Ds1 and his food fussiness.

[staryeyed]

He is now 6 after being an amazing eater as a baby/ toddler. Have been through phases where he has self restricted buit he has always come out the other side. Over the last 2 months he has become extremely restrictive. He now no longer eats the thing we could always rely on. He is not the worst Ive heard of but he is getting pretty bad he will eat:

Plain crisps
Crackers
Rice cakes
Sometimes cereal
Roast chicken
Lamb chops
Rice
Beans
Sometimes carrots
Dried apricots
Fruit sticks
Fruit crisps
Cake
Chocolate
Biscuits
Peanut butter
We have started including gluten aft 4 years gluten free beause we wanted to see if he could tolerate it and we need to find more stuff he will eat.

Has given up recently:
Eggy bread
Pancakes
Potaoes of any kind including chips
Pasta
Bread of any kind
Cucumbers
Apples
chicken breast
Burgers
fishfingers
Fishcakes
Chicken nuggets

I dont know what to do. What i have been doing so far is to keep offering him food of different kinds to see if he will try and having specific snack times and plain snacks. He just wont eat his dinner. Then I will wait leave his dinner out, no pressure. Then later if he as eaten nothing I will offer something plain which he will sometimes eat. I dont know if this is right to do. Should i just feed him things he will definately eat? Should I get stricter and cut out all snacks?

Background:
Ds1 is Non verbal and has limited understanding.

He gets obsessed with sugary treats so we dont have them in the house much at all. For example, we will have cake for someones birthday. We will put the leftovers hidden away but he will keep keep looking for it untill he has found it. He will also stay awake / get up very early the following morning I think because he is obsessing over the cake. He will always wwait for a referred food - wont eat dinner but request snacs instead.

He has been on a biomed programme for 4 years but we have had to cut back due to him not taking supplements. Now i put them in peanut butter which seems to work but it means we havent been qble to follow plan set out by nutritionist.

He is always looking for food so i know he has an appetite.

He has pica and will eat grass mud shampoo toothpaste and crayons given the chance. When he started restricting himself he had eaten a lot of non food items at school (end of term).

He is not food phobic and is very sensory seeking. He smears and rubs food so has no problems with textures but has never liked soup.

Had some involvement with cahms over sleep issue and this but it was a waste of time not at all helpful.

Hopeful bump.

Sorry you didn't get an answer.

Like many of us on here we have picky children. I am quite lucky in that DS will eat all of the foods on both of your lists but struggles with meat that has not been processed, vegetables, fish etc etc

I don't really know what to suggest for you but clearly you are very concerned about the amount of nutritional food that he is eating. Could you get a referral to a dietician - does a specialist SN dietician even exist???

I'm sure someone else will be along shortly. Where it is the holidays, people aren't around so much

Thanks ben10

He does have supplements and a nutritionist. I just want to stop him cutting back more.

I actually think he eats quite a lot. Sorry that's not very helpful, but he eats more than my 2 put together.
I personally would only cook meals based around the foods he likes, he is only little yet and may get better in time.
Sorry I am not much help!

I know you said only sometimes but, could it be that on those occasions he doesn't eat dinner because he know's there will be a plain snack later?

Is there any possibility that there is a lik between the pica issues at the end of term and the change in what he will/won't eat or is it just coincidence?

Sorry nothing terribly helpful there :)

Hi Staryeyed, my ds is 10.6 and sounds a bit like yours. My ds is non verbal, little understanding, severe autism, Gdd and pica. He too has a very limited diet. It seems odd doesnt it that with pica they eat anything as you say mud, grass etc (ds faecal smears and eats this too euch!!). I make my ds dinner from things i know he will eat even though that means same dinner most nights. At end of day so long as he eats thats all that matters, though obviously would be more nutritional to eat properly. Im fortunate that on a good day ds will eat lots fruit / small amount of veg. Hopefully will get better through time (well tell myself this anyway though my ds 10 and same as always). FWIW i think list of things your ds will eat is quite good my 12yo NT ds is fussy to and he eats less than that. have to say im quite fussy to so maybe thats where they get if from

Sounds like he eats quite a lot compared to my dd (7), i gave up a long time ago with dd1, although i do try and offer her new foods to try but sometimes the reaction i get is so bad that i wonder why i bother. She eats:

For breakfast- toast or wheatabix

For lunch- chees sandwich (has to be cathedral city and walbertons)
Crisps (ready salted only)
Strawberries or bluebrerries
Yoghurt (with no lumps)
chocolate cake or biscuit

Dinner- pizza (only cheese and tomato) or Sausages (Asda only).
Waffles or home made chips
Pasta shapes.

She wont touch any veg or mash potato, the only fruit she will eat is berries or bananas.

If we go to McDonalds she will have a milk shake (strawberry) and a doughnut .

Her younger sister is the oposite and will eat almost anything.

I cant work out a definate link but he does seem worse when his PIca is bad. the supplements he was taking did help originally now not so much but he wont take what he needs supplement wise and Im scared to push incase he stops taking them all together and I really think they have helped in the past.

I have tried to be really strict with the pica and over the summer he hasnt had much opportunity to eat things he shouldnt but has had a bit of mud from the garden before I could stop him and a crayon or two whenI wasnt looking so not terrible over summer but his eating hasnt improved.

I cant work out if he has a bad stomach, is being extremely fussy or obsessing about snacks. I feel like I need a strategy to deal with it. I guess Im always trying to fiix things we have had some success in other areas tackling things head on.

I think I will cook him things he likes but right now that means lamb chops and rice and roast chicken which I couldnt really afford to cook everynight.

Could you do a roast chicken say on a lunch time and then let him slice off (with you) a piece and chop it up to go in a rice risotto-ish tea? If he sees its roast chicken that you put in you could then buy cheap thighs/legs and cook up and use those in bits instead in his meals as he will still picture it is the roast chicken? Would he eat meals mixed up. The beans could go in the rice like peas would have?

would he eat chicken soup/broth. Where you could let him help you with the roast chicken chopped in it? You could use a vegetable stock base or liquidise some veggies in it (only a little but better than nowt)

do you know anyone with a mincer? food processer. Probably sound daft but if he sees you mincing a lamb chop and making some sort of pie. make your own crisps out of potatoes and use them as a covering on top. We use plain crisps on top of bacon and leeks and drizzle the top with grated cheese and wack it under the grill. (you might then at a later date make the slices thicker so he gets back to eating potatoes. Just thought you might get away with minced lamb which is cheaper to buy.

I know its the same foods as on the list but if he is involved in seeing you do it and helping it might help him to get a bit more adventurous perhaps.

I would maybe decide to do a meal planner with him involved in planning it for the week and cut out the snacks. It probably will be hard but worth it if he learns the meal infront of him is all he is having. Then reintroduce a snack and turn it into a reward/surprise as in "seeing as you ate all your breakfast/dinner you can have this today too" but if he starts refusing to eat dinner again withold the snack.

Apologies for pack of punctuation.

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately he wont eat anything mixed although I had got him to eat bolognaise / curry a few times in the past -when he has been particularly good with food. Never eaten soup, not even as a toddler.

I tried putting everything in breadcrumbs which worked for a while but then then he cottoned on and started picking the coating off and just eating that.

He ate dry weetabix this morning for breakfast which is good He ' s never eaten them before as he was gluten free.

• lack of punctuation