Hi, & I'm new. I have a 3 yr old, who while hasn't been diagnosed officially with AS is showing some distinct signs of it and is being watched closely by therapists, early intervention teachers & paediatricians. The biggest issue for us as parents is that he refuses to feed himself, & what we spoon feed him has to be no more than mashed in texture. He has never shown a great like of food, including milk as an infant. Has anyone else had this issue & if you did what helped, if anything?
Hi Oruamo, I have heard of this numerous times.
I would say to be careful not to push any food he doesn't want at the moment, he needs to have no stress around food, otherwise it will increase his anxiety.
If you feel his anxiety is not too great, after he has eaten his normal food, let him stay at the table, and place some food that is finely chopped near him.
Don't say that he has to eat it, but you play with it in your fingers as if its interesting.
See if he wants to play with it, but don't push him too. Just let him observe you if he wants.
If you do that a few times, and see if he has an interest each day.
Then on the next day when you play with the food, eat some of it, and see if it wants to play with it. If he is interested in playing with it, that is good.
You could then change the food, and make it a slightly different texture, and see if he likes to play with it.
He might prefer something in cubes, finely chopped or lumpy to feel. Or something like jelly/jello.
The basic idea is to let him know that different foods are not something bad or to be wary of.
If he just plays and doesn't try for a few weeks, its still positive, as he is having a good experience with food.
Babies usually like to play with their food, and mess around with it, its part of the learning process. An autistic child might miss that phase, and then be anxious when having different food textures.
I assume that your doctor has ruled out any problems with gastric reflux, or with his swallowing reflexes.
I know the technique of reducing stress around food, and letting a child play with food to decrease anxiety, and to heighten interest, has worked for other kids, it might help you somewhat. The main thing is not to make any stress for the child, as autistic children are extremely sensitive, and can develop phobias more easily than an average child.
Thanks for that. Our son was involved in a messy food play group. The difference with your suggestion is that he's eating first & then playing with the food immediately after. Your idea might be more useful as the food play is not at a separate time from the eating.
In the instances that you've heard of it, does the child eventually eat on their own? My biggest fear is that he'll reach school age which is only 2 years away & not be able to feed himself. I can only imagine the bullying this is going to generate.
It has helped the children, but it may not be a quick solution. The thing is with having a child on the autism spectrum, expect to have some difficulties, and by the time school comes there may be other things to worry about.
There is worry with all children, but I would say take it one day at a time, and not worry about the future too much, some things can get better, some things can regress, it might be a case of good days and bad days.
On the worry about what this will mean in a few years ... I agree with Amy, it isn't worth the energy to look that far into the future. One battle at a time (not to say I always follow my own advice!). My son has issues with food and eating, not the same as yours, but issues none-the-less. Some he outgrew; some he may never; some he started to work on only after he realized that his bad habits were interfering with his ability to make friends (yes, they bluntly told him, and I did before that, but some lessons have to be learned the hard way in life no matter how much us parents wish to prevent that - we did buffer the fall, though, as did the teachers). You do have to be careful how much you force issues when it comes to food, since one step forward can, very easily, result in 2 steps backwards. See how things go tyring out the ideas in the above posts, and try not to worry about how this will play out in school. Yet.
I was like that when I was a small child. My mother used to force me to eat by yelling at, slapping or threatening me. For this and all the other things she put me through, I rarely speak to her. Don't make the same mistake my mother did.
Wow, it's nice to start talking to people who seem to have experienced some stuff like this!
We tried some sliced banana after breakfast today which my son quite enjoyed playing with. The chocolate buttons at lunch weren't nearly as interesting.
And that leads me on to my next question. My son doesn't appear to have any problems getting his hands messy with gooey wet things like mashed banana & jello (but still probs eating it) I think he wasn't so interested in the choc buttons because they had a dryer texture. One thing that was picked up in his messy food play group was that he wasn't very keen at all to touch dry cereals like Rice Bubbles (or Ricies, I'm not sure what you would call them).
I am glad that he enjoyed playing with the banana.
As for the dried cereal, what about trying this: Have a small amount of milk and the cereal seperate (have one bowl for each of you) and you play with the cereal by putting it into the milk and then feeling it as it absorbs the milk and gets sloppy and encourage him to do the same. He will then be handling the dry cereal and can observe the changes. That might help him realise that the same food looks different when you do different things to it and might make the dried foods more interesting to him.
