Food Issues, School Lunches, and General Pickiness

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Yougest is 5, has ASD, and is small for his age. He's in the 38% for height/weight, which isn't too bad, but at his well visit we discovered that he's gained 3 pounds in the past year.

That concerns me. The doctor wasn't worried, and he's otherwise very healthy, but the fact of the matter is that his diet is awful. He has only a handful of foods that he's willing to eat, with no vegetables and very few proteins involved. Doesn't like milk, doesn't like cheese, doesn't like most meat. Won't touch sandwiches.

He will sometimes eat these things if WE'RE eating them, but if we give him his own portion he decides that he doesn't want it any longer, and quickly moves on to claim that his tummy hurts.

Youngest is going to start Kindergarten in the fall, and we want to send him in with a decent lunch -- he certainly won't touch the lunches served at school, I'm sure. But I cannot figure out how to get him to EAT stuff. I got him to try something new last night, after reminding him of how he's claimed to "hate" Rice Crispy treats the previous night (never having had one before) only to discover that he actually loved them when he deigned to nibble on a corner.

In this instance, though, the nibble only served to justify his hatred.

I am not going to to force him to sit and eat stuff that he dislikes. It wouldn't work in any case (oh, he's stubborn), but that's one of my most vivid memories from childhood, and there's food that I still won't eat because of it.

I just don't know what to do with him. Sometimes we'll find something that he loves, only for him to decide after a day or three that he never wants to eat it again. Other things, he'll insist on eating every single day. Right now, breakfast is a blueberry bagel with butter (and some multivitamins), lunch is goldfish crackers and a cereal bar and dinner is applesauce and...whatever we can convince him to eat.

Any other parents gone through this? How did you solve it, if you did?

for brother ( not ASD but also very picky eater) we used ABA principles - gets the food he likes after he eats half of a meal he dislikes, during the feeding process we were offering him choice to avoid spoon(to take a break, to rest from feeding) , never letting that a single meal lasts more than 30 minutes (not effective and meal is not suficient) and never forcing him or losing self control. Meal (eating) must be sth done without emotional bursts because child will connect it with sth that is not pleasant and will refuse to eat, and ofc at the end of the meal giving him positive reinforcement ( if you re already doing ABA with your son u know what I mean)... small portions and no emotional interference while feeding... worked for my eating disorder too (well not so well)

I have four kids (NT but I now suspect my youngest son may have mild AS like me) and they all went through the picky phase more than once and sometimes it lasted a while. My younger two were also pretty skinny as little kids, but healthy and active. What I would do is offer a couple of things and if they didn't eat, I'd say ok. I had to remind myself that they wouldn't starve with food available, and that if I kept on trying different things it would set a precedent. I can't please everyone with every meal, so there were times they had to either eat what I cooked or do without. It's hard to make them do that but in the long run it's a lot better on them and me. Unless there is a medical reason where he needs to eat more, let it go. Focusing on it will make him focus on it too and it will make it seem really important in his mind.

If you are really concerned that he's not getting the calories he needs then try milkshakes with ensure, ice cream, milk, and instant breakfast in it. Add peanut butter and a banana and it's a ton of calories. If you don't think he would try it, make yourself on, drink it in front of him and tell him he can't have any. He will want one.

Really don't let yourself get too worried about this. Kids won't starve even though we moms are almost convinced they are about to.

For lunches, maybe make a list of foods you will send. Sandwiches in column A, snacks in column B, fruit or vegetables in column C. Let him pick one from each column for his lunch for the next day. If he doesn't want to pick then you pick, but let him know that is what will happen.

Hi. My son has been on an anti-psychotic med for 7 years and it greatly increased his appetite. He started it at age 5. Both before, when he wasn't eating much, and after, when he's eating all the time, I've had to get a bit firm. I'll never force him to eat something but I do reward him for eating veggies - for instance "no we can't have ice cream today because you didn't eat your veggies the last three days" and then of course when he does eat them we get to have ice cream. Putting the new thing on his plate helps too. Some stuff I've read says they need to have seen it on their plate several times before they decide to try it. For a while I wouldn't bother putting anything on his plate that I knew he wouldn't try because I didn't know there was a reason to. But now I do and it does help.

