Your child sounds like mine, who runs a little on the anxious side. It sounds like your DD knows that "food" is now a way to get a reaction out of you. Kids are sneaky like that.

My DD gets a pick of any snack she wants when she gets home from school (she recently turned 6). If she is still hungry then I offer her maybe one more choice of something very small, fruit from the fruit bowl and she can have her dessert before dinner. But then, and I think this is where you need help, you can't engage. If she asks for more or tells you she is hungry then you need to tell her 1 or 2 times about the options and then ignore. It takes a little training on both your parts but then I think you should see things die down a bit.

I have dumbed down my food. Offer a few choices at meal times, but don't analyze what she's picked. I try to make a menu for the week and let her pick one meal.

And then before bed my DD always gets a choice of something (anything "boring" and doesn't take much prep, like bread with butter, banana with peanut butter, milk, etc). The choice before bed time alleviated a lot of anxiety because she knows she would be full before going to bed.

If your child is consistently growing and gaining weight on the curve, then I wouldn't worry to much. But, don't engage her in food talk and don't analyze/or let her hear you get frustrated by her food choices.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. She is 5.

Those of you suggesting it's ARFID -- can this be diagnosed even if she is a healthy weight and following a healthy growth pattern? She's never been underweight (or overweight -- always just right at the 50% target for weight/height) and has no signs of anemia or malnutrition. She definitely has signs of anxiety around meals/food though. And the symptom about "vague complaints about digestive issues" is spot on. She often talks about her stomach hurting but there's never any clear cause except occasionally needing to go to the bathroom. But yeah, I hear "my tummy hurts" probably 4 or 5 days a week.

I will talk to the pediatrician about this, but just out of curiosity, what does treatment for ARFID look like? Is it something you medicate or is it just behavioral therapy? Just wondering if there are things I could now that could help, in case it takes a while to get a diagnosis or we don't get one. I'm definitely at a point of desperation.

NP. Yes.

OP, go back and look at the DSM-V diagnostic criteria for ARFID from the first lin. Note the part about "associated with one (or more) of the following:"

"Marked interference with psychosocial functioning" satisfies the criteria.

Anonymous wrote:My kid eats:
PB&J
Pasta that he dips in hummus
Bacon
Yogurt with granola
Apples (2-4 per day)
Chicken nuggets
Raw baby spinach
Quesadilla
Cheese and crackers
Pizza
Cantaloupe
mango
cucumber slices
Muffins
Toaster waffles

That’s pretty much it. No burgers or hot dogs. No sandwiches.
No sauces on food. No dipping sauce except hummus.
Ped says he eats too many food for feeding therapy. We just let him eat from his rotation. On the bright side - he can and will eat the same thing every day. When we were home for the early pandemic, he ate PB&J, apple slices, and milk for lunch every day from mid-March until the end of June. 7 days a week. When he was 3 or 4, I made him Annie’s Mac and cheese every day for 6 months.

He’s 8. A lot of these foods he added in the last 18 months. Today he told me he ate salsa at camp and I nearly fainted. We dropped the rope years ago OP and we’re all happier. He takes vitamins. He will drink Ensure and smoothies with greens or protein powder included. His pickiness is not my failure as a parent and is not a rejection of my cooking or rejection of my love. It’s just a quirk of who he is and he will try new foods when he is ready. We make them available and when he does eat something new we don’t make a big deal if it.
We also play a game where we go to a store and pick out a new pastry or a new cheese we don’t know and he gladly tries them. Once we went to a bakery where all the signs were in a foreign language. We picked an assortment of things and tried them as a family. It doesn’t translate directly into trying new foods, but is a fun way to try new flavors and textures in a low stakes way.

My kid eats:
PB&J
Pasta that he dips in hummus
Bacon
Yogurt with granola
Apples (2-4 per day)
Chicken nuggets
Raw baby spinach
Quesadilla
Cheese and crackers
Pizza
Cantaloupe
mango
cucumber slices
Muffins
Toaster waffles

That’s pretty much it. No burgers or hot dogs. No sandwiches.
No sauces on food. No dipping sauce except hummus.
Ped says he eats too many food for feeding therapy. We just let him eat from his rotation. On the bright side - he can and will eat the same thing every day. When we were home for the early pandemic, he ate PB&J, apple slices, and milk for lunch every day from mid-March until the end of June. 7 days a week. When he was 3 or 4, I made him Annie’s Mac and cheese every day for 6 months.

