help with bizarre eating habits

[Namaah123]

over the past 6 months my 3 year old has developed some strange habits with food. He wont eat anything if it is presented in a way that looks nice to him and he will sit and happily stare at it for ages. he is not a fussy eater as he will eat absolutely anything except yoghurt (which he has hated since he was a baby).

Some examples (because I know this sounds bizarre)

• if I make spaghetti and meatballs, I usually layer the spaghetti, then the sauce then the meatballs and the cheese. He wont eat it like this because he doesn't want to "mess up the stripes"

• I made rainbow jelly for a siblings birthday and again didn't want to mess it up

• I made a smiley face pizza and didn't want to mess it up

• if I make him a sandwich he doesn't want to touch it cause crumbs will fall of the bread

• if I give him soup with bread he doesn't want to dirty the bread with the soup and wont eat the bread as above

I know this sounds as simple as don't give him food in a way that upsets him but it isn't that simple any more, His habits are getting worse each week and it's making every meal time so stressful. It's gotten so bad that he wont allow us or his brothers and sisters to "mess up" their food without having a melt down. It used to just be food that was supposed to look special (like rainbow jelly and teddy bear toast) but now it all foods.

I have to intentionally make his and everyone else's food look messy (ripping a sandwich into chunks and roughing it up a bit or mixing everything up until it's just an unrecognisable blob. The other way of getting round it is to serve each item in separate dishes (cant be one of those compartment plates as those freak him out as well) but there is 7 people in our family and I just don't have enough dishes and space to serve up 3 or 4 plates to each person.

It's also gotten to the point where he wont let me put his untouched perfect plate away, he will carry it around the house with him until he falls asleep and then I can finally clean it away. He will even rearrange it back to how it was if it gets a bit messed up from being moved about. If I do take it off him he is devastated for the rest of the night, I'm not talking about a 15 minutes tantrum and then it's forgotten about , he will just sit quietly somewhere and sob for ages and no amount of trying to reason, comfort or distract him will help.

I tried to Google for advice but I don't even know what to search for so hopefully someone on here has some advice

Really sorry, I have no idea on this one. Does he go to any childcare? If so, how does he react there?

Is it just food or it is other things too? A chat with your GP might help, liking order of things in a certain way to this extreme makes me think of a child on the autistic spectrum. I am of course no expert. I think your GP could help get to the bottom of it.
It may well of course just be one of those phases that will pass! I really hope I don't upset you by saying this.

hi, no you haven't upset me, I have actually wondered myself a few times if he might have some form of autism. I've read some information on the internet and although he does has some behaviours that are part of the autistic spectrum he also has some that seem to exclude it.

eg 1. His nursery referred him through to speech and language therapy 6 months ago as they thought he had difficulty with understanding/speaking and doesn't socialise at nursery. But at home he will socialise with us and his brothers and sisters and actually learned to talk really early (by the time he was 12 months he used about 20 words and by 18 months he was stringing 2 and 3 words together and used over 100 words). We had 1 meeting with the speech and language people and they concluded that his language was very good and was just shy at nursery and we were discharged.

eg 2. he does have a bit of an obsession with his trains needing to be lined up across the room with their matching tenders or shoes needing to sit in matching pairs. But then he will do a lot of imaginative pretend play with his trains as well

eg 3. He threw a toy at his sister when she messed up his line of toys but then he got really upset because he hurt her and wanted to comfort his sister, he was cuddling and stroking her hair and saying he was sorry

eg 4. he has developed an obsession with minecraft and would spend all day carefully building amazing houses and structures if I would let him but he will also play it along with someone and help build a structure the way the other person wants

His nursery haven't said anything about problems with his snack there but I will ask when I pick him up in a bit. He doesn't socialise much at nursery and they say he just sits on the sidelines playing happily most of the time but he has started taking part a bit more, he put his hand up to change the day on the calendar last week which was a shock as normally he is the only one that isn't bouncing about to get picked.

I think i'll make an appointment with a gp and speak to them as I'm very confused one what to do now. I just didn't want to go to a GP and have them laugh saying it's just a phase he is going though (which hopefully it is but I hate being made to feel like a paranoid mother)