What I've found with him is that I have to not let him eat bagels and granola bars if I want him to eat anything else useful in the day. Those fill him up too much. Being on the anti-psychotic means a huge increase in his type II diabetes risk, so that's the main thing I'm always working on, trying to reduce his intake of starchy carbs. I have to just not have those items in the house, and then when he's hungry, I have a better chance of him eating something else. There is a lot of tantrum-throwing - "But I don't WANT an apple! I want BREAD! You are the WORST MOM EVER!" but I just try to calmly say bread isn't good for you and you had four slices of bread yesterday so you have to be better today.

Having a choice of fruit around that's already cut and ready to eat is helpful. Strawberries, blueberries, grapes, apples (don't cut too soon as they leach out a bunch of vitamins when cut, supposedly), canteloupe... One of the best ways to get my son to eat something is for him to come into a room and find me eating it while relaxing and watching TV. I guess he automatically thinks it's probably a better more cool food if eaten like that. So I'll make a bowl of fruit and head for the tv. He also likes things in packages, especially when he was that age, so string cheese and those pre packaged cut veggies with dip. We live on a ranch and have fresh eggs coming out our ears, and thankfully he somehow decided he likes hard boiled eggs because otherwise he won't eat an egg at all. The way he got onto hard boiled eggs is thru his love of salt. I told him that hard boiled eggs is a food that most people put salt on, and now he loves them. He'll also sometimes eat sliced tomatoes since that's another thing that's common to put salt on.

He likes green beans made with lemon too because once we were at a fancy restaurant and they served a side dish of them and the waiter complimented him on being a "big boy" (he was 5) for eating them, but he hadn't really been eating them, and after he got complimented he felt guilty and had some, and discovered he really liked them. And he will sometimes surprise us and be very adventurous because once when he was 6 he got served an entire baby octopus in a dish of rice at an Asian restaurant and I had just known there was no way he'd eat it, so I just playfully said "I'll give you ten bucks if you eat that" thinking we'd crack up laughing, but he ate it! It's a favorite family story so sometimes he'll remember that he was adventurous and he'll try something odd just to be silly again.

Throughout his life the main thing that's helped him be more adventurous with food is to be out with teenager/young adult types who he really idolizes. He won't eat burritos at all, ever, as far as I knew, but the other day we were driving past a burrito restaurant and he said "let's stop there and eat, I ate there with my sister." And sure enough, he ate a big burrito with all kinds of stuff in it. I was shocked. And there was a friend she had who my son really idolized and he'd eat whatever that guy was eating, so he tried authentic taco stand tacos made with beef tongue and all kinds of other stuff with him. It only slightly helps in general, since most of the time my son will still be very picky, but occasionally we can get him to try stuff by reminding him of stuff he tried with my daughter's friend.

So as for your school lunch issue, I wouldn't worry too much. Just put a couple things you hope he'll try and won't be too sad about if he just throws them away. If you talk about it he should soon learn to eat more to avoid being hungry, if he wants to, and then it can be more of a choice he's making. If he eats a bagel at breakfast I can't imagine he'd be hungry at lunch - even my ravenous 12 year old is often not hungry until the after school type timeframe if he had a bagel for breakfast. If your son comes home from school super hungry, that'll be a great chance for you to try to get him to try other stuff. "Oh, we ran out of cereal bars, but I'm having carrots and scrambled eggs" or whatever. I have learned over the years to try to take advantage of the times when my son is going to be really hungry and less likely to be as rigid and picky.

Good luck!

My older son has always been below the 3rd percentile. I think his last BMI was around 13. However, if you look at any photo of any kid on my side of the family, we were all like that. Most of us grew up to be a more average weight. Don't worry too, too much about those numbers. The criteria fails to take a lot of factors into account.

I would spend the rest of the summer finding things you can send. My younger son is super picky. He likes breaded chicken, pasta with just oil and salt, mac and cheese, yogurt, and hummus with pretzels.

Also, fruit has just as many vitamins as vegetables. If he eats fruit, don't sweat it.

You can also try some of those protein bars like Cliff.

Peanut butter cookies is a good way to sneak in protein. Or, anything that has cooked egg in it.

It will get better. I thought we would never make through the lunches with my younger son. He ended up getting envious of other kids' lunches and making requests.

My youngest is a little older than yours, 7, but here is what he did this summer that amazed me. I got him to take a cooking class, which is another story in itself, but while the class theme was desserts, the instructor worked in some sweet/savory items too. I was absolutely FLOORED when DS ate mango/jalapeno chutney on the last day of the class. It seemed to really make a difference that he had participated in preparing it and so was willing to go what I thought was WAY outside of his comfort zone and try something new. I am pretty sure if I had prepared this at home and put it in front of him, he would not have been willing to taste even a tiny little nibble.

