Eating Issues

I am wondering if any parents have had issues with their children not eating or only eating certain foods. My daughter is 3 1/2 with ASD and she is to the point where she will only drink milk. She is particular about the milk and I have a hard time hiding things in them milk. On occasion she will eat some animal crackers or cheez-its but we are down to just milk.

We have an appointment with a nutritionist but I am looking for some parental support as well and how parents have worked with their children.

She is in OT and attends SpEd PreSchool so she is receiving therapy?s to help with her food sensitivity but I am really getting worried and stressed that she is not getting all the nutrients she needs. Her Pediatrician doesn't seem as concerned since she is just below average for hight and weight.

I have learned to follow my heart with my kids and feel there is more I can do. Does anyone have experiences or ideas they would like to share.

Hi akmomof2

I just wanted to comment that there is definitely research showing that children on the autism spectrum often have issues around eating. These are thought to arise partly due to sensory issues (such as when a child can't stand chunky foods and will only eat smooth foods) and partly due the general rigidity and repetitive behaviors associated with autism. Children seem to get stuck on certain foods.

Researchers in Pennsylvania published a study called "Food Preferences and Factors Influencing Food Selectivity for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders" in Research in Developmental Disabilities (Vol. 27, 2006, page 353). Some of the foods they identified as accepted by more than 50% of the children with ASD were: apples (60%), chicken nuggets (67%), hot dogs (65%), peanut butter (55%), cookies (77%), potato chips (82%), and pizza (72%). They had no vegetables listed that more than 50% of children with ASD would accept. They hypothesized that perhaps children with ASD are drawn to foods that result in quick "sugar highs," or that they may be supersensitive to bitter or sour tastes.

I invite parents to share their stories about their children's issues around food, especially any interventions or other solutions they have found that help to expand the list of foods they will accept.

My son doesn't eat much at all and there are days he won't eat anything. We took him to a therapist who told us he has Sensory processing disorder. My son for now likes starchy foods and perfers to drink milk all day then eat. When my wife cooks we set him a plate with the same food we have in hopes he will eat it. He does not. He does like chicken, green beans, bread but he is picky which breads he will eat, and he likes yogart and vanilla ice cream the best. My wife and I have tried eveything to get him to eat different foods to no avial. He has a very sensitive palate and knows there is something different about his food. You cannot fool him. We no longer worry about it because the doctor told us he is not lacking nutrients. In fact he is three years old with a weight of 60lbs at almost 4 feet.
My wife and I have cut back on his milk intake and we give him a mix of soy and milk. We also started to give him 1 or 2 percent milk to cut down on his fat intake. He is not a sweet eater which is a good thing but he does like dark choclate and crakers. There are days he will eat a whole pack of crakers through out the day.
I wish he would just sit still and eat what we eat but he is not and we don't force it on him anymore. He is getting better and will now sit with us and eat a roll and a few bites of chicken or beans so that is a good start. If we go out he will get a grill cheese sandwich and a few fries so things are looking better but don't forget the ketchup or he won't eat the fries. And so it goes......

Hi, everyone, I'm new here. I Have a son who was diagnosed with PDD-NOS. Hy son would not eat vegetables or fruits. None. I was feeding him babyfood fruits and veggies. It was the only way to give him those nutrients and vitamins. Have you tried vitamins? Our ped. gave my son vitamins while I kept on trying to get fruits and veggies into him. My son loves ketchup, so we put it on everything, except the fruit. He still wont eat 99% of the fruits in the world. He'll only eat bananas. I just keep on trying. Pediasure might be another way to go. The doctors have told me that my son might grow out of the picky eater mode, maybe. At least I got him to eat some veggies. I steam them and add butter to them and if he wants ketchup, I put some on or put it on the side and let him dip it. He's now 8, and I think it was when he turned 7, that he started eating. Only problem is, is that my mother has to feed him. Good luck.

My son's preferences sound a lot like your son's, littlemama. He also absolutely refuses to eat veggies. When he was younger, he'd eat the baby food variety, but now, at 13, he won't touch them. He also has an intense craving for ketchup, and puts it on everything. He seems to crave carbs -- bread, crackers, pizza. As for fruit, like you said, he will eat a limited array: bananas, apples (peeled, sliced, with peanut butter on), canned pears or really soft fresh pears, canned mandarin oranges, fresh strawberries. That's about it.

He has added a few new items to his diet since early childhood, but not a lot. To be honest, I don't even try to force anything anymore, just try to make sure I have those few good things he will eat on hand.

