I don't mean to be rude but I'm just curious... did you try simply not giving them junk food? I have done some research on this and have not found any good evidence that most autistic children will actually starve themselves for any meaningful amount of time if their picky foods are not provided.
Every child is different. Some kids you just need to let them burn themselves through a phase while supporting it was positive stuff elsewhere.
I have one kid who will demand the giant tray of cupcakes from Sam’s Club then proceed to eat half of a cupcake twice and never think about them again (in this case, we actually did buy the giant tray for a BBQ and had left overs). We simply continue to offer her other, healthy food while she goes through a phase on something.
The other kid remembers where everything is, despite being very young. She will scream about certain foods she wants (too young to talk) and work us to specific cabinets and drawers where that food was. We have to be a lot more mindful of what food we expose her to and be prepared to nudge her towards better options. Push her too hard and she simply gets stuck on that one specific food item she wants.
While you’re right that kids won’t literally starve themselves, food can be a battle point in a day filled with other things. Sometimes you just have to read the kid and bend so you don’t ruin other priorities.
Framing it as "being picky" is really not helpful. As somebody on the spectrum, my (fortunately very few) food sensitivities aren't a mere matter of preference... they're the result of me experiencing visceral, nauseating revulsion at specific tastes/textures/smells. If it's the only option, I will absolutely skip a meal entirely rather than deal with it. I would probably have to be at the point of literally (not figuratively) starving to fight past that response, and even then I wouldn't be sure about keeping it down.
Not giving them junk food doesn't equate to ignoring food sensitivities. If someone is tolerating chicken nuggets, there's a whole host of healthier food with similar textures, tastes and smells.
You have to battle the psychological aspect which says that they are different even if they smell, taste, feel the same. It really isn't that easy, if it was, parents of autistic kids would be doing it. There is also a reason why McDonald's nuggets are the go to for autistic kids the world over. They have been engineered over many decades to be the most acceptable taste and texture for children.
A friend of mine (with an autistic child) explained it as:
If you give your kid a strawberry - even within the punnet the tastes and textures will vary - even mid summer some will be unpleasantly tart.
If I make a sandwich it will be mildly different one day to the next, depending on the freshness of the items I put in, the brand of the ham, the spread, the bread.
But junk food will ALWAYS BE THE SAME. If surprise and novelty is an issue for you/your child, then eating food like that removes so much stress for everyone involved. Yes it isn't healthy, but the meal gets eaten and no one cries.
But say, one goes to get McDonald's nuggets and lightly and secretly messes up with it (adds a bit of lime one day, vinegar another, etc.) before giving it to the obsessed child. Wouldn't that remove the "always the same" aspect and thus decreasing the appeal of junk food over other foods?
Also I'm sure cheese, avocado, a carrot, zucchini or pumpkin from the supermarket are going to taste extremely similar across the months unless they are hyper tasters (in that case they'd definitely notice a change in taste across nuggets).
The difference between fresh McDonald’s nuggets and ones that have sat in the UHC/production bin for half an hour is night and day though, and that’s just the variance officially allowed by McDonald’s - don’t get me started on double-fried nuggets!
Have you tried ordering them "fresh"? It takes a few minutes longer, some cashiers won't know what that means, and they might not do it if its late and they're closing up, but I've always ordered "fresh" nuggets and french fries that are made to order instead of pulled from the baskets. Explaining that it's a food sensitivity issue will almost certainly get most of them to comply.
It works at all the fast food places for fried items, as far as I can remember (except Seattle's Dick's).
Same to me. I might not understand it but I'm not sure any kid is going to go starving with some homemade food in front of them.
The biggest red flag is why on earth are kids fed junk food to begin with? Maybe their parents also love it, making it harder to set a better example at home? Hard to say.
>experiencing visceral, nauseating revulsion at specific tastes/textures/smells.
It's definitely hard but this can be overcome with work. In my much younger days I had this reaction with a lot of foods that I now eat.
I knew I was going to have to overcome a lot of my hangups about food in order to be at least semi-healthy, so I did in my late teens/early 20s. Before that the only thing I ate was pasta.
Exactly, it gets more and more difficult the older you are and the more established the habit is, so helping your children overcome these issues early is very important and sets them up for a healthy lifestyle in adulthood. I have a friend in his 40s who is having strokes and is vehemently unwilling to eat a single vegetable. His food adversions are much worse than any child's.
I'm not saying it's easy, because it isn't. But it's very much possible.
I'm also not saying all food aversions need to be worked through, however, allowing your children to have a severely limited diet doesn't set them up for long-term success.
To add additional context to my other reply, I do not find this question rude, but I do get frustrated with people who seem to think our food problem is easy to solve.
My wife and I have agonized for most of our daughter's life about feeding her. She has autism and ADHD, and will often forget to eat if we do not work hard to get her to eat. If she eats a food whose textures, smell, or taste trigger her, she will vomit immediately. She hates to vomit, and will refuse to eat ANYTHING after this happens (even her comfort foods). She doesn't want to be around food at all at that point.
She is very small for her age and underweight (we have routine consultations with her endocrinologist on her growth, and have had countless conversations on whether we should start growth hormones with her. There are so many things to consider around that decision, it has been quite a challenge).
We have a dietician that we consult with regularly, both about her eating and her growth. She, along with both our endocrinologist and pediatrician, feel that getting her calories is the most important thing, and that we can sacrifice quality for quantity, because even when she has freedom to eat whatever junk she wants, she has trouble eating enough. Both the dietician and her therapist think it is very important we never turn food into a battle, since she already has so many issues around eating that we don't want to make it worse.
I appreciate your question being in good faith, but I do get frustrated when people make comments about my daughter's diet, as if we haven't agonized over this for the 8 years of her life. This is something we deal with every day, and I find it both frustrating and amusing when people think they can solve the problem in a single internet comment.