Trying to keep my very picky eater 3yo healthy as we’re (hopefully) expanding his diet. Right now the only foods I can get him to actually eat are McDonald’s, a specific brand of yogurt, banana bread, some crackers and some bars. Refuses any beverage besides water. (He’s likely on the spectrum.)
I know you’ve thought of this, but encouraging you to try again. Ive found that kids will refuse something to eat and then come back to it later when they are actually hungry.
It may take a tantrum and crazy cry session, but with love and attention they can normalize and get back towards a more normal diet.
I get that kids have certain things they don’t like, but for anyone whose kids only eat things that are deep fry brown, I think it’s worth the short-term crisis to solve the long-term aggravation and health issues. Edit: ok yeah I missed the potential autism part of question. Encourage other parents to stay strong with eating habits if that is not the case
That’s not how autistic disordered eating works.
It may be spartan, but giving them a regular plate of homecooked dinner (with vegetables of course) and nothing else until they’ve finshed it, works most of the time. If not, they go to bed hungry which doesn’t hurt them (it hurts your sleep though) if it doesn’t happen every day. Like you said, they’ll likely come around, but you have to out-patience them.
So, abuse the autistic child…
No, I guess I should’ve mentioned to not abuse your child this way. Just like a microwave manual mentions that you should not put your cat in a microwave.
Problem is, withholding food is abuse, period. You’re telling someone who doesn’t have the same neurological capacities you do to either starve or eat something they very likely have a visceral reaction to.
The other poster mentioned they missed the ‘potentially autistic’ part. While withholding food is abusive regardless,this for sure exacerbates the issues. I suspect you may have missed that part as well. It’s okay, just have some humility to step back and say so. Or keep advocating for old school abusive parenting.
Quite the contrary. It’s abusive to only feed your kids mcdonalds, because that’s the only thing they want. You’re telling someone who doesn’t have the nerological capacities you do that they can decide whatever they want to eat.
My kids get a varied diet with all the nutrients they need. They can choose not to eat it, that’s fine, but I’m not going to give them mcdonalds instead. Mcdonalds does not provide the same nutrients as a well balanced meal.
Sometimes I persuade them to “just eat a few bites” and than they can have desert as reward.
Sometimes we go to mcdonalds or some other fast food thing. But that’s my choice, not theirs (mostly). And it’s an occasional thing and a family event, like maybe once per month.
Maybe this approach doesn’t work for neurodivergent kids, but I never claimed it did. If you have a neurodivergent kid, you should maybe look into other methods. I should add that I also don’t know if this works for children of all ages, genders, races, handicaps, species, planets and dimensions. It works good enough for my kids and I’m taking that as a win.
Right. So maybe go back to the last paragraph, admit you probably missed the potential neurodivergency, and show some humility. Or double down and continue to offer bad advice.
No one here has said just let the kid eat what they want. Not OP, not me, not anyone else. We all want the kid to eat a better diet. That’s literally the purpose of this thread.
The problem is that, for non-typical situations, typical solutions don’t work. And, even for typical situations, starvation isn’t the best option. We’re trying to explore other possibilities, rather than the traditional ones, and being told “force the kid, you’re the parent” is at best tone deaf.
I see were this is going wrong. The last sentence of OP’s post says:
That wasn’t there yesterday.
It was. I haven’t edited my post.