Vegetarian ideas anyone?

[claw3]

Ds is an extremely fussy eater. Since the age of 3 he has been refusing to eat 'dead animals' and has never tasted meat.

Does anyone have any simple child friendly recipes or ideas?

Moosemama, he likes the taste of bananas and will eat as long as they dont have any brown speckles on the skin, so some of your links definitely worth a try, thanks

I think some of them, he might actually eat. The lemon baked tofu, is a no. I can now tell just by looking at food myself, whether he will like the look of it.

This food he will touch, lick etc given to me by the feeding clinic, is not going to work. If he doesnt like the look of it, there is no way he will touch or lick it. If he will touch a food, then he will eat it. He has never tasted a food and spat it out. So it has to pass the look test, that is the only test it has to pass before it is eaten.

Thanks again for the links, i think he might actually eat some that!

Silver, he will sit at the same table with people eating food which he is not ok with, but if some is spilt onto the table, he will have to move away, if it isnt wiped up. If i tell him to sit down again, he will, but he starts to get really anxious and starts fidgeting and scratching his skin.

He wont touch the plate which has had food on it.

He is happy to help prepare food and enjoys mixing it (with a spoon, no hands) except meat. We were making omellete, he was happy to mix the eggs in a bowl, but had to leave the room, when i started to chop up ham.

ABA can help with food and phobias? i didnt realise!

I thought feeding clinic would be helpful, but they are just repeating what ive already done in the past.

Must dash school run

right, sounds as thoughhe is doing brilliantly on some scores.

sititng and eating with other people eating? - great! (even meat, I take it? or does that have to be separate?)

re: the cleaning - is it that he is worried about the sl=pilt food contaminating hisplate? or general worries about cleaning it up (dd1 needs to have spills wiped up straightaway sometimes, makes her very anxious). could you involve him in the wiping up? get him to have some control over it?

he wouldn't touch a plate at all that had forbidden foods on? not even to help clear away?

would he tolerate a plate nearby with a forbidden but not toally scary food on it that is nominally his? to look at/talk about? and then clear (with your help) at the end?

re: the clearing away - if he will not touch the plate at all, would he help you do it? ie be involved int he whole process - you carry the plate, he opens the bin for you? and then slowly, slowly inch by inch involve him more? he could just watch you do it first if totally threatening to him, then come closer and closer watching?

ABA can attempt to tackle anything - it is a set of behavioural principles to work form. you always work within the child's boundaries - no use scaring them stupid or making htem too anxious to cope.

drawing up a proper food desensitisation programme could well be the way to go. dd1 was (for a short while) a food refuser. she now eats like a horse, but form quite a limited range of meals (5 different main meals). since I can get quite avariety inot her, I'm not that bothered at the moment, but we have worked on a few bits in the past.

great that ds will help prepare foods too - that can be quite a big step. would he help cook too (meat aside) - ie pouring the eggs into the pan for the omelette? helping to stir a sauce? really good stuff there - dd1 won't come near stuff she won't eat.

re: phobias and ABA - oh yes! have gone through drinking with dd1, and a short spell where she didn't eat (at all - no idea why, just stopped for a couple of months, except for raisins and dried fruit bars). now tackling her dog phobia, which is extreme - we used ot ahve a dog, but (after no incident) dd1 overnight was phobic. after 2 years of trying to integrate dd1 and the dog, we had to rehome. still working on the dog phobia! dd1 can sometimes now watch while someone else strokes a dog (from a safe distance, next to an open door so she can go inside if she needs to - she often does).

whereas her phobia of animals in general is comig on great - she can now stroke small animals (rabbits, guinea pigs) and last week patted a horse!

we have also got through extreme water phobia with her too - which is where her non-drinking stemmed form, she was so phobic she couldn't even drink! and now she enjoys baths/swimming, and tolerates drinking.

it is all a case of having a (sensible, taking autism and extreme reactions into accoutn) plan, and reducing the fear and anxiety.

new school may well have experience of a fussy eatrs programme, but your ds does sound extreme - I'd be tempted to go to the top (which, imo, is a good ABA cons)

Your feeding clinic experiences are exactly why we've never asked for help with DS2, claw. He's quite the carnivore (we were suprised, last night, to discover that he loves chicken kiev, even though he usually rejects anything like garlic bread. He even stole half of his brother's!) but only eats a very limited amount of fruit in tiny amounts and virtually no vegetables apart form baked beans and the of smear of tomatoey sauces (I can contaminate his chips with tomatoey pasta sauce, but that's as much as he'll accept). He also weirdly loves stewed rhubarb!

