Reply to So sick of my child’s picky eating

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

Reply to "So sick of my child’s picky eating"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As an adult picky eater, please know your son doesn't WANT to be this way. I'm sure he wishes he liked more, that he didn't worry when going to restaurants, or to people's homes, etc.

I was just somehow born like this, and although I eat more than the four things I ate at age 2 (yogurt, grilled cheese, pb&j, and I forget the other), I am still distinctly picky. Wish I weren't, but I truly hate a lot of foods.

Unless your son is a brilliant psychopath, he's NOT doing this to drive you crazy.[/quote]

+10000

I’m an adult picky eater, too.  It is not my choice.  I have spent the greater part of 4 decades trying to be more flexible with food.  It is awful.  No kid chooses this.

The best suggestion I have is to bridge foods.  For instance, I would eat baked potatoes.  My best friend in college convinced me that kidney beans were basically Lilliputian baked potatoes.  She even broke one open, fluffed up the white insides, and prepared it like a mini baked potato.  And after years of literally gagging and vomiting when trying beans, I ate my first one.  Then they became some of my favorite foods!  (I’m trying to eat low carb now or I’d eat bean chili all day every day.)

For me, it’s about safe foods.  Foods that don’t put me in a panic.   [/quote]
You understand that what you described is a serious disorder, likely not of a physical kind? We are presuming that OP's kid doesn't have an eating disorder or she would have said so.[/quote]

There is a very newly classified disorder called Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) which overlaps but is not the same as extreme picky eating.  I highly encourage any adult picky eaters who find their life affected by their limited diet or stress around eating to look into it. If you WANT help there are just now some research based approaches to treatment, some based in CBT.

My child has ARFID and we aggressively sought help well right around the time this disorder was identified. I am so thankful to have a name to put with our struggle but despite my child having a fairly extreme case (and us proactively seeking help) it took over two years to get that diagnosis. OP’s child may not YET have an identified eating issue but it doesn’t mean there is no problem there.

For what it’s worth many (but not all) children including my own have some underlying physical/medical issue that contributes to the development of ARFID, including undiagnosed food allergies or problems swallowing etc. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics