Autism and eating

[Jimjams2]

If you're fed up of the food threads, if you're having a nightmare........ very good and useful article here

You'll like this quote

"A frequently suggested strategy for many children with eating and feeding disorders involves withholding food until the child is hungry enough to eat. This approach has been shown to be dangerous and not appropriate for a child on the autism spectrum. Unfortunately, professionals as well as concerned family members and friends mistakenly blame parents of children with autism spectrum disorders for their child?s poor eating habits."

Excellent Jimjams
everytime theres a food thread just pop that one up love it

I was very interested to see that some children with ASDs are unable to process the "hungry" sensation or understand it. I suspect ds1 may fall into that category.

Yep, Sam deffo- I haven't managed trea yet - other two are bgging (it is cooking!), Sam just not even mentioned it.

There's so much crud about. bar the obv parenting classes (Loved the Guy at Snap when he retorted 'I think you'll find that advice hasn't been given by those in the know since 1952 ), apparently it is rumured the idiot behaviour chap up at Ed Pswych has been moved on after advising too many parents to lock the kids in the rooms.

Can I just ask why SN mums think that they're being got at with food threads? They're not aimed at them, that's for sure. I certainly don't post on them thinking "ooh, this'll get Jimjams' back up, I know she hasn't bothered trying DS1 with vegetables enough times" because I would hope you know that I've a bit more intelligence and empathy than that...

They annoy me because so many of them seem to be along the lines of "oh look at the what I saw dreadful mother 2549 buying this morning" and dreadful mother 2549 could quite easily be me as I don't wear a little bell round my neck to tell warn people .

Anyway I linked to this article as its actually very good , very comprehensiive and has a good summary of the various issues that might be causing the problem (which is the place to start if you want to actually try and get somewhere).

That's fair enough - nobody likes to think they're being judged. But nobody does judge you or any of the other SN parents - that's the thing.

If I started a thread that said "why do so many parents (other than those whose children have SN) feed their totally NT children utter bollocks" is that better?

Exactly Socci

Also, from a personal POV, I don't like this 'This is what a perfect Mum does...' feeling iget from these threads. I also think that there is so many ways a parent can get it wrong, food is but one tiny, visible one... I bet tthere are many famillies where Mum packs an organic lunchbox, pips it in a Boden bag and then bgets so pissed that when the Nanny brings kid home she's comatose on the Sofa

yes precisely socci. I don't have a sign on me saying "parent of child with SN so bog off with your opinions" . When I go out with ds1 most people are too busy tutting and headshaking to even realise he has significant SN as he doesn't come with a sign either.

Go girls, SN mums have a very hard jod and i totally sympathise. I work with ASD children and they can be very particular about what they eat. Some of our children have a very limited diet as that is all they will eat and it may not be healthy but it is food

Useful article, Jimjams, thank you. I haven't posted on the other thread as it had got so long & involved! Good to read an article which made some sense though.

If you were to see me shopping with ds1 and ds2 you certainly wouldn't be able to tell straightaway that they're autistic. Besides, some people would be far too busy peering at the contents of the trolley to wonder whether there are any SN issues involved.

I haven't read the other threads but THIS one is very timely for me. I will print off the article and have a read. DS's eating/food issues are terrible. I can't narrow it down to any specific thing such as colour, texture etc.... he's just a very resistant little sod!! I have tried many times to increase the foods he will eat and once he even chundered on the table rather than touch the morsel I was offering! I hoped that going to an ABA school would sort it out..... they have tried formally with school lunches and many times in other ways - all to no avail! I am scared to upset the apple cart (pun emoticon) and put him off what he does eat. The funny thing is, when he was a toddler he ate very well and friends' eyes would bulge "he eats THAT?!". I now see that this was his "passive" phase before we taught him to notice things and participate (there's no free lunch [pun emoticon again]). He then eliminated things over time and still would if I let him..... aaargh!

oh Davros that sounds so like ds1. He ate everything and anything up until about 15 months when the slow process of rejecting foods started. Then you end up in the situaiton where you are surviving on such a handful of foods that you daren;t do too much in case those go (I remember doing a casein free trial- for 2 weeks- no effect except he would no longer eat yoghurts or drink milk agggghhhhhhh- this was when he was about 2 and a half so way before I was wise to the ways of food).

I think ds1's apple rejection is an association- I reckin he had one over-ripe apple and now can't go near them- hence the shuddering, but impossible to track down the whys and wherefores of what he's eating.

Also very situation specific so for a long time he would eat foods in goosey's house that he wouldn't eat at home. Now I can get rice and casserole into him and goosey can't. No reason for the switch.

I think the thing that did help was getting him to start taking crisps with tiny bits of baked bean sauce, then the baked bean crisp sandwiches. It kind of mixed textures, and rules and made it easier to cope with. Although he still finds the first mouthful of casseroles very very hard, and some days can't do it.

I don;t socci- ds1 will respond to a reinforcer now- so "nbig mouth then button", BUT only with foods that he has already eaten. His aversion to unknown foods is far too strong for any reinforcer to overcome. I thnk the crisp/baked bean sauce/baked bean thing acted as a desensitisation program. Without that - no chance.

OMG this is so true:

"Children do not want to be tricked. Tricks such as hiding ?extra? vegetables in spaghetti sauce and or supplements in a child?s favorite drink do sometimes work but can also backfire. Sometimes, after detecting ?additions? to familiar favorites, the child learns to be suspicious of all foods and will limit his/her diet even further. This strategy probably works best when the sensory characteristic the child is focusing on is the ?look? of the food. If a child is more sensitive to the smell, taste or texture of a food, it may be harder to make ?additions? because they are usually easier for the child to detect. Be cautious when using this strategy."

In ds1's case he used tom evaluate food on looks alone. He would eat disgusting things if it looked ok so I could hide fish oils and supplements extraordinaire in his foods. Then he went to BIBIC who gave him a sensory program and his sense of smell kicked in- but of course went into overdrive (as an example he smells the seat when people stand up, and if I kiss him on the cheek he rubs his fingers over it and smells them). And so supplements were out the window (or eaten around) , and hiding supplements in foods led to the food being rejected (even the beloved buckwheat pancakes were off the menu).

It depends how strong the aversion is. In ds1's case his aversion to "unsafe" (ie not buckwheat pancakes, gluten free bread or gluten free pizza) was so strong that he couldn't eat a mouthful of anything else. It was probably like asking him to do the celebrity get me out of here withcity grub challenge or something. A chocolate button was not enough of a reinforcer and it was the strongest one we had.......

witchety grub I mean- yum yum

ha ha - like ds1- it's always the "originally passive" ones that do that (hence our 2 visits to hospital when trying to toilet train ds1 -who deciced he would just not wee for over 24 hours!)

Also I think if there's one trigger than bins the whole lot then it can be very strong. DS1 stopped eating a whole bunch of foods when the evil nursery he was at (aged 20 months) told him off for eating chips with his fingers.