How Do You Handle Your Picky Eaters?

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No, I'm not. It pretty much sucks a giant rat's behind. I have learned after four years how to 'deal with the reality' that I will be sick like this on and off until I die or they find a cure. The hardest part is having to give up all of my outdoors lifestyle due to extreme UV sensitivity that causes horrible flares. In a place like Australia, built around beach lifestyle (and the lifestyle I grew up dreaming I could live), it's been a real depressing pain in the butt. I'm still alive though, and am now on medication that will keep me alive, so that's a good thing. Best of luck to your sister. It is a horrible condition to have to live with.

Thanks. Best of luck to you too. I hope they do find a cure, sorry to learn you are living with this.

That's ok. The operative word is 'living' and I'm certainly thankful for that.

Best of luck with the food issues. I think you will find that our tastes and food habits change and stay the same throughout our lives. Some of us do eat a wide variety of food but I tend to eat the same stuff for months and then switch up. I used to have a roommate in my early 20s in SF who would call my food 'ominous meal' (using my real name) because I ate the same thing all the time - risoni, nutritional yeast, spices, and a touch of sour cream. Before that my 'meal' was mini quiches with a bit of creme fraiche on top for months. All of that interspersed with other foods like a salad, an apple, etc., but always (and for months) the same meal. Right now our 'house meal' is black bean burritos interspersed with daily salads. My 'snack' is rice crackers with a Greek yoghurt dip I make. Creatures of habit, we are.

I'm probably the poster child for doing everything wrong -- for a long while we've been making 3 separate meals: one for DS9 (who only eats about 20 foods total), "kid food" for his twin sisters (one will try anything, the other is a more "typically picky" kid), and then an adult meal for DH and I. I'm trying to change this around for the girls, and have been working on incorporating ideas from It's Not About the Broccoli and Getting to Yum. DS9 has started therapy with an OT, who is taking a very cognitive approach, basically talking with DS about his fears and anxieties with food. She's putting DS in charge of deciding which foods to try.

I was a picky eater as a child, not badly picky but I couldn't face things like liver and sheep's hearts with those tubes sticking out of them. Trouble is we had such horrors most evenings.
So this is what my mother and her English husband would do, they would make me sit alone in the kitchen until I had eaten the cold offal, sometimes I would still be there at 11 at night, thank goodness when we got a dog but the dog would only lick the boiled potatoes which I also couldn't stand, I liked mash but we always had boiled, I would sometimes put the food in my pocket because I really couldn't eat this stuff, it made me reach.

Now I am grown up and left home the end result of this form of parenting is that I will never ever go and visit them and have a meal with them. I haven't seen them for years, abused children never forget.

Thanks for more replies!

Ominous, I wish we could do more beans here. My son loves burritos and chili, but my older son is allergic to legumes- so it can't be a family meal. I also tend to go through food phases. I've been on a toast with honey kick lately.

Zette, I don't think your doing anything wrong given the circumstances. I used to also make separate meals (adults from kids) when my kids were younger. Forcing the issue with a kid with food anxiety would surely backfire.

Nambo, what your parents did sucks. My parents used to make me eat some of my veggies, and some of what I didn't want to try- but within much more reason. The smell and sight of milk and butter used to make me gag (still does) and they never forced it on me. I think the fact that there were several members of her family who shared this weird dairy aversion helped her realize it was more than me just being annoying, though.

I feel for families with multiple food sensitivities. Because there are only two of us, our food sensitivities are easy to manage. My son is lactose intolerant and I watch my gluten (not intolerant, but I notice too much gluten really does affect my IBS). He can eat a chewy tablet for his issues, and I don't eat the bread and buns he enjoys. Much easier than a lot of families have it.

I often worry about posting in threads like this because our family is so small and much easier to manage because of that. I have no frame of reference for the two adult, two plus kid families at all. I feel lucky. Not gloating much, just a little. (joking)

His food allergies are much more manageable than they used to be. He used to be allergic to much more. Now, besides peanuts, he does not have the more common food allergies. He is fine with dairy and wheat. He is mildly allergic to most legumes and some fruit (meaning gets hives, itchy tongue, slightly swollen lips), but enough to need to avoid them entirely. He is severely allergic to peanuts.

Don't worry about posting in threads like this, food issues come up in families of all sizes .

Rice and peas. Usually have some pre-cooked in the freezer or microwavable bags onn the shelf.
Also have learnt to cook all sorts of stuff from Japanese Dorayaki pancakes to home-made curries and bobotie. DD likes those a lot. So do me and DH
DD won't eat pork so gets a burger or chicken instead but for the rest I expect her to eat 4 out of 7 what the pot cooks and if she won't she gets rice, sometimes there is yellow (pilau) and other times she has to make do with plain white. Peas are optional. She is pretty good with vegetables though and eats most either cooked or raw.
She will live on carbs if I let her so over the years I have changed my shopping habits; fruit, biscuits and chocolate spread, she will devour untold amounts if I buy it so I do so sparingly.
She has intolerances to gluten but can handle some of it so eats bread. I buy corn alternatives and have to avoid annatto because it makes her eczema play up too.

I've always been a picky eater.

My Mom used to just insist I eat it, but that never worked - I'd end up going hungry, meanwhile feeling so unhappy and thinking she'd stopped loving me. (I have PTSD as well as autism, and I tend to assume people hate me whenever they do something that hurts me.)

What I would suggest is to prepare a meal where all the family members will eat at least part of it, check in with the pickiest family members to make sure they can eat it, and then let them eat as much as they can and leave the stuff they can't eat. For example, everyone in our family likes eggs, but done up differently, so my Dad makes a batch of plain eggs and doles them out to those who don't like toppings (myself and my brother) and then the second batch has toppings that he and my Mom like.

Also, remember two things:

Picky eating is not a choice. To get an idea what it's like to be a picky eater, imagine someone serving you up a big steaming pile of fresh dog poop. There are certain foods that are just as unappealing to me as that would be - and I'm amazed that other people can eat those things and actually enjoy them. Autism, and to a lesser extent simply being a child (children taste bitter more intensely, it's an adaptation to discourage them from eating poisonous plants), literally causes certain foods to taste different from how they'd taste to an NT or an adult. Texture can also make a difference - some foods taste just fine but feel horrible in my mouth.

Refusing your food is not a personal insult. My Mom used to always take it personally when I refused to eat something - she'd been raised to think of a mother feeding her child as a symbol of nurture and caring, and when I rejected her food, she felt like I rejected her care as well. But really, I appreciate and love my Mom, always have, and there is no connection between how I feel about my Mom and how I feel about the food she just made.