This week, Mary writes about her experience of the foods fads and “fussy” eating habits of AS children and shares some tips on overcoming them.
My experience with diet and the AS child was, i’m sure, the same as most if not all parents out their. Up to the age of 12, Adam’s diet was very limited. I mean limited in as in he set the limits and only ate certain foods and had lots of fussy food fads.
He absolutely hated (or should I even say despised!) crisps of any kind, though I think that it has to be more for their smell than taste. He ate lots and lots of of the food he did like such as chicken and roast or mashed potatoes but always had to be served in a very particular way for example potatoes had to have gravy or toast had to be either dry or the butter had to melt in! Equally, no food on the plate could touch or he wouldn’t eat it and he never mixed his food, eating every item on his plate separately, one at a time.
Until the age of 12, I mashed certain foods up for him as he couldn’t bear the feel or sensation of “lumps” in his mouth. He would never eat anything like a sandwich as again that would be mixing food together, and yet he would eat things like bread by themselves!
The goods news is that I thought this would never change and it has! Don’t get me wrong he is still a very fussy reader but once he got to the age of about 15 or 16 he seemed to be trying more foods, I can’t say exactly how or when it happened but it did. He now will eat things like pizza, something he wouldn’t have even entertained the idea of touching his lips before! Really though this was something which evolved overtime. In my experience, food fads and diets are not something you can really stress or argue over, instead gentle encouragement is better. I mean there are still some foods Adam can’t bear touching his palette, not because he is being fussy but because they genuinely cause him great discomfort in his mouth.
If you are going through profound food fads with your child with Aspergers and are worried about their diet, their are a few little tricks I picked up through the years which helped me overcome the worry and get some nutrition into Adam’s body! One was I used to make or buy lots of smoothies, when they were done properly it meant he got lots of really good nutrients into him without worrying about bits or lumps! In addition, I found he liked foods like stew when they were mashed to a pulp so I would front-load them with vegetables so that he would get a good dose of his 5-a-day without even knowing it and would make them regularly as a result.
Honestly though, do not stress to much about food fads because I genuinely believe that if a child with the condition will change it will happen very gradually (almost automatically in a way!) overtime and that trying to force a change in this regard can just lead to deeper resistance! I really do think that children with AS are about 2 years behind with most things social or sensory than the “average” child, and most children go through fussy stages over food when they are young but change as they go through into their teenage years.