It also helps us to just let DS know what is going to be served at each meal. When I am packing his lunch, I ask him what he wants, well, I give him choices like leftover spaghetti or soup, apple or banana, Cheez-Its or Goldfish, etc. That way he knows what to expect when lunch rolls around and is more likely to eat. I have noticed that at dinner time if I don't tell him before hand what we are going to have, even if it is something he usually likes, he will get upset and walk away from the table (usually with some choice rude comment but I try to ignore that part).

Overall, DS is not as picky as he used to be. When he was 4/5 I'm pretty sure we went for months where he would not eat anything but spaghetti. He was down around the 30th percentile for weight at that time. You would not know it now though. He stepped on the scale the other day and weighed in at 61 lbs and he is only about 4'2".

His usual lunch sounds pretty portable. I say go the course, and send him that plus maybe something like baby carrots (or whatever somewhat healthy thing he might eat.) Make sure the school doesn't try to force him (or nag him) to eat the extra healthy thing. I made sure I let the teacher know, and to make sure she told the lunch staff this. I sent my son with "deconstructed" sandwiches: bread, string cheese, and grapes and or baby carrots on the side. He did not feel anything he ate at school was lunch so I called it a snack, and told him he could eat "lunch" when he came home. Sometimes I would send other little fruits or veggies, but that was basically what I did.

I too was going to add... focus on breakfast, a good snack/meal after school, and dinner, and whatever he eats out of his lunch at school is just a bonus. Also, remind him to leave it in his lunchbox if it is unopened and uneaten as many kids learn to throw everything away to avoid the "you need to eat" talks.

We also focused more on the skills he would need as he got older and would go to other people's houses, dinners in public, family dinners.

Tolerate food on your plate you don't like (this can be hard with the touching things and smells)
Be polite (thank you's, no thank you's and trying a small bite... no eww's, yucks, comments about look, smell, tastes, or textures and no exaggerated faces)
Learn to make small snacks and meals you like for when something is served you don't eat and you are hungry later (mom doesn't make two different meals at our house)
Allow him to participate in meal planning, making, serving, etc. He gets to choose one complete dinner meal a week. we always offer multiple veggies so there is choices.
As he gets older, help him to understand the reason he has to tolerate some foods for social interactions.
We played Fear Factor Food as a game for the whole family - he enjoys seeing others react so strongly to some things and how they get it down, then we all cheer.

There is also a technique called Food Chaining you might want to research.

Try this book, I have heard it is good:

Just Take a Bite: Easy, Effective Answers to Food Aversions and Eating Challenges! by Lori Ernsperger, PhD, and Tania Stegan-Hanson, OTR/L

I was a terrible eater when I was a child. Which really helped for me was that at one point my mum involved me in the whole cooking process. She took me to the supermarket and we picked out food together (fruits and veggies, no candy of course!) and after that we'd cook together. I am not really into television, but I once saw on the television about a kids weight loss the same thing and that really worked out well.

I've also seen on some YouTube channels (I went from a kid that only ate certain foods and ate them ONLY with tons of apple sauce to a (healthy) food lover hehe) where people started juicing with their kids. Like picking out fruits and veggies with their kids and let them put in in the juicer. It always tastes better when you make it yourself.

I always had a hard time not knowing what was exactly in my food. Besides not liking lots of structures and tastes in food, I was also afraid of strange and new things in my meals.

You might check the consistency of the foods. If a food has the wrong consistency, then I find it very difficult to eat it.

And the consistency expected depends on the food. For example, one local woman made me some banana bread a couple of months ago. Her banana bread is usually quite good, but this one time she didn't cook it long enough and it was just a touch doughy. I was spitting it out on the first bite and left the rest of the banana bread sitting on the table until it got moldy.

Consistency of the foods has always been important to me, but when I was younger, taste was more important and my sense of taste was very good. Even then, the wrong consistency would often have me spitting the food out. Then I had a strong case of the flu once and it seems to have destroyed much of my sense of smell. My resulting sense of taste was pretty much nonexistent and all I had to go by was consistency and appearance so consistency has become much more important to me.

My boys all seemed to have a pretty steady weight from about 3 to 5, and then some weight gain between 5 and 6, so maybe it's not all that unusual for a 3 pound gain between 4 and 5.

