Bloody Jamie Oliver

[bakabat]

Healthy eating has come to DS1's (SLD/PMLD) school. So now of course DS1 isn't eating at all (except in the classroom where they are still alowed to eat crap- it's the school dinners than have been changed). He was making real progress with food as well. After years of only eating gluten free bread and pizza school had managed to introduce chips and potato waffles and some meat and fish (in the form of gf fishfingers and chicken nuggets)- first meat and fish in 4 years so a major achievement. It's unreliable - but he will still eat fishfingers and nuggets very occasionally at home (refuses often).

They are apparently allowed to eat potato waffles once a month (?) and chips occasionally. BUt on days when those aren't served he'll eat a packet of crisps and a biscuit and occasionally a yoghurt and that's it (so of course behaviour goes because he's hungry and he comes home and starts trying to wolf down anything he can get his hands on- ie biscuits).

Now I'm sure healthy eating is lauadable in ms, and I'm sure it should be encouraged in SLD/PMLD, but to remove the alternatives when so many of the children have problems with food. ....

DS1's teacher is having a nightmare from the sounds of it.

Any ideas- packed lunches don't realy go down well- it would just be more crisps. Of course this could lead to him regressing in trying new foods and we could be back to pizza and biscuits and nothing else. I worry as well that if he's only seeing chips/potato waffles very occasionally he'll stop eating those as well- let alone fish fingers etc and we'll be well and truly stuffed again.

what are they serving though?

Hi bakabat,
sorry to hear your having such a difficult time with your ds's school lunch. The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote recently on the subject of packed school lunches - maybe there are some ideas that may be of help to you (although I realise he's v fussy) - good luck

Alternatives to Sandwiches

On cold days a home made soup is a welcome addition to the lunch box. Chicken and sweet-corn soup and minestrone are popular with kids and the addition of pasta and beans turn a soup into a meal in a flask.

Salads in the summer are refreshing and full of essential vitamins and minerals. Try making your own Asian coleslaw with red cabbage, grated carrots, bean-sprouts and chopped peanuts.

Make a wholemeal pasta salad with avocado and tuna or chicken and cherry tomatoes. Use low-fat mayonnaise and mix some finely chopped baby spinach leaves in for colour and iron.

When making home-made pizza, why not make extra and use the left over in the next day?s lunch box.

Similarly, a slice of Spanish omelette made with potatoes and onions left over from the previous nights dinner makes a tasty lunch.

If you like baking, a quiche with lots of healthy vegetables and even some cheese makes excellent lunch box material.

Cold chicken drumsticks or cold cocktail sausages are tasty little treats to add variety to your child?s lunch box. Cold vegetarian sausages are a good alternative for the vegetarian child.

Tips to help them love their lunch

Planning ahead avoids a morning panic and helps to avoid repetition, which can lead children to become bored easily. A varied diet is essential to ensure that your child gets a wide range of nutrients.

Talk to your child about what he or she likes to eat and plan with them what they will eat on most days. But do allow for some flexibility, if there is a healthy lunch food that they enjoy and they want to eat it everyday, let them.

Involve them in the weekly shop and give them the job of fetching their own school lunch ingredients when in the supermarket.

Encourage children to try different foods before they are allowed declare that they don?t like something and even if a child say?s they don?t like a particular food, try them again in a couple of months as children?s tastes change frequently.

Don?t repeatedly pack something you know your child doesn?t like just because it?s healthy as this may encourage a lifelong aversion to a food and is a waste of money.

Remember, unhealthy foods won?t find their way into your child?s lunch box if you don?t buy them.

No idea what they're serving. But he was only eating gluten free pizzas, toast, crisps and biscuits until we started school dinners. He ate apples until about 2 years ago. That;s why the chips, potato waffles and fish fingers etc were such a great leap forwards (I was or example hoping to get from the gluten free chicken nuggets to the annabel karmel chicken in cornflakes recipe- somehting he loved as a baby). I suspect they're serving things like mash and shepherds pie- no chance- that squishy texture was the first thing to go when he regressed at about 13 months.

He's non-verbal and very sensitive to textures. The only thing I can think of doing is trying to get him onto home made gluten free rolls again- he may eat those with jam on- but its a backwardsa step in terms of trying to expan his diet.,

Chips, potato waffles and nuggets were a huge achievement (and will quite probably be lost without repeated exposure). Grrr.

oh he;ll eat pink fromage frais as well (no other colour). He's still allowed that I think.

Sounds a bit strange, but if he is able to eat the potato waffles and fish fingers etc, cold - could you not pack them for lunch yourself?

My ds is 8 and has a sensory problem with hot or warm food, so everything is pretty cold when he eats it. Just a thought.

Have you tried potato wedges..they might offer these.
Try find out a typical menu then you can introduce some of the things at home.
There may be some form of nugget on the menu.
Try not to get uset about it until you kow the menu, it may not be as bed as you think!

He won't eat them cold!

Could you and the other parents have a word with the head and ask him to put some stock items that the children all like on the menu? As you say, he is not eating healthily otherwise and they can't say its inclusive then can they?

Especially as his teacher is having a lot of problems with him, surely that should carry some weight?

Can you give him repeated exposure to them at home? Or will school microwave them if you send them in? Can you hide them in pink fromage frais?! (joke!) Dunno. Sounds like a bummer tbh.

It's not the head's decision- it's govt diktat. A number of the children are tube fed so why on earth they can't allow special schools to be sensible enough to do the best for each child I don't know. Grrr.

