Autism & hearing others eat

[user1464279374]

Hello!

My son is nearly 4 and going through the ASD diagnosis process (though at this point I've no doubt he is).

He has a very restricted diet - only two food items at the moment - and has now started to gag and scream whenever we eat food near him, especially anything crunchy.

Has anyone had experience of this? How do we handle it? We want to eat around him more because we want to encourage him to eat, but it is making him really distressed.

Thanks so much.

Have you tried ear defenders so the sound is reduced? Edz Kidz ones are the most recommended.

He refuses to wear them! :(

I wouldn’t want to eat wearing them. It would be horrible!
How about playing background music?
Could you start by eating what he’s having? So the same lunch. Or a bit of it. So he’s not imagining you eating what he can’t face.
No experience so ignore me if that’s not useful!

I did think afterwards that that would probably amplify the sound of your own eating in your head aside from anything else.

Background music, reading stories, small toys to distract him?

Our ds has had a very restricted diet for almost five years. In our experience eating with us has made absolutely no difference whatsoever, he is just not interested in what we are eating and eats the same food every day. If it were me I would try and aim for one meal a day where you eat together (but don’t push for this at all costs) and eat separately from him for the rest if this is what he prefers. I think the key thing is to lower anxiety around food and mealtimes.

Hi op, my asd son eats in the kitchen and the rest of us eat in the dining room. He eats with us in restaurants though. He also has a restricted diet of 2 foods. He cannot tolerate children screaming or crying. He will start screaming loudly in reaction. Its a pain but it is what it is

White noise may help too?

I’m looking in the book Understanding your child’s sensory signals but there’s nothing that matches exactly.

It does say that the auditory and vestibular systems are linked. Maybe some calming vestibular activities before meals could help with auditory self regulation? It’s worth a try. This is what came up on my first search but you will find lots of other information online.

yourkidstable.com/vestibular-activities-and-input/

Let him eat in another room or wear headphones. Eating can be so tricky anyway, that I wouldn’t be putting another stressor together.

My DS cannot tolerate many other sounds, and took years to tolerate restaurants (again screaming crying kids), and doesn’t like to eat with us but cannot tell us why so he can eat somewhere else, it’s fine. I’m trying to gradually introduce him to eat with us once a week, for a short time.

We want to eat around him more because we want to encourage him to eat, but it is making him really distressed. One of then biggest lessons for me, is to take my DS seriously. If he is distressed, that is him communicating to me that I’m doing something wrong. You are not encouraging him to eat by eating around him. Being in a distressed state is never good for anything! Just saying as I’ve made that mistake before, because I do not understand why, I’ve tried to push a situation on DS. Quickly learnt not to do this!

I’ve even had Christmas lunch with DS in another room, and his father so upset that we weren’t all together - but I had to defend DS - he needs to avoid distressing situations. Small changes in small increments, I think can increase tolerance, but it always has to start from a calm position.