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Ben's Mum

Meal times

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Hello,

 

I could do with some advice.

 

My son Ben (8) has some very definite food dislikes, however, my husband does not want to make different meals for everyone (he is the home maker, I work non-standard hours) so occasionally Ben goes without a meal. At first mealtimes used to be a battlefield and we would often see Ben sat in front of a cold dinner for ages, this was before he was diagnosed and we were trying to stop him from being so fussy (as we then saw it). However, I am now concerned as the food he will consistently eat is the stuff that is not good for him and we need to get him to eat some healthy food. He understands this and can go for ages eating everything we put in front of him but then it all goes wrong for a while.

 

Should we just let him eat what he wants when he is going through a fussy phase or should we just have him miss an occasional meal?

 

I also have a 5 year old NT daughter and I am expecting baby no. 3 in August so we don't want the younger kids thinking that they can develop bad food habits but I also don't want to punish Ben for something that he just can't deal with.

 

I am really struggling at times to know whether I am doing the right thing - am I being too hard on him or too soft? Where is the balance!!!

 

AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!

 

Ben's Mum

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Oops!

 

I should have added that Ben was been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome a couple of months ago and has not yet been assessed further (we are waiting for an appointment with a Speach and Language therapist).

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What sort of food does he like?

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Hi,

 

We have the same difficulties with our daughter. She will eat toast & milk/fresh orange for breakfast. Nothing else, but that breakfast is ok with us. For lunch she will eat a sandwich, with only 2 fillings (marmite or peanut butter), a yoghurt (plain, no bits or fruit in), a packet of crisps, drink of juice..again. ok with us, and we try to sneak the odd banana in because she will tolerate these. Now, tea times are horrendous. She will only eat chicken nuggets, sausages with either smiley faces, chips or waffles. That is it. We've tried everything to try and get her to eat healthier meals on an evening, including disguising food, sneaking food on/inside something, refusing to let her leave the table until she's tried new food, or even as you have, reached a point of her skipping meals because she refused point blank to eat what we put in front of her. We sought advice from her paediatrician, who explained that she could have sensory sensitivities and dislike certain textures, and also she may like the sameness of her meals. He advised us not to force her to eat what she didn't want to. If she wanted the same tea every night, then give her it. So long as she was eating. She is 5 now, and been eating the same tea time meal for years. She's thriving, and I've totally chilled out about it. It was a huge issue for us, for a long time, and all we achieved by trying to tackle it was to make meal times stressful and appalling. Our older two children still eat a healthy evening meal, and would not even want to eat what she eats every night, so that is not an issue for us. We are hoping with time she will try other foods, but it will be on her terms, when she feels ready to, and not something we will enforce. Good luck :D

 

Take care,

 

Debs

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What sort of food does he like?

bugpuss my daughter is the same as yours she is 6 got to be the same all the time but she got to have hers frist dont like anyone eating before her she will not eat her food if there is any food on the tv she was dx on the 12 april aspergers jill

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My son is 10 now and very similar. Making separate meals frankly drives me mad, but I've decided there has to be some give. C won't eat anything casseroled, or mixed together in any way, so that does limit what we can cook. Sometimes he has all the ingredients, but separated out -- raw carrot, separate chicken, etc instead of cooked together.

 

Can really recommend a multi-tier steamer, so you can just bung one veg on top of another (or over the stew, potatoes, whatever he won't eat) and keep them all separate.

 

One thing that has helped with C is the '5 a day' rule for fruit and veg. It appeals to his sense of 'rules' -- and he sees it written down so often in shops or on food that he kind of accepts it's not just us pushing him. His version of a 'portion' of veg can sometimes be one pea, but hey ho.

 

Reward 'trying' healthy food -- even just a lick, then stop. It did improve slowly for us once we stopped pushing too hard.

 

A fun one we did a while back was blind tasting of food -- teeny chopped up bits of cucumber, apple, carrot etc round a plate, child tries one and guesses what it is. (Only use things he likes or at least tolerates!) We found out this way that C can genuinely pick out red pepper from orange pepper with his eyes shut, whereas his NT siblings couldn't tell apples from cucumber (or indeed onion, in younger son's case). That finally convinced us that it's a genuine sensitivity, not pure fussiness.

 

Good luck!

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Thanks everyone for your replies - I will check out the other thread when I get more than a few minutes!

 

We have decided that for every meal we will have some form of potatoes ( I don't think that we have found any that he doesn't like yet) plus bread and butter, at least then he will be able to eat something.

 

Having read what you have written Ben doesn't appear to be that fussy!!! He will also quite happily eat the same meal time after time - we always used to give him microwave lasagne for sunday lunch and he had no problems with that but we were concerned about him not getting the right kind of food so stopped.

 

Knowing that fussy eating is part of the problem will help - we believe that Ben's Asperger's is mild and don't want to automatically put everything down to his "condition" and we are still finding our feet.

 

Thanks again

 

Ben's Mum :D

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Hi Ben's mum,

 

Kai is 7 and he is a total fusspot too. He would happily eat the same dinner every day. He has to have everything arranged on the plate the same, or he won't eat any of it. Total nightmare!

 

What i have done, is try to make his limited diet "healthier", ie by making my own chicken nuggets with fresh chicken and breadcrumbs and buying chips that are only potato and sunflower oil (so many of them are full of rubbish). I also give him multivitamins and iron. In some ways, his rigidness helps as it is one of his "rules" that he has to have a banana and apple before bed EVERY night, so at least he is getting some fruit.

 

Loulou x

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My little chap is v much the same as the others, we got a referal to a dietician to help us test the gf/cf diet he is on (gluten and caesin free to see if it alleviated any behavioural problems), any way, we had to write down a food diary for a week. At the end of which although his diet is VVV restricted, I was surprised how much he does actually eat. It may be worth a try.

 

We've also just put him on some vitamins daily, after a very non-helpful gp prescription I found that holland and barrat sell pink teddy bear shaped vitamins that are like a powdery tablet, he has his 'sweetie' once a day!

 

My son is 3 1/2 and I also have a daughter who is 5, and number three is due in august too! Bad timing with the weather heh?! It is worry about these habits being passed onto to other children in the family, but we are used to the idea that we are never q going to be a conventional family, so some oddities at the dinner table are prob the least of our worries!

 

btw you are welcome to pm me if you want to compaire swollen ankles and weight gain!

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We also gave our daughter a multi vitamin. She doesn't like chewy sweets, so we opted for the childrens liquid multi vit from Boots. She liked that, and also added a fish oil for good measure, the Omega one, also from boots. We tried making our own chicken nuggets too, but she could tell the difference and wouldn't eat them :( I tried buying Birds Eye dippers after that, presuming they must be the healthiest ones around, but she wouldn't touch them either :( She's eaten Asda nuggets for years now, and will not variate to a different brand...except Macdonalds :lol:

 

Take care,

 

Debs

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Hi I tend to make meals that has something he will eat in. Good luck with it all.

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