he wont eat......

[diddymiddys]

My son is coming upto 3 years of age, and he will not eat. it started 17 months ago when he just stopped eating for no reason, took him to the doc's they said he would eat when he was ready bla bla bla..... several visits and 4 months later my son would bearly eat anything so he was sent to a pedeatrition, who refered him to a dietritition who refered him back to the pedeatrition, who said he probally is autistic which we suspected anyway. the long and the short of this is my son is 22lb hes nearly 3 i was hopeing sombody may know of a nutrient drink or a high colorie drink i could give him as he will eat nothing other than garlic, strong cheese and olives, thats all he eats. any ideas welcome i am at the end of my wits with the so called professionals.

Garlic, strong cheese and olives are not such an appalling diet. Plenty of fat and protein and calcium, some vitamins from the garlic and olives.

Try a multivitamin - will he eat sweets?

he wont eat sweets he seems to have a phobia of food

have you heard of complan provides a balanced mix of high-quality, essential protein, fat and carbohydrate to provide energy.

Will he eat ice lollies? Could you make smoothie ice lollies for him?

DS2 won't eat fruit but he will eat any fruit in an ice lolly or smoothie.

Sounds really hard, chese is a good thing to eat though. Are you getting any help with his diet?

he has tried complan, and it did not seen to make much difference, if anything it made his bowels worse than what they are already hes on movicol 3 times a day, my problem is they are screening him for autisum, untill they reach a diagnosis as to how far along the spectrum he is they will not interveen with his diet, but he looses weight so fast his 4 month old sister is 14.6 lb he is nearly 3 and only 22lb so you can see my problem.

the dietrition wont interveen untill he has been propally diagnosed with autiusum, she wants to put him on a dairy free diet to see if that works but the prob is he wont eat so changing a diet isnt going to make much differance he will drink cows milk but proferes water so taking him of milk and changing it to soya as she has sudgested will be a waste of time really

my son stopped eating when he was about 2.5yrs, he ate a wee bit on christmas day then nothing except juice/milk until the easter holidays!

he was already on pediasure plus milk for poor weight gain so we upped that and added in calogen as he has quad dystonic cerebral palsy and has really bad muscle spasms so any calories we managed to get in were getting burned off by the muscle spasms!
when he stopped eating docs said just leave him he wont starve himself, but my boy is very determined!

it went on like that for ages spells of not eating and spells of only eating certain things, he too loves strong flavours, chilli, curry, garlic etc and has got very fussy/picky (part of me thinks its behavioural as it started just after his dad flung us out)and within 2 years his weight dropped to 9.7kg (just over 21 lbs) and he was 4.5yrs

he now has a gastrostomy button and is fed mostly thru that and can eat whatever he likes as he gets all his calories and nutrition thru that so anything he eats is a bonus, his weight has doubled and the pressure is off and now because he can eat whatever he eats much more quantity wise altho he is still quite stubborn and at the moment will only eat curry, sausages, chips, chicken but only in a spicy batter etc

not saying your son will end up with a gastrostomy of course but there are loads of juices and milks and supplements that the dietician can try once they are on board so try not to worry too much, hard i know!

does he like Rolo puddings theres loads of calories in them or creme brulee, that sort of stuff, ds lived off rolo and milky bar puddings for a while!

could you make something with cheese and garlic perhaps but also a few breadcrumbs to kind of stick it together and if he likes it gradually increase the breadcrumbs in it so its kind of a cheese and garlic in breadcrumbs type thing?? probably a silly idea but just a thought!?

would he eat pizza? or garlic bread with cheese? one of ds's favourite things used to be a garlic pizza bread from Dominos...loads of calories in that!

diddymiddy, my ds is exactly the same, extremely limited diet and food phobia. He has been like this since he could eat and he is now 6 years old.

Has your ds been tested for anemia? (ds is severe anemic, which has a knock on affect on his eating, no appetite)

CAMHS and specialist feeding clinic, have been a tiny bit more helpful than Dietitian. All Dietitian was able to do for us, was advise about what foods are good/bad to eat, which isnt the problem, it's getting him to eat!

Feeding clinic has given us a 'food i will look at', 'food i will touch', 'food i will lick' etc, etc and we are taking things very slowly.

try calling the dietcian back and chatting with them .Im fully expecting ds2 to be put on supplemeted drinks due to weight loss

That's useful claw3, at the TAC meeting I brought up DS' gut / bowel issues and asked about a referral to a gastric specialist and was fobbed off with the dietician.

I suspected all they would do was advise on what he should be eating and I bloody well know that.

Will ring today and say I won't be taking them up on it!

dd3 has food supplement drinks as she can't put weight on. The ones she has are paediasure and nutrini, they come in various flavours, personally I don't think they taste that nice although dd3 likes them. It can be a bit hit and miss to find a flavour dcs like so it's worth persevering if first go doesn't work. Unfortunately they need to be prescribed so may be best to get back onto the dietician.