My son is almost four with Sensory Processing disorder. He was going to therapy twice a week for this but we had to stop because of the cost factor. My son has a very limited tast for food. You can see the other emails I wrote about his SPD. The only new food he has picked up on in the past year is dark chocolate which he eats very little of. My wife introduced him to fruit smoothies and he seems to like it which is a good thing because he has bowl issues and this will help him past "it" along. We have to be sure not to give him binding foods but this is not a problem expect apple juice which he likes at times but trying to get him to eat vegtables and fruit won't happen; we tried everything to get him to taste it.
We cannot get upset about this because he has his days where he will eat more then three grean beans and a few bites of chicken which on other days he won't eat at all. He is happy drinking milk all day but now he is having days he won't drink either so we are hoping the doctor can find what is causing our son's severe constipation and if so maybe our son will eat more.

littlemama wrote:

Hi, everyone, I'm new here. I Have a son who was diagnosed with PDD-NOS. Hy son would not eat vegetables or fruits. None. I was feeding him babyfood fruits and veggies. It was the only way to give him those nutrients and vitamins. Have you tried vitamins? Our ped. gave my son vitamins while I kept on trying to get fruits and veggies into him. My son loves ketchup, so we put it on everything, except the fruit. He still wont eat 99% of the fruits in the world. He'll only eat bananas. I just keep on trying. Pediasure might be another way to go. The doctors have told me that my son might grow out of the picky eater mode, maybe. At least I got him to eat some veggies. I steam them and add butter to them and if he wants ketchup, I put some on or put it on the side and let him dip it. He's now 8, and I think it was when he turned 7, that he started eating. Only problem is, is that my mother has to feed him. Good luck.

Hi everyone. I am new here and new to all of this. My son is currently undergoing diagnostic testing for Autism.

He also has a problem w/ eating...prefers milk and crunchy food like cheez its or teddy grahms ect. He is 21 months old and I worry about him because he doesn't eat. He is getting ready to start OT soon and is already in ST twice a week along w/ DT once a week. Does the OT really help w/ these eating issues?? I always offer him whatever it is we are eating and he usually runs away screaming. Sometimes he sits in the highchair at the table w/ his older siblings and will play w/ his spoon, dipping it into the food but refuses to even try a bite.

My son has eating issues too. It started at birth though. He was trying to suck a bottle, he couldn't latch on to the breast, though we found out later that his soft palate (the muscle that closes so that food doesn't go down the wind pipe) did not work at all so he couldn't get any suction. He got formula out of a bottle but very slowly because he could only get it out by chewing it. so he would drink a little and then quit because he was so tired from using his jaw muscles to get the formula out. We tried making the hole a little bigger so he wouldn't have to work so hard, but then he started choking frequently so we were back at square one. At a year old he was the size of a six month old. He was small, but active and he seemed relatively healthy. shortly after that his soft palate did begin to work. It wasn't strong, but we were able to put him on pediasure. By then his jaw muscles were very strong and he chewed through every nipple, we had to tell him to stop biting so hard or he wouldn't have a nipple to use. His soft palate still wasn't strong enough for him to use a straw and he wasn't coordinated enough to use a cup. Solid foods either choked him and he spit them out or he would throw up everything in his stomach. The doctors told me not to try solid foods every day, but maybe just once or twice a week because all that throwing up was making him lose weight. After a while i limited my frequency in trying solid foods. I think I went 2 months without trying solid foods and his weight really picked up. As a matter of fact he went from being in the 5th percentile at age 1 to the 95th percentile at age 2. Pediasure works wonders. By age 2 He did start eating some solids, limited solids, but solids just the same. for some reason at about 2 1/2 pediasure started making him throw up so we had to stop the pediasure. six months later he had lost 8 pounds. the doctors put him on a medication to increase his appetite, told me to give him a multivitamin and let him eat whatever and however much of the foods he wanted. He gained 4 pounds back and is steady. He is 42 pounds and 42 inches. He likes corndogs (though for a long time he would eat the breading off of it and leave the hot dog part) pizza, biscuits, sandwiches, pancakes (only if he can dip them in ketchup...lol...weird I know but that was the first thing he ever ate all of) and sometimes carrots. He loves m&ms. He also loves anything Icy like snow cones and Icees and popsicles (he eats so many popsicles that we started buying sugar free ones so he wouldn't get so much sugar) He doesn't like milk, but he like the imitation chocolate milk that really has no milk in it. He doesn't like anything sour. He likes most meats though, like chicken and bratwurst. The good thing about my son though is that he wants to try things, especially if he sees me eating them. The problem is that so many new foods make him gag and throw up that now when he tries a new food he tries it near the garbage can so he can spit it out if he needs to. Before he would just spit it whereever he was. Mostly all over him. Oh, he likes popcorn too but it has to have a lot of salt on it. The occupational therapist says that he is so young that extra salt won't matter much and right now we just need him to eat a wider variety, so I salt it up just like he likes it. I can usually get him to eat something if I cover it with either ketchup or ranch. I can get him to eat macaroni and cheese if I put hot dogs in it and cover it in ketchup. I am so glad someone is discussing diet...lol...right now if you ask him what he wants to eat it is either a sandwich or a corndog (more often a corndog), but I can suggest other things and he will grudgingly accept like dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets (he loves dinosaurs). I guess I will stop now..lol...sorry so long...