My just turned 5 year old is picky, as well (though he does seem to have more things he's willing to eat at least part time than yours). He's weighed somewhere between 38 and 41 pounds for about 18 months (He's also pretty short, so he's still not incredibly skinny, even though his leg length has went from 3T to 5 pants). Maybe because he's the third, I've been way calmer with him. He'll eat cheese--on bad days nothing but cheese. On better days he'll eat yogurt (sometimes), milk, crackers of all sorts, oatmeal, pasta (red sauce, white sauce, mac and cheese), hot dogs, bologna, olives, bananas, apples, oranges, peaches, cherries (these are new!), dried small fruits (but not new fruits), broccoli )sometimes), corn (sometimes), carrots (sometimes), tomatoes (sometimes), lettuce based salad (sometimes), french fries, and anything with lots of sugar (which we don't like him to have). We eat a lot of International style foods. Curry (British style), German recipes, Irish full breakfast, Cajun food, Japanese recipes, Hobbit themed tea party, Vegetarian meals--anyway a lot of variety, none of which he will eat.

His routine still seems really limited sometimes. Oatmeal (sometimes with fruit in it) and glass of milk for breakfast every morning, Hot dog or bologna with crackers, cheese, and then some sort of vegetable that he likes, but which are usually ignored for lunch. Crackers or fruit or sometimes yogurt for snack. Usually a screaming fit for supper when we try to get him to eat with the rest of us. Or if we don't want to listen to that, then basically the same thing he had for lunch, except maybe adding in pasta.

What we've tried to do is get him eating healthier version of the foods he's already eating. We decided in January to not buy hot dogs anymore, because they are quite vile as far as food quality goes. He cried himself to sleep for three nights in a row, until his dad told him that he'd learn how to make homemade hot dogs. So we got half a beef (grass fed, no hormones or antibiotics) from a local Mennonite family, and every couple of weeks my husband makes the kid enough hot dogs to last him (and the rest of us) until he makes them again. We fix his oatmeal every morning, and offer him several fruit options to go in it, and he has gradually gotten open to adding things in. At first he wanted it with nothing but a bit of sugar and cinnamon. Now we're up to being able to add in black and golden raisins and peaches (one at a time) in, and I have some dried cherries, blueberries, and cranberries to try to talk him into next week.

Maybe you could find a recipe for a homemade version of the cereal bars he likes, and cheese crackers really are insanely easy to make at home (the only hard part is if you insist on cutting them out into cute shapes. Then you'll be cursing the idea, I sure was! I just made little squares the next time, and bigger squares the time after that.) So at least you have a better idea of what chemicals, how much sugar, and what nutrients are going into him with his lunch. Small changes usually seem to work well for us. So maybe for breakfast, a whole wheat bagel to at least give it a little more oomph. Or even getting a child friendly cook book and letting him pick out and help make something like muffins, which are still pretty similar for breakfast. My kids are always more willing to eat things they helped cook. Supper, I don't have many ideas, not much to work with, with only applesauce.

When my 5 year old was going to preschool, I'd send cheese cut into shapes with tiny cookie cutters, 3 mini sized hot dogs, some crackers--usually two kinds one like Triscuits or cheese crackers (these are actually really easy to make at home) and one sweeter like graham crackers, fruit (you can do some pretty cool things with apple slices like cutting a checkerboard or turtle shell pattern into the peel that make them look more fun to eat, and those tiny clementine oranges "Cuties" fit in little boy lunch boxes, are easy to peel, and just look fun due to the tiny size). Sometimes I also cut sandwiches up with the tiny cookie cutters. He is much more likely to eat them if they look like bite sized bunny rabbits or crowns or boots, etc. With my kid, I always included cheese in his box, because he'll ALWAYS eat cheese. The other stuff was stuff he normally likes, but I knew if he decided he hated every thing else in the box that day (he does that pretty often) then he'd at least eat the cheese and get something in his stomach.

Try looking up bento school lunches. There are a lot of blogs out there of moms making American food lunches in the bento style. It basically involves making the food look pretty, and using tiny portions so that there is a variety of foods in one small package. And I really mean a small package. A lot of the Sprout's lunches were packed in a single sandwich box (his preschool provided the drinks, so you'd need a separate drink bottle for a school lunch). The idea being that you pack it looking pretty and pack it in tight so they can throw it in their backpack and shuffle it around all morning, and when they open it at lunch it is still pretty. Pretty food being more attractive therefore making the kid want to eat it.

