Yummy yummy, sometimes

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Batsman is not a great eater. As a baby, he ate well and always accepted, tried, sampled the food I offered. Looking back now I can see that he never really demanded food. He never demanded it in that “I’m hungry, muuuuuuum” way that our 17 month old Bowler does now. The Batsman really did lots of passive acceptance of food rather than ravenous eating.

Just before he turned 2, the descent into poor eating began. It happened so gradually that before I knew it (and was a little distracted with a new & difficult Bowler pregnancy), the Batsman had effectively eliminated a whole lot of foods from his diet. And it didn’t matter what we tried, once he had decided he didn’t want something that was it. Bye bye broccoli, sweet potato and peas. See you later pasta, rice and messy food of any kind. And it was definitely goodbye to any form of red meat. We did everything to help him increase his repertoire of foods and I mean everything. It was only on a very rare occasion that he would attempt something new. His diet had taken on a distinct beige/white colour – bread, crumbed fried pieces of chicken or fish, raisin toast, weet bix, cheese, yoghurt – and it primarily had to be all in separate “bits”, not touching each other, not messy, not texturally challenging in the slightest. Discrete eating we called it – Captain Beige is in the house. In a family where food is revered, cooked and tended lovingly, this limiting of the Batsman’s diet was heartbreaking.

 I fretted and worried, tortured myself really. It’s a primal thing isn’t it – a mother should be able to feed her child well, shouldn’t she? And even though I knew it wasn’t really my fault, it’s ever so hard not to let the guilt kick in when this kind of thing happens. Children’s eating is also one of those topics, like baby sleeping patterns, where everyone feels like they should give you their ten cents worth of advice. “Have you tried hiding the vegetables in the Bolognese sauce?” “My child eats broccoli cooked 3 ways, maybe you should try cooking it like that?” Thanks for caring but NOT HELPFUL.

Then in March 2010, along came our ASD diagnosis. The Batsman’s eating issues became just one of a myriad of issues we had to deal with and make decisions about. The priority was getting an early intervention program going. It was a couple of months into our home based therapy program that I felt I had the strength to tackle the dietary issues again. It was still an enormous source of angst for me. I dreaded meal times. No matter how much I tried not to turn it into a battleground, it invariably became one as the Batsman tried to exercise a little piece of power in his world. His reaction to lots of foods was, and remains, so much more than just ‘fussy’ eating. As the parents of many kids “on the spectrum” will tell you, the reaction to some foods is often one of “this food offends every single one of my senses”. With some foods, like pieces of banana, the Batsman will gag and cough until it’s gone, it’s not pretty.

In June last year I went to see a dietician to talk about it all, hoping for a magic fix but knowing there wasn’t one. She was fantastic. With a couple of kids “on the spectrum” herself, she was sensible, practical and reassuring. It helped a lot to talk to her. She gave me some ideas of things to try, talked to me about supplements we could use and mostly reassured me that because the Batsman was still growing well, in at least some forms, he must be getting what he needed. Phew.

A couple of books have been useful to me on this part of the road. They helped me to stop beating myself up about the Batsman’s nutrition and to realise just how many people go through this with their “spectrum” kids – to find a place for myself in all of the pressure of modern day parenting and “50 recipes the whole family will love” that’s not so lonely. This book and this one were a great resource.

Ellyn Satter, who wrote the “Secrets of feeding a healthy family”, has a fantastic “Division of Responsibilities in Feeding” which outlines whose job is whose in the whole family eating scenario. She says that essentially the parent is responsible for what, when and where and the child is responsible for whether they eat and how much. This mantra has helped me so much, to take pressure and guilt away from both the Captain and I as parents, to realise and be clear that we can’t “get the Batsman to eat” or “make him eat” and that ultimately as he grows he will learn the responsibility is his to eat well and look after himself. Her books and website are certainly worth a read.

We have a much more relaxed approach to eating with our Batsman now. He regularly has milkshakes and smoothies to make sure he gets his supplements. A very regular meal is a large platter filled with lots of bits and pieces of whatever I have in the fridge, some desired items like chicken or fish nuggets, some very much less so but our aim is to make sure we expose him (and the Bowler) to lots of new, fresh, healthy foods, even if he doesn’t try them. Very occasionally he will try a new food and that is cause for much celebration but there is no pressure on him to do so. If everyone is more relaxed there is often more success in getting food into him and I have learned not to get too emotionally attached to whether he tries the things I cook.

Progress is slow, the steps are tiny, the successes are celebrated and all I can really say is that we do our very best. I hope that one day the Batsman will grow to discover the great joys of good food. And as he said to me yesterday through mouthfuls of fruit toast, “Yummy, yummy in my tummy Mummy”.... yes indeed my lovely boy, yes indeed.