I feel the pain with eating issues. My son who has autism quit eating solid foods around his second birthday. He went from straight food refusal to only drinking pediasure. He even at first would not even drink his pediasure resulting in a long hospitalization where he almost had to have a feeding tube. My son is now three years old and I can not tell you how much I would give to have him want to eat ice cream or any sweets. I am the only mother at the ice cream parlor begging my child to just taste the huge sundae I have bought for him. He is in OT and speech therapy and we were evealuated by a feeding therapist who because of the severity of the case sent us to a pediatric feeding program. We would love to use the program who after paying out of pocket for the evaluation said we need to be there. Problem is it is 65,000 dollars for 8 intense weeks then you have even more after that. We have pleaded with the insurance company now to go out of network but they deemed it not medically neccesary for my son to eat solid foods since he can live off of pediasure and has sustained weight being on it. I have appealed and written my congress but no luck I have been denied twice. I am having a difficult time with the feeding disorder my son has and it seems that no one really knows how to help and the people that might be able to are way out of reach.

I'm so sorry to hear what a miserable situation you are facing, mbcmama.

As a research project, we don't have any information about how to help you fight this. One idea would be to look up your state attorney general's office and see if there is a way to file a complaint outside the insurance company in addition to appealing inside its own system.

Autism Speaks has Autism Response Teams that help families find local resources. I don't know if they would be able to help with this situation specifically, but it may be worth contacting them to see if they have any resources that might prove helpful: http://www.autismspeaks.org/community/outreach/autism_response_team.php

I hope you are able to get the assistance you need for your little boy soon.

Thank you for your encouragement I will try that as well. I did contact the insurance commisioner and they made a call on my behalf and even gave me a state investigator but the insurance company held with the decision. The feeding clinic that Matthew needs to attend also had their lawyer try with the insurance company in an appeal and once again we were denied. I will try your idea next, thank you for your help and if you or anyone comes up with any other ideas let me know. I am at least thankful that at the moment Matthew is able to live off of his pediasure and continues to drink it.

My hope is this is helpful. I am an autistic/asperger adult. I also experienced these eating issues as a child, and to some extent even now as an adult. I did not know until reading this thread that it has a name or that other autistic people have these same experiences.

There are some foods I grew to eat over time. But there are still those same core foods that I do not eat. In fact, just the smell of them when other people are eating them or when I am cleaning up after someone who has eaten them make me nauseous. I do not know why this is, just that it is.

It is not something we do with intent to be difficult. My heart is to apologize to the parents who apprently love their children and have concern for their children's eating habits.

It seems like from my perspective that we not only process thought in a different way, but our bodies are chemically different as well. I have this thought that there are some foods that affect us in a different way than they do non-autistic people.

There are some foods that make me tired the next day after eating them. There are some foods my body seems to direct me to, such as the milk. I tried to logic through the milk situation. My logic tells me adults should not drink so much milk (I am in my mid 40s). Logic usually works for me, but in this particular situation with the milk, my body wins and I drink it. I have learned to drink the 2%, but it was a major battle to win.

There were some foods I did not eat as a child because I associated them with negative feelings or thoughts. These are the foods I believe I now eat whereas before I would not. Perhaps it is as I have already stated and I have outgrown these phobias.

The others that continue to affect me physically, I still do not know why I cannot eat them.

My thought by posting in this thread is to encourage the parents that there is hope. And to say thank you for loving your autistic children.

Cyndi

Cyndi, thank you for your post.

I'm sure parents will find your comments helpful!

I'm happy to say that just recently my son (PDD-NOS 3yrs)has started eating pasta, mashed potatos & a few other things which used to make him gag. Although I still can't get him to eat anything thats green, still working on that. I know these aren't the best foods for him but him eating anything new is a step in the right direction. He was mainly a meat eater chicken, hamburgers, bacon (which i replaced with turkey bacon) steak...(what 3 year old eats steak lol) etc. so when ever he tries something new it's a step in the right direction.

I'm also happy to say that the school he goes to insist on introducing new foods to the kids at evry lunch time to help parents find new foods the kids like. it's been fantastic & I think that helped our son to try anything at least once.

My son also has major eating issues. He will only eat chicken, Pep. pizza in the Red Baron Only box!. He drinks only Welch's Fruit Punch in the 6-pack. He will do this on a variety of foods. I believe it is Sight and Smell oriented. He has to see certain things as a ritual. Maybe it is calming to him to have it this way. I never force any food or drink on him. He has always had to have a shot since being diagnosed with Autism if he gets sick. Before Christmas he developed Bronchitis and they gave me Amoxicillin telling me he had to get used to taking medicine's again. It is a hard convince with children who have sensory-disorders but I tryed. He vomited 3 doses and I was going to call and he came to me and asked where was his Pop-tart Medicine! I let it set on the counter for 15min to take the chill off this time and he finished the whole bottle in the proper dosing schedule 3 times a day until gone! I guess it had to do with the Tempature of the Medicine and he had to be willing to get those sponge-bob stickers to take it. It was the best Christmas because he took the medicine. OT really help's but I feel like they do not want pushed to do or take anything. I'm still trying the Veggie's, no go not even cooked in Cornbread or muffins. He can Smell it and will start gagging. Just hang in there. They will do it when only they are ready.