You wouldn't believe the stuff I've hidden in foods over the years scummy Although he's wise to it now and eats around the added extra (although he doesn't spot tiny amounts of cod liver oil in cartons of orange juice he he).

Total, total bummer. We're on a highly restricted diet so I have huge sympathy for you.

The way I've tackled this in hospital is by getting hold of their menu. They know the thing weeks (months) in advance, and there is absolutely no reason they should not give it to you. The caterers should also be able to supply a diet sheet, showing what is gluten free, dairy free etc. It may be best to contact the caterers direct; you'll have to do this every week & the chances of chinese whispers increase if the school is involved.

Then I go through and work out what is edible and what is not (for us because we're on a different diet, it's about whether it's safe to eat - for you it will be about preference as well.) Then I choose what she's eating on the days she can eat there (write it down & give to the school on Monday morning) and fill in the gaps with stuff from home. On average, hospital provides about 30% of her food, but it does cut down on the constant sandwiches.

Last resort - maybe if you present this as a "medical" diet, the school will let you pre-prepare food and send it in for the kitchen to warm up? Though they may have issues with your DS eating turkey twizzles and chips in front of an entire dining hall of kids mournfully staring at their carrot sticks and hummous.

the school are very good- he was already having different food each day anayway - because of the gluten free factor, so they've been good at getting stuff in for him. (his teacher has organised it all - he's very switched on about the various issues and food and eating is probably one of the major parts of his curriculum- last week for example they went to Sainsbury's- he bought some yoghurts then they went to the cafe for a snack). The toruble is that there's nothing that he will eat that they're allowed to give him, apart from waffles. TBH he won't eat sandwiches either (he'll eat gluten free toast).

This is an exert from his home school book yesterday

"he's had almost one pot of yoghurt throughout the day which we've done through a mixture of putting it on his finger for him to lick off then some spoonfuls. potato waffles are not off the menu-they are only allowed once a month, don't ask me why! Contradiction about chips and waffles noted but I wonder when chips will also get the axe. God bless Jamie Oliver- perhaps he hasn't had to live with or cater for someone who thinks waffles are the next best thing to anything"

The day begore says

"The gluten free thing continues it's just that A only really used to eat the potato waffles and they are along with other things that have been banned"

You can see the problems he has around food (he's refusing fish fingers in the main at home again now- sounds like school as well)

my girls SN school send a menu home each week and its all healthy stuff,which is o.k for them as they do eat most things, unlike DS, but the school cook does other stuff too, it's just not mentioned on the menu

Bakabat, that must be so frustrating I can't imagine.

Sorry to thread crash, and doubly sorry to be an NT mum thread-crashing, but chocol8 how did you find out your ds had sensory issues with hot food?

Only my ds will only eat cold food and only have cold baths. I run his bath lukewarm and he insists on running the cold tap.

If presented with 'hot' food - not boiling, obviously, acceptable temperature for toddler - he says 'hot' and pushes it away until it's gone stone cold. Got to the point where I cook his veg and pasta and run the cold tap over them.

Apologies because I know NT mums worrying about problems of which SN mums think 'I wish that was my only problem' is highly irritating, but it is something that concerrns me and HVs and friends dismiss it as just a quirk.

ds2's like that edam! sensory issues are common in kids. DS2 aksed for hot chocolate this week then wouldn't try it because it was hot (even when it was lukewarm).

OJ- that's what they were doing- but now the things they were gettting in have been banned (in the last 2 weeks).

mind you I don't think it would have taken much to push ds2 over.

So NT mums shouldn't really worry about sensory issues because they are common in all kids? Phew. Thanks for putting up with me on a thread where you are trying to deal with a very serious problem.

ds2's ridiculous- everything's too hot, or too windy or too noisy, or too sandy (he'salmost as bad as ds1 on the beach the the moment). He also has vestubular "issues". Completely and utterly NT though. Ds3 on the other hand- is little bruiser with no sensory sensitivity at all!

It's just a pain in the bum when we are at friend's houses or eating out as he won't start his food until it gets cold, by which time everyone else has finished. Absolutely nothing compared to what SN mums have to deal with, obviously. Good to know we don't have to try to do anything about it though, just one of those things, I guess.

There are things you can do about it - I just haven't really bothered much with ds2. One thing you could do is get a sprayer thing and add water- start with cold water and spray into the mouth. The make it increasingly hot. Spraying itself is good for any sort of mouth sensitivity (electric toothbrushes as well). DS1 used to ask us to spray stuff in his mouth! It was used as an early PECS reinforcer he liked it so much.

That's interesting, thanks. Will bow out of this thread now as feeling guilty I've hijacked it!

don't feel guilty edam- tbh I doubt there's much can be done- I'm just moaning.

I wouldnt worry till you see the menu

Aunty mady- It's been going for just over a week now. On the first day he had cornflakes and a biscuit, on Monday he had crisps and 2 biscuits, Tuesday- not sure, on wednesdays he had crisps, thurs ok because they had chips and Friday ok because he had his monthly allowance of waffles. They're offering him things like baked beans and baked potato. Absolutely no chance. Baked beans come with sauce (forbidden) and potato is squishy no way. IN the past they would have given waffles and then tried to get him to have waffle with a tiny piece of baked bean sauce on (so far refused), and they've tried them with chicken etc (so far refused).

Just been flicking through his home school book this term and its mainly about eating !

I just find it so annoying when these diktats come from some govt official with no idea of autism, or being non-verbal, or sensory issues to do with food. Nothing like no experience to get people making crappy decisions that others then have to suffer from. Grrrrr.