I've managed to get him to the point of not rejecting a plate of food if there is a piece of carrot or something green on his plate, but haven't been able to move him on. I played a tickling game with a raw broccoli floret, the other week and after a few minutes, he actually reached out and grabbed it off me - then instantly gagged as if it was in his mouth. I just don't think some people appreciate how deep seated these aversions are and that they're not just a case of holding out for preferred food (he does do this, too and we can tell the difference).

However - he's taken quite a fascination with our vegetables and fruit bushes. He was actually running his hands over the unripe blueberries, the other day!

would he consider eating nuts? would they be like eating honey hoops or crisps - not a bad colour?
DD2 is a really poor eater but I put a bowl of unsalted cashews out at every meal - good protein at least ( probably the only protein she eats apart from hummous or baked beans)

Silver, yep even meat, he can tolerate sitting at the same table, as long as it isnt too near him ie if the person moved their plate nearer to him he would want to run away and if i make him stay seated, gets upsets.

He is worried that split food will touch his skin or get onto his clothes and i suppose also worried it might touch his food, he certainly wouldnt eat his food if it touched his plate. He wont touch it or help to clear it up. The sloppier the food, the worst his reaction ie mash and gravy. All food that he doesnt eat, he wont touch. If he touches food, that means he will eat it.

No he wont touch a plate, not even an empty plate that has had food on it or the knife or fork. He wont tolerate it being any nearer than a sat at the table chair place away from him. He would get quite hysterical if you moved it nearer to him.

Ds absolutely loves the dog, shares everything with him, but he wont put his dish of food onto floor.

He would watch me scrap plates, but wouldnt come nearer or hold a bin open.

No, mixing in a bowl is as far as he will go, although this is an area i think i could work with ie involving him a little bit more, as long as he can wash his hands constantly.

Dont even get my started on the water phobia! fine for washing your hands in, but you dont put your body into it!

Ourvye, feeding clinic have been crap (not helped by school telling them ds doesnt have any difficulties) They have sensory trained OT's, but rather than trying to work with me and ds and actually taking notice of what im saying, we have to follow their standard response to ALL children it seems and keep re-doing the same thing, we have been trying to do for years.

Ds has told me he will only eat yellow/white food, so why not go with that and try to expand his diet with what we know. They seem to take the attitude that he is controlling and i need to take control.

Which is rubbish as far as im concerned, i KNOW he wants to control any aspect of his life he can, but why not use this to our advantage. I find them very patronising!

I was thinking of a vegetable patch for ds in the garden. Not sure if this is a good thing or not, as he is already convinced that anything cooked in the oven has 'worms' in it and hates all insects. I could easily put him off of food for life, if a fly landed on something he was growing!

Bubble, nuts is something i have been working on recently. He likes salty and crunchy. I think these could be a success, i have been trying with unsalted and no success. Will give salted ones a try. Im sure he can smell salt!

brilliant that he will sit relatively near meat - for him to be so close ot somehting he has such an aversion to is really good.

I think there are a lot of positives there oyu can work from, but I do think you need a comprehensive, cohesive plan.

there are a few areas I'd start work on, but obviously I'm no expert.

how about getting him to come nearer (measured in millimetres, literally) when you are scraping your plate?

and alongside that get him ot hold open the bin for other stuff, so he is used to that part of the task too (eg hold it open for you emptying vaccuum cleaner, or to throw the newspaper away - soemthing totally non-threatening). get holding the bin open for you to be as general a task as possible, without it being worrying for him (unless he is stressing baout the dirty aspect of the bin), eg helping scrape his plate, etc.

the moving nearer while you scrape "nasty" foods will take a long time. but keep at it, millimetre by millimetre. do all the distracting possible while you're at it- talk him through the london underground map

it might be worht having a map of the route to the bin, from table/kitchen - divide it up into sections - and ds can move a pictureof himself along to show where he is going ot stand while you scrape the plates. it might also be worth considering a reward for his hard work - something to build up to at the end, as well as immediate rewards for each step taken (as in daily step, not literally each footstep)

now, all of the above is not whati am saying you should do, but is mpore an idea of how we have built up plans of how to get dd1 over things. you have ot break it down into steps smaller than you ever thought were imaginable. that's where the dietitian's "lick it/taste it/touch it" plans are hopeless - the jumps are too big.

re: clearing up spills - try to leave it a second longer each time. each second is a second closer to normality. get him to get the cloth for you, or the soapy water, whatever he wants - get him involved in solving it all - it helps with self settling, and then as a knock on with the anxieties (they decrease once self settling improves)

the whole idea is to work at the edge of his acceptance all the time- not too far, as worrying and stress are counter-productive. but remember each step, and once it has been mastered, don't allow backwards steps - keep pushing th eboundaries, milimetre by painful millimetre, so tiny that hopefully he doesn't object.

do you think he is rejecting on the sense of smell, rather than the "look" of food?

dd1 rejects through smell - she once refused a jam sandwich (made with a different jam from usual) from about 8 feet away, before she had seen it, and she hadn't seen me make it so didn't see different label etc.

she often rejects things as they come to the table, and will not be budged either.

these days, if it is a known food, we can usually get her to take one (tiny) bite before having anyhitng else. eg, we had lunch in a restaurant on saturday. dd1 had plain grilled chicken breast and chips. she used to eat chicken, but doesn't anymore (don't know why)

she ate her chips, and wanted the rest of her meal (fruit, nut/seed bar, raisins, crisps) but we got her to have one bite f chicken before she had it all. this has taken years of work to get to this point. it IS possible, but it is so very hard, especially when you know there is the very real risk of stopping altogether.

oh, meant ot say - we know dd1 has no aversion to chicken - she eats it in risotto and in curry.

Silver, i have drawn the line with certain things. I refuse to wipe up spills.

I refuse to re-make meals because ds has decided there is something 'wrong' with the one he has. This could be anything, he has seen a fly, dad has handed him the plate instead of me etc, etc, otherwise he really would dictate.

I cant force him to eat and i am very laid back about food, but i draw the line at him telling me what to do, iyswim.

I think it is look, rather than smell mainly, although im sure smell plays a part in it.

For ds i think texture of food is important, you can tell a lot about texture by the way food looks. Ds refuses to use a knife and fork and only eats 'finger' food. So food has to be 'firm'.

if you refuse to wipe up spills etc, or re-make the meal when he thins it is wrong, how does he cope?

does he eat any of it? or is he too anxious and refuses it all?

I hoe you didn't think I was suggestign he runs the whole show

I think you are doing well - you have a good idea of how he is operating/what bothers him about food/what eh might accept. this is a great start.

Have sent you an email, btw.

Oh no Silver i would never think that you or anyone else would judge, everyone is nothing but supportive

Was just trying to give you the whole picture. Ds is very controlling and he would have me running in circles!

If we have a spill ie a tiny bit of gravy, i tell him its ok and that i will wipe it up when we have finished eating. He will try to leave the table, but will stay if i tell him to, but then he gets anxious. But as you say its just pushing the boundaries and trying to get him to tolerate it, just that little bit longer each time. He is tolerating more than he did before and can stay at the table a bit longer. I figured in school they are not going to wipe up spills when he demands it, so this is why i chose this battle to fight.

If i dont re-make his food, when he feels its wrong. He wont eat. His reasons for not eating were getting ridiculous ie someone looked at him, daddy touched the plate, worms in it etc, etc. So i just ignore his reasons. He says 'im not eating because of whatever'. I say 'fine, dont eat it' and carry on chatting, eating etc. But he has to stay at the table until we are finished. His reasons for not eating are becoming less frequent.

Will check emails later

sounds as htough you are doing excellently - you've got him staying and eating, despite spills, AND you've managed to chip away at his £excuse" for not eating.

that's real progress.

do you chart any of this? as I said to you recently - readign dd1's statement stuff again the other week really brought it home to me how much progress she has made. I was overlookng it, mostly, as there are still daily battles, and mountains to climb - get ot the top of one peak, and instead of a lovely panoramic vista, there is just another mountain range instead! BUt looking back, and remembering in detail ow she was a year ago was really uplifting.

It might be worth keeping a mealtime diary - not what foods/how much but rather his behaviours, hw long he stayed at the table without being anxious, how close he cam to eating something his dad touched, etc etc - it ight help to look back and see the progress which is so clearly there.