He is 7 with ASD. Eats everything with his fingers. Takes a single bite out of each piece of food, puts it down, takes another bite out of another piece, puts it down etc. While he is doing this he is crumbling the food with his fingers. Sometimes he takes some of the food back out of his mouth again.
When he's eating food like chips, sausages etc it's not too bad, but crumbly foods like fish cakes, his gf bread and shepherds pie go everywhere. He drops bits on the way to his mouth, on the way back from his mouth and then wipes his fingers down his jumper. Often about a quarter of his food ends up on the floor.
Up to now we haven't worried about it too much tbh - there are other things we see as more important. I also know how lucky we are that he eats fairly well - his diet is limited but mostly healthy and he has a good appetite. But now he's seven, we feel that his eating habits are marking him out as even more 'different' - in private we can cope, but in public.....well, I wouldn't want to watch him eat tbh!
We give him a spoon every meal time and he will use it once or twice if we ask him to - but then he just refuses. We tried giving him a very small portion that he had to eat with a spoon before he got the rest - he would do this, but we never ever progressed from this point.
So lovely ladies......over to you!
PS: DS1 said tonight that we 'have to teach DS2 to eat properly because if he wants to have children when he's older he'll need a wife and girls don't like messy eaters'.