oh its so important when you have food problems to realise you're not alone so well done for starting this redbull.
DS1 was weaned on homemade food and until he was about 15 months would eat anything- organic of course- god I was so smug Anyway he then cut down and cut down-this tied in with his regression- he was losing words, losing eye contact and referencing stopped, other sensory stuff came into play, an aversion to putting feet on grass or the carpet for example. The last "sensible" food he would eat was fish fingers- although in the end he would only eat them with jam! And then that went too. We were left with a child who would eat bread and cheerios and nothing else. He would have smoothies, so we worked hard on those until one night he had a tummy bug - few hours after drinking a smoothy- and that was it smoothies gone as well. Bread and cheerios it was.
I had him tested at Sunderland and found he had problems with gluten. So we switched to gluten free bread and cornflakes. Soya yoghurts, then switched to dairy yoghurts- didn''t seem to be any casein problem than goodness. I hid (still do) all sorts of things in the bread- hemp flour, currently linseed. I found he would eat banana bread so we made that. My dad managed to get him to eat buckwheat pancakes. And buckwheat pancakes with cheese (coated in jam) are a twice weekly tradition in our house.
He went through a phase of eating apples, would eat 3 or 4 a day then overnight that stopped, and he now shudders if I put an apple near him.
When he was at mainstream school he would frequently eat nothing all day.
Since going to special school where foiod forms a major part of the curriculum he began to expand his diet. First into potato waffles, although they were Jamie Olivered and off the menu (first new food in 4 years oh joy gone). Then his school started by giving him ready salted crisps with a tiny piece of baked bean sauce on one corner. Then one baked bean as a crisp sandwich (one crisp broken in half with a baked bean between the 2 halves). From that he moved onto teaspoons of baked beans then mashed potato. from mashed potato they started adding tiny bits of casserole sauces, and now he'll eat casseroles. This summer I added rice to casseroles. Now he's on casseroles I can grate veg etc into the food, first veg for 4 years. I still have to use a mssive amount of ABA to get him to eat. So I dish up a casserole. He runs away. I bring him back to the table waving a chocolate button. He starts screaming, I say "big mouth then button" he opens his mouth, then closes it then lunges for the button, I hold it up again "big mouth then button". Eventually he'll take the foirst mouthful then subsequent ones are easier.
The "my child eats healthy food because I've been so great at weaing and feediing him/her" don't even enter my reality to be honest. They're so far outside our existence. Trying to get ds2 and ds3 to eat a healthy balanced diet when they have full blown eating disorder behaviour in front of them at every mealtime is another challenge.
The Great Ormond Street Clinic is supposedly very good if almost impossible to get a referral to. The book "can't eat won't eat" does summarise some of the techniques they use.