food problems

[Jeni]

are any of your children extremely fussy eaters?

 

my son wont eat any fruit or vegetables and refuses to try new foods and on the few occasions i get him to taste something he doesnt like it and u can see him retching and gagging as hes trying to swallow it. i still try to get him to taste new things but its really beginning to get me down. i feel its my fault as he didnt get to try these foods when he was a baby, i fed him on heinz baby food tins as didnt have the money to buy fresh, also didnt know what to do with it lol. i see other parents of kids, whether with problems or not and their kids always seem to eat healthy stuff that mine just wont touch.

 

sometimes it seems as tho he is actually scared of the food. when i think back to him being younger, he would eat fruit and vegetables up until he was about 2. he had to spend a night in hospital with gastroenteritis and after that is when things seemed to change, he got fussy with his food. at the time i tried the 'he will eat it if he is hungry' approach, but he would rather go hungry than eat and in the end i had to give him whatever he would eat which was usually junk rather than what we were all having.

 

hes almost 13 now and i dont feel i have any hope of getting him to eat healthily (and cheaply for me). i would appreciate any other ideas anyone has!

[lil_me]

My son

 

 

Asks for the same food every day usually, same thing since he was about 2.

 

Will not try new food. If you put a new food, or something he says he doesn't like on his plate he won't eat for the rest of the day and will usually throw it at you. Beans, spaghetti, rice and mashed potato are like an enemy, his teacher has now learned not to try to put these on his plate after she got covered

 

Only veg he will eat is sweetcorn and cucumber.

 

Only fruit he'll occasionally eat is bananas,strawberries,melon,raspberries, kiwis (yes all the expesnsive stuff) and tinned oranges. Have to be sliced in a fruit salad apart from the tinned oranges. Usually leaves most of it.

 

Everything has to be prepared in a specific way.

 

Certain things go with certain things, can't have something and gravy without yorkshire puddings etc. Fish fingers only go with chips, etc etc

 

Only pasta he'll eat is Bachelors Chicken and Mushroom pasta in sauce, no other make will do and it has to have sweetcorn in it.

 

If anything happens to his food, if something falls off his plate or he spills his drink, anything he won't eat for the rest of the day, same if we don't have in what he wants to eat.

 

Luckily he'll drink Fibre juice which is a Tropicana one as before that he had a really bad stomach due to the restricted things he would eat.

 

 

I think he's fussy but easy to buy for I suppose, just costs me a fortune

Edited August 14, 2005 by lil_me

[KarenM]

Both my kids are fussy eaters but the AS kid is by far the fussiest . This seems to be a very common problem with AS kids. I even saw a book about this. IF I try to give her anything new she has a melt down so i just let her have what she wants plus vit tabs and eye q tabs , shes tall and strong so it doesnt seem to be causing to many problems. We mams really make our selfs feel guilty but we can only do our bests! karen

[shell]

we tried letting steven play with diffrent foods to see what he did and after a few weeks he was licking his fingers and things slowley progressed from there he still refuses things but his diet is a bit healther

[jessie]

hi jeni

my son has as with adhd and has always been a fussy/faddy eater. He tends to go through periods of eating the same thing for tea every night. Just now it's a certain brand of chicken fillets, but in the past it's been bacon or fried eggs etc.....and then ususally about three ot four weeks down the line he refuses to eat it and we have to find something new. He's even been known to have his favourate food for breakfast and I think his teachers must wonder what on earth is going on when he tells them he's just had chicken fillets for breakfast. He also takes concerta and this severly affects his appetite so if he asks for the same food over and over then it's hard not to give it to him. We also give him vitamins and eye q. As for varying the diet and trying to get him to eat fruit, well I find that by chopping up some mixed fruit and popping it down to him while he's playing the playstation (again) that he tends to pick at it without even noticing. I don't even tell him I'm giving it to him and just put it as near to the controller as I can. I also try milkshakes, usually banana and add honey and ice creme...as his appetite is poor I'm always trying to calorie boost. He's a skinny lad. It's hard not to worry about diet. I know that I do and seem to spend a lot of energy working out ways to give him healthy foods. I also make a lot of soups and he seems to like carrot and corriander which I suppose is quite sweet.

 

I am amazed when I go to friends house and see their kids scoffing cucumber, raw carrots etc.........while my son wants to know if they have any chicken fillets?

 

 

good luck

jessie

[jessie]

me again

my son just turned thirteen and I know how hard it is not to worry about them getting a balanced diet

[Jeni]

its nice to see that im not the only mum whose child has these problems with food, altho ur children seem to be more fussy than mine. thing is, he is overweight so ive started to cut down on the amount of food he eats (1 sandwich instead of 2 n stuff). he doesnt really go outside which makes the weight thnig worse.

 

i think if i had the chance again i would do things differently but hindsight is such a wonderful thing lol

[lil_me]

Medication affects my sons appetite, Concerta much less than the Ritalin did, but when he is not at school he doesn't take it and eats literally like a pig, he forces food down so fast, but still the same stuff. He lost almost 2 stone when he started on Ritalin which was a terrible worry.