Lauren had very definite food preferences as a child. I found that slicing fresh green grapes and strawberries in half and offering them to her, was a good inducement. After that, other fresh fruits, mixed and cut so that their various colours are obvious. For instance, she'll never eat a whole apple, but likes it sliced. Seems to make all the difference. I think big lumps of food might be intimidating.
Alison
Thank you for all your suggestions so far.
Does anyone think AS phobias/anxieties over ride basic human instinct? The reason I ask is that I've often wondered if my son even has the instinct to eat. I would never ever do this, but I've wondered what would happen if hypothetically speaking my husband & I just never fed him. Would his survival instincts kick in, or are these turned off? I wonder sometimes if my son has ever felt hunger.
Please let me reiterrate I would never ever do this. I'm just interested from a theoretical point of view
Any phobia can over-ride human instinct if it is strong.
Sometimes I won't eat for a day or two or hardly eat anything at all and it makes me feel weak and lightheaded but I still don't feel like eating. The feeling of slight hunger doesn't really bother me.
My daughter is 15 and still has major food phobias. She won't touch anything that isn't dry-crunchy or tough-chewy. Her diet is mainly milk, meats, breads, and very tart apples. She chokes down an occasional lettuce leaf to get her mom off her back about eating vegetables. She tends to eat very small amounts of food, unless it is a favorite food like pizza (but with no cheese!).
She has been this way since birth and it has never gotten better no matter what we tried. Actually, I think her range of preferred foods has narrowed since she was a toddler. Sometimes I worry she eats like an anorexic, but she is a normal weight, does not express any concern over her weight, does not hide under baggy clothes, and will eat large amounts of her favorite foods whenever she has access to them.
I didn't know about AS until recently. I handled her food issues very badly when she was a child, mistaking her refusals for stubborn defiance. But I don't know what I could have done differently or if I can do anything to change it now that she is older.
Lately I've been trying to just drop all the food pressure with her and let her fix her own meals, even make her own lists for grocery shopping. She does seem more relaxed. The other day she tried a plain hamburger at a fast food place...picked at it like it was some revolting foreign object, but she did order it herself and ate about half of it before requesting her usual chicken nuggets. I count that as improvement. At least she tried something new. She's beginning to be embarrassed about always ordering "kids meals" at restaurants...she thinks she's getting way too old for that, but finds it very hard to change to new things.
It is hard for me to be sympathetic...being AS myself and liking food way too much...it is hard for me to imagine how she feels, but I see her struggle physically over food and I see that it does bother her genuinely. So I am trying to get off her back about it. It isn't easy though to sit back and worry that my kid will starve herself to death due to anxiety over food textures.
Maybe your son does not have the correct feeling of hunger or can't interpret that feeling?
I for myself have problems to drink enough because I usually (except for very very warm weather or sweaty sports, heavy bodywork etc.) don't feel thirst! I have to make drinking a routine, but until now I failed (I only could establish a coffee drinking routine) and I got to remind me day after day to drink enough! I'd probably not dry out, but I think the missing thirst could have real bad effects on my health.
It's a bit alike with hunger, but not as worse. If it wasn't for my kids I never forget to feed regularly, I'd skip/miss a meal or two per day, but not dangerously.
I remember that my son could not say that he was hungry, when he was younger (he has AS, too). Even though he was speaking very good. But I recognised a change in his behavior when it was time to have a meal for him - he became kind of restless and then aggressive, so I knew something was wrong. After a while I knew this was the sign that he was hungry or thirsty, but he did not realise it himself until maybe age 6.
Sibylle
I reacted very badly to being weaned off the breast just before a year of age and mum found the only things I would eat were pieces of fruit or avocado or small fingers of toast with vegemite. I wouldn't take a bottle or dummy and only drank milk or juice from a cup.
If it were only known back then that much of this behaviour was due to autism. Strangely enough, I soon became a very good eater and it was my non-autistic brothers who had the most food fads.
I read that it is very common for autistic children to only like smooth textured foods with fairly bland flavours. I wonder if it's possible to try this little boy with things like toast fingers that he can pick up rather than have him try and use cutlery until he's older.