Anonymous wrote:- Breaded and browned chicken tenderloins

- Marinated and grilled chicken tenderloins

- Rib eye steak

- Spaghetti

- Creamy pasta with shredded chicken

Do you cook foods like this for dinner? We still do, DD age 10

I make stuff like that daily (OP here). My DD would not touch it with a ten foot pole. I don't understand what the suggestion is here... the problem isn't that I don't serve her healthy or protein-rich foods. It's that she will not eat them.

When I was a child, my parents would make a meal and then if we didn't want to eat it, we could have cereal instead. My brother ate Raisin Bran for dinner every night for at least 10 years. Now as an adult, he is an adventurous eater with no problems at all.

I didn't want to fight about food with my kids. If they don't want to eat a meal, they can have a pbj or cereal. DH would prefer that they eat whatever we have for dinner but he admits that the not-fighting method of dinner is less stressful. The kids get full tummies without fighting about it.

- Breaded and browned chicken tenderloins

- Marinated and grilled chicken tenderloins

- Rib eye steak

- Spaghetti

- Creamy pasta with shredded chicken

Do you cook foods like this for dinner? We still do, DD age 10

I'd start with the pediatrician and then a nutritionist and feeding disorder clinic

Anonymous wrote:How old?

Oh 5.

How old?

OP here. She is 5.

Those of you suggesting it's ARFID -- can this be diagnosed even if she is a healthy weight and following a healthy growth pattern? She's never been underweight (or overweight -- always just right at the 50% target for weight/height) and has no signs of anemia or malnutrition. She definitely has signs of anxiety around meals/food though. And the symptom about "vague complaints about digestive issues" is spot on. She often talks about her stomach hurting but there's never any clear cause except occasionally needing to go to the bathroom. But yeah, I hear "my tummy hurts" probably 4 or 5 days a week.

I will talk to the pediatrician about this, but just out of curiosity, what does treatment for ARFID look like? Is it something you medicate or is it just behavioral therapy? Just wondering if there are things I could now that could help, in case it takes a while to get a diagnosis or we don't get one. I'm definitely at a point of desperation.

How old is she?

OP, there are several ARFID threads on the Special Needs forum, here is one re: a therapist at Children's.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/603355.page#10096524

Look into feeding therapy, OP. You may want to find a therapist familiar with https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/learn/by-eating-disorder/arfid

Get some intervention now, for your sake and because kids can't grow properly with so little protein. Having a professional involved will relieve some of the stress on you and keep it from being a battle.

The Helpline at the link above may be able to give you some names in the area, or your pediatrician.

Good luck! It is really hard.

She's picky, she picks at her food, everything is too hot or too cold or too medium, she likes things one day and then not the next, she likes a food and then doesn't like how it's prepared. She complains constantly that she is hungry but then won't eat the food I give her. Part of it is that I do want her to eat healthy foods (if it were up to her she would simply eat baked goods for every meal, the occasional berry, no vegetables, and no proteins). We are not overly restrictive about anything. I read all the stuff about picky eating and do all the stuff you are supposed to do, including:

- composing meals that involve mostly familiar foods, including at least one I know she'll eat, in small portions
- Inviting her to cook with us and be active in preparing meals
- Making meals colorful and inviting
- Not pressuring her to eat anything, not having any banned foods
- Never talking about food as good or bad
- Never bribing her to eat
- Trying to make meals playful and fun
- Providing a shelf with a variety of healthy snack options for self-serve

And so on and so on. I'm so tired. All I hear all day long is "I'm hungry I'm hungry I'm hungry." I feel like 90% of my mental capacity is focused on trying to feed her. I'm waaaaaay passed trying to get her to eat meals with us (she simply will not, she won't eat cooked food, combined foods, anything with meat, any vegetables at all -- we tried this forever and every meal was an exhausting battle because she'd sit and and cry and refuse to touch anything on her plate). I don't do short order cook but I prepare meals from the set of foods she has been known to eat and then try to gently mix in new foods as we go to expand horizons.

But none of this has eliminated the food battles. Today she complained about wanting food literally from the moment she got up until I was tucking her into bed. Every meal I served her, she ate the one thing I knew she'd eat (a muffin, strawberries, some apple sauce), picked at the rest and complained. She told me she was hungry at bedtime so I let her have a piece of bread with butter but I'm honestly angry about it because I don't want my kid to be hungry but WHY IS SHE HUNGRY I DEDICATED MY WHOLE DAY TO FEEDING HER.

Just why. I cannot. I can't take the combination of refusing to eat everything but complaining constantly about being hungry. What the heck am I supposed to do here.