Milady, Dietitian could prove helpful (although their job is more about offering nutrition info, which most of us are well aware of!) they will try to rule out any physical causes and request referrals. Although you seem to have to have failure to 'thrive' before they will rule out any physical causes.

Dietitian was pretty dismissive when i asked about testing for gluten etc, but she did request referrals from Paed to CAMHS and feeding clinic as she thought ds difficulties were likely to be psychological something i had been saying for 4 years!. (shame it took 4 years for referrals to CAMHS to be accepted though!)

Dietitian is a bit of stepping stone, you have to go through the motions to get where you want to go.

He'd not failing to thrive or underweight because of all the milk he guzzles (touches no other protein though) so I don't know...

Just spoke to the SN HV and she said that the Paed may refer about an underlying physical problem but they are "reluctant". Do they not want to be seen to be supporting Wakefield in any way do you think?

Typical of them just confirming what you had been saying about psychological issues - have you had any help regarding sensory ones from the ever-elusive O.T? The waiting list for ours is 18 months!

Dietitian told me to rule out gluten etc, it involves pretty intrusive procedures ie biopsy, which they are not prepared to do, unless the child is severely underweight, not growing etc. (and to be honest i wouldnt want to put ds through that either). So it seems as long as the health issues are relatively minor ie anemic, teeth extraction due to poor diet etc, they dont bother to rule out physical causes.

Ah the elusive sensory trained OT or gold dust . The feeding clinic are made up of a team, Neurologist, SALT and wait for it sensory trained OT!!

OT basically give you strategies, as i mentioned earlier 'food i will' do whatever to and they seem to think the answer is 'messy play'. OT is coming from clinic is coming home next month, to do some 'messy play' and then they basically leave you to it for 3 months, then next appointment.

We havent managed to get passed 'food i will look at' yet.

Ds goes to CAMHS once a week and they do some playing with toy food, talking about it and helping him to cope with other anxieties. They have told me sometimes you just have to accept 'this is as good as it gets'! ds's diet is being supplemented with iron, calcuim, vits etc so its 'manageable'

Ah I see. And gosh, no I don't think a biopsy is necessary, or anything else invasive. Naively I thought maybe some sort of ultrasound would be the way forward...

So that's what the sensory-trained O.T does. I did wonder. DS is great at messy play these days, and like many children, fond of trying to eat all sorts of non-food items. Except actual food! (My Mum always shrieks when he picks up slugs and snails but I just shrug and say he could use the protein if he wants to try one and it's organic etc )

Has your DS improved wrt to food he will look at? I think we're the people who have sons who will only eat McD's fries but only with the pointy ends off aren't we?

Will he eat garlic bread? my dd1 is surviving on Garlic bread and pizza at the moment. If there are things he will eat then let him eat as much of them as he likes. Dd1 has always been really fussy, i know of another child who is 4 with ASD and lives on baby food.

Milady, yes we are no pointy ends or any kind of imperfection!

They may well be able to do a scan, no harm in asking. Remind me, what do you feel the problem is?

LOL @ snails and slugs, yum

Ds is the opposite to your ds, over-responsive senses and nothing goes in his mouth, he never mouthed objects as a baby, hates anything 'messy' etc. Sounds like your ds is under-responsive and seeks sensory input. Your ds should like strong tasting, spicy food etc, according to the 'text book'!

But i think (although not 100% sure) that the OT strategies would be the same ie more input to create more appropriate responses.

No ds hasnt improved he would always 'look at' food, but wont tolerate it near him (its been 3 months, not sure how long before OT decides its not working). With ds if he will touch a food then he will eat it, if he wont touch it, there is no way it will go anywhere near his mouth.

All the food he will eat is 'beige' and i have suggested trying to work with this, but OT is adamant that i will be 'reinforcing', so i am plodding along with her suggestions for now.

Sorry to hear that your DS hasn't improved claw , I agree with Leonie though, you're doing the only thing you can.

I'm not sure about mine, he seems to suffer so much pain at night and his bowel movements are so odd, I'm sure there is something wrong. Then again I suppose it might all be okay if he could go gluten and casein-free but he just can't, on his restricted diet he'd starve. Even the Paed agrees.

Leonie, i totally agree, im just going through the motions and following OT advice. If im honest everything ive tried (and ive tried loads!) hasnt worked. I had high hopes for the feeding clinic, but seems they are just covering old ground. Im hoping once this ground has been covered, she will move on and try something else.

Milady Your poor ds, it must be a vicious circle you eat, you suffer pain, you dont want to eat. Dietitian might be able to help or at least request a referral to someone who can. Silverfrog on here did say you can have a private urine test done to test for gluten etc which could give you some indication.

my DS is more v. fussy than phobic - preference for the beige diet....

but Milady - when my DS was 3 he had awful stools and guzzled 4 pints of milk a day - when I reduced his milk intake that made a big difference to his stools. I appreciate it was easier for us though as DS would at least eat even though a lot of it was junk food! I never went down the urine testing and considering gf/cf route as DS didn't get an ASD DX, more of a weedy - probably language delay DC