like a hedgehog...basically lots of quirks to make it look appealing to children. We have made alot from the book and have enjoyed them all. My DH's and my favourite meal now comes from this book so its not just for younger children. I got it for a few pounds on ebay. www.annabelkarmel.com/bookshop/feeding-your-baby-toddler

I've got an ASD son and know a lot about nutrition and so it's been quite a difficult mental journey for me to go on to accept that a child can seem to thrive on crackers, bread, cheese, bacon etc.

It took about a year for him to eat 3 (but only ever 3) peas now and again. And he will occasionally eat raw carrot and raw apple unsure duress and as as part of a plan.

I read Internet threads about 'ohh not having 3 types of veg with every meal' and laugh bitterly!!!

He's 8 now and is (touchwood) never physically ill (has thrown up once in 8 years) and there are ASD kids out there who live only on ketchup or one type of dry cereal so I count myself lucky!

I asked for a referral to a dietician and after 9 whole months they came back and give him a glass of orange juice once a day. That was it!!!

The ASD lady from the education department said they can be sensitive to gluten but love it so try and swap some of his wheat based foods to oat based ones. He won't eat rice.

Before he was diagnosed the whole thing caused me so much self torment - but then his brother was raised just the same and eats anything! I've just had to get used to all the judgey looks when eating with others and he sits down with a piece of bread and a crisp!!!

Good luck - I think trying to reduce the gluten is a good move.

I have asd ds1 and various things have worked over the years.
Taking pressure off-I let him eat in another room and slather everything in tomato sauce. He's so much better now I don't insist on the table or say ketchup doesn't go with salmon.
I put it on his plate but never say he has to eat anything.
I leave stuff on the side in the kkitchen and he sticks a finger in.
He tries stuff at school and then I replicate it at home.
Homemade ice lollies out of fruit puree/juice.
Homemade ice cream with lots of fruit.
Vitamin 'sweeties' and fish oil 'sweeties'
Jelly made with fruit juice.
Breadmaker bread with grated courgette/carrot.
Deep fried tempura. with ketchup!
Carrot juice and lemonade.
Biscuits/cakes made with fruit/almond flour/seeds -anythuing that might be good.
Going fruit picking in summer and growing own in garden.
Salted seeds/nuts -I add a bit of 'lo salt' to walnuts or sunflower seeds and he thinks it's a naughty snack.

I get low sugar/salt ketchup.
I try and vary carbs-so oats/rice/corn as well as wheat.
I use wholemeal flour in all cakes/muffins.
I make popcorn instead of having crisps.
I mix soda water with fruit juice for pop.
I count freeze dried or dried fruit as one of his 5 a day.

Ps he would never eat a sauce, any 'damp' food, any chip that tastes different and wouldn't give a flying f'ck if his dinner looked like a hedgehog. When I went on holiday it blew his mind so much he lived for 10 days on dry plain biscuits!!!

Defineme - I think the pressure off thing is key here. There are some really good ideas there. Mine can't eat without fiddling.

Live natural yoghurt mixed with fresh fruit puree and manuka honey instead of normal yoghurts.
Someone on here years ago said they boiled loads of veg in water and then mixed up the water with jelly cubes for jelly.
ds now loves parsnip 'chips'.

Sorry -seemed to be on a roll there!
I insist my nt twins eat at the table and they have to try everything. Ds1 gets to eat on the floor in front of tv-don't care as long as he eats something!
Holidays tend to make ds1 stick to his trad 'yellow food' diet!
When he was little he would eat surrounded by teletubbie books.

thanks v much everyone for your replies. Ruggle will look at that book and interested to see what it says. I did try her on gluten/casein free diet years ago but didn't see enough of a idfference/if any to warrant the "faff". I let her eat where she wants as eating at the table is a big no no.

I also think sometimes she seems fairly healthy on what she does/doesn't eat so why bother but I do think her "windy" problems are not helped by her diet and also she is quite big (although tall as well and was not seen as a problem by paeds but wouldn't want her to get any bigger).

She does crave sweet/salty/ food although carbs are dwindling. She often doesn't want bread/crackers/pasta now - which makes it difficult at lunchtimes! Thanks everyone will put my thinking hat on but if anyone else has any ideas please feel free!

Will she eat fruit if it is dipped in chocolate or as a smoothie?
Have you tried making faces on homemade pizzas with red and green peppers and cherry tomatoes?
What about dried fruit in cereals?