Food and asd

[strongandmilky]

My ds5 has started to get really fussy with food. On the waiting list for Ados and expecting asd diagnosis. He's always been a bit picky but will usually have a good appetite if it's something he likes. Lately he's been refusing to eat meals he's liked in the past, but his language is limited to just declaring something's disgusting or yuck, not able to articulate why he doesn't like it. If I serve the same thing a week later he might eat it without any complaint. He will sometimes say yes to a meal, then when I make it refuses. When I try and encourage him to eat something he gets really anxious.

I don't want to get into the habit of making dish after dish for it to be refused, but also worry about getting hardly any food into him. Yesterday he would only eat a bite of toast for breakfast, thankfully ate all his mac and cheese at lunch, but barely even nibbled the edges of a wrap from a chicken fajita for dinner (previously would happily eat all).

What can I do? Every meal feels like a battle. I try and gently encourage, give lots of praise for when he does eat, but don't want to stress him out and worsen the situation.

I wouldn't do any coaxing, I think often that only risks making it a battle of wills.

Where possible try to let him pick what he wants to eat even if that means having the same thing for a few days. What I have learnt that the important thing is getting the calories in rather than anything else -
I would try to get a good multivitamin. If you can you can always add things like cream and full fat milk to things to add the calories

Ds would happily not eat st all and can happily for 24 hours on just half a sausage roll. As he started to lose weight he is now under the dietician (not much use!) and has a build up type drink (that in itself was hard as he is a dairy refuser and most are dairy)

Oh it is awful isn't it? I can't say I have any useful advice, but I can empathise!

Our DS (8/ASD) is on prescription vitamins, to which we add protein powder, broccoli sprout extract, Kidophilus probiotic and vegepa capsules. He's mainly on a liquid diet now, after reducing and reducing his solid intake to the bare minimum/chocolate/dry carbs....

It took a Tier 4 NHS referral to get the prescription for the vitamins, but you may be able to get your CAMHS/paed/GP to do this if you have an ASD diagnosis - we get Seravit - or I suppose you could buy it online at £25 per tub in the meantime. It contains vitamins and minerals in a white powder which we add to a smoothie. It is ever-so-slightly gritty so doesn't hid well in a chocolate milk, but would be possible to conceal in a dessert or yoghurt I reckon. It makes us feel a bit better knowing he gets some vitamins.

If you haven't heard of it, look up Ellyn Satter's Division of Responsibility. Try putting out means "buffet style" in dishes so everyone helps themselves - but make sure to include at least 2 foods you are fairly sure he will eat. It takes the responsibility away from you for his eating. Your job is to offer the food and his job is to eat it. This paradigm was very liberating for us - although it still doesn't make a child eat!

As Sirzy has said calories are king and you have to feed them what they will eat, even if it fills you with horror. There is no point going down the kids will not starve themselves route because frankly these guys will, and it is not fun trying to get their BMI back up from near-hospitalisation levels I can tell you.

Definitely enrich and supplement where possible so that little goes a long way. Chocolate milk made with double cream keep our DS taking in 200+ calories a day, so try to work extra calories into whatever he does like to keep him bulked up, and you feeling (a little bit) sane. Good luck

sorry - meals not means

If you want to share the sorts of food that he does eat, I might be able to give you ideas of how to boost its nutritional value.
I'm the Queen of hidden nutrition

Thank you everyone for your replies. It's only in the past couple of weeks he's been especially picky. I'm trying to not get too stressed and make a big deal of it as I think it's more to do with control then sensory and don't want to make it worse.

One day he'll happily eat shepherds pie and ask for more, I'll serve it again a week later thinking I'm on to a winner and then he won't touch it! Infuriating! Also trying to cater for fussy NT DD as well as a veggie DH. And there's no reason to most of it! Happily eat roast chicken but not chicken nuggets or goujons. Will eat mash but not chips. Will eat carrots, sweetcorn, broccoli, won't eat pizza. Loves cucumber, won't eat peppers!