 

I rely on vitamin/fish oil all in one and fresh juices (which he loves anything tangy) to keep him going. Won't drink milk at the minute but we used to make milkshakes with vitamin packed high fat yoghurt as a booster. He stopped drinking milk since he was given some that had gone off which is a major issue with him, if one of his fave things isn't perfect once he won't touch it again.

 

Buying for a fussy eater is boring and I do wish he's eat more of a variety and healthier food, but the way I see it now is its better than not eating at all, which he'll do if I try to push him to try new foods.

[~Jonathan~]

I'm okay with food but I won't eat anything if the sell by date is that day. I don't mean the use by date but the sell by date. I genuinely believe that I will collapse and be very ill if I do. Or, if something's been open for a couple of days even if it specifies 3 on the packet/carton.

[KarenT]

James had a very limited diet until a year ago when the Olympics were on tv - he suddenly decided he'd eat sliced carrots if they were made into the Olympic rings, but even then they had to be cut in half because he couldn't manage a whole one. He'd just found out that the rings represented the continents and that coincided with his interest in geography at the time, so he'd eat Canada first then the USA, then the Sahara Desert followed by South Africa etc etc. That led on to an interest in trying new foods and his diet is quite good now, but up till then I'd cooked the same meals every day for four and a half years and they were all beige.

 

Have a look at my post in the poll thread on food favourites for a method we're using now to try new foods. Some of you might find it interesting.

 

Karen

x

[Suze]

Yep very fussy my son sounds a lot like yours Jeni.All his food was still pureed at 3yrs cos he could,nt cope with lumps .Smells and textures are a problem and he vomits very easily.Limited diet with no fruit or veg.Eats only certain products and hates to eat with others.Never eats at school and even now if he opens the fridge he will vomit if he smells somthing smelly!!!!!

[sue1957]

From the age of 18 months til about 4 and a half, my son started by getting faddy, finished up food phobic. Had to eat same breakfast, same lunch, same tea, all white or off white food, done in a certain way, absolutely no crust on bread, cut in squares not triangles, certain plate etc etc. If a pea finished up on a plate then nothing on the plate would get eaten. He was also water phobic, hated going outside, if he did he had to wear "the hat." Would only wear dark colours, turns out he was light sensitive but just couldn't communicate it.Also water phobic.

 

Found out he was sensitive to fluoride in toothpaste, (we don't live in a fluoridated water supply area). When we changed brand, within a few days he started to improve. Started eating a wide range of foods, became much less light sensitive, went out without the hat etc, became much less water phobic.

 

Turns out some people aren't able to excrete fluoride properly, and it builds up and can cause problems. As the water isn't fluoridated we can avoid it, but if they ever decide to fluoridate our water then we would have to install something to take it out of the mains, or else move!!!!

 

Sue

[Flora]

My son is extremely fussy. This is what he will eat

 

Yorkshire puddings with gravy (has to be Bisto chicken)

 

Broccoli (only the bushy bit smothered in ketchup)

 

Hoops and hotdogs

 

French toast

 

French bread with real butter on it

 

toast (has to be very crispy and only cut in a certain way)

 

poached eggs

 

tomato soup (has to be heinz)

 

shreddies

 

Ant that's it. Nothing more nothing less. He has been better since I started him on omega 3's and cut out the fun pots (children's version of pot noodle!!).

 

Also he won't have more than one kind of food on a plate, so if he has more than one item per meal he has them all on seperate plates.

 

Lauren

[Canopus]

Turns out some people aren't able to excrete fluoride properly, and it builds up and can cause problems.  As the water isn't fluoridated we can avoid it, but if they ever decide to fluoridate our water then we would have to install something to take it out of the mains, or else move!!!!

 

Moving is the only choice unless you buy bottled water taken from a spring with a very low fluoride content. Standard water filters remove chlorine but they are incapable of removing fluoride. The only way fluoride can be removed is by expensive complicated methods such as distillation or reverse osmosis.

 

The World Health Organisation supports water fluoridation.

[something_different]

I am 23 and STILL eat practically the same thing every day

 

the only healthy thing i eat is homemade soup,

(Lentil, made with lentils, carrots, leek, and turnip then HAS to be blended or else i will not eat it!)

 

lol

 

nothing else i eat is that healthy tho

 

Toast, or chips with or without cheese!

 

French toast

 

plain hot dog

 

cheese sandwich/bread and butter

 

lol and that is my diet, i don't like anything else.

 

well yeh plain crisps, and dairy milk chocolate, not v healthy either is it?

 

tho i don't eat cake or anything like that.

 

that is all i eat

 

if i am away anywhere and i don't like the food i will choose to go hungry rather than eat anything i know i won't like.

 

like have lasted over a week, living on the odd bit of bread and butter to eat rather than try anything new.

Edited August 15, 2005 by something_different

[FinalStraw]

I am 23 and STILL eat practically the same thing every day

lol

 

Well I'm 29 and can say pretty much the same thing, I have got a bit more adventurous over last few years though, but always end up coming back to the same old bland few things and everyone thinks I am not only fussy but a boring eater!

 

It gets embarrassing when I go places and they know what I am going to order before I speak though!

[lil_me]

Sometimes got to be a good thing knowing what you want each time, my partner drives me round the twist as he can never make a decision