It also kind of seems like most of the things your son likes are pretty easily chewed. My oldest had feeding issues when he was small--sensory issues with things like ground meat (too gritty); with tougher meats (too hard for him chew with his low muscle tone); with soups, etc (too much coordination required to get them to his mouth). Have you asked your son's OT about the feeding issues? They might be able to help. I think it is more often addressed now than it was when my oldest was small. I see kids being dropped off with food all the time for the OT to get them to try to expand their diet where my oldest goes to OT.

I'm not sure if it's been said yet.. it could be that your child has a legit reason why he's not eating well. When I was a child, I didn't enjoy eating either. I was underweight and food just didn't make me feel good. As an adult, I was tested for food sensitivities (which is different from allergies) and discovered I was eating from a long list of foods I was sensitive to. People may roll their eyes, but I went on the GAPS program (with my family) and after a year, I was able to reintroduce 30 of those foods I was sensitive to.

I really don't think your son is making it up when he says he has a tummy ache. I really do believe he initially enjoys the new foods you give him but for whatever reason, it doesn't make him feel good afterwards. He's too young to understand this himself, let alone be able to explain it to his parents.

My advice (take it or leave it):
1) Do a sensitivity test - again NOT an allergy test
2) Try the Introductory diet from the GAPS program. I have read many many stories from parents who raised picky picky eaters and this program really did help. Likewise with my son. He is more open to trying new foods now, 1.5 years into the program. The good news is, it's not life long.

I just thought of this and thought I'd post it. When mine were young it was hard to get them to eat certain things. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes, which DH and I love, was something they would just pick at. I finally figured out how to get them to eat that. I had to make it fun. This is what I did.

I made up my meatloaf but instead of putting it in a loaf pan I put it into two round 8 inch cake pans and cooked it. Then I made my mashed potatoes (whipped with an electric mixer, very smooth) and I put the whole thing together like a cake. The meatloaf was the cake and the potatoes were the frosting. I decorated the top with cut up vegetables.

They actually ate it because it looked "funny". Ha ha funny, not weird funny.

If you make stuff in shapes and all will he eat it? Make things that look like something else?

I had a similar experience when I was a kid. I was 8 or so at the time. First, a bit of background. For most of my childhood, I hated milk (and still not a big fan). The only dairy product other than chocolate pudding that I willingly ate was natural hard cheese (mozzarella, mild cheddar, etc.), but cheese is expensive, and my family was poor while I was growing up. I didn't like the cheaper products, like cream cheese (unless heavily salted) or Kraft Singles ("too slimy," so never). So my parents had trouble making sure I get enough calcium.

Until one time, when I was on a plane to Orlando (for a beach vacation, not Disney World), with my family. They served a full breakfast (good god, I feel old typing this). It included a cup that resembled a Handi-Snacks pudding, only I couldn't read the label. Neither could my parents, because the label was not in English. They suggested that I try it. So I did. It didn't taste like pudding, but after a few spoonfuls, I found it to be pretty good. It was even better after I crumbled a cookie into it. I ate the whole thing. When the flight attendant came by to collect the empty trays, my parents asked her to translate the label; she said it was banana yogurt. I did, however, drink a few sips of warm tea to "get the milky taste out of mouth".

My parents were floored! I actually ate yogurt! After we returned home, my parents quickly went out and bought cups of yogurt in a supermarket. After some trial-and-error, they were able to find a low-cost brand that I likes, because some brands were "too liquid", "too sour," or had something else that displeased me. I still eat yogurt to this day (at age 30).

I was exactly the same as your son as a kid and still have a very limited diet.
There aren't words to describe how stressful and upsetting meal times can be, the only way I have is to ask you to imagine what it would be like if some one put a plate of grubs, insects, kangaroo testicles and the likes alla I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Hear and force you to eat it. that is what a plate of fruit is like to me.

One of my childhood friends (NT) would only eat jam sandwiches and fish fingers, and that was all from the age of 3 to 12 when he started to eat pizza with the topping scraped off. His mother took him to lots of doctors and eventually to a top paediatric dietition. who basicly told her not to worry, so long as he was fit, healthy and, putting on weight it doesn't matter how restricted his diet was.

All you do by forcing the issue is to cause stress and upset, which makes the situation worse.

I couldn't manage eating when I was younger. I used to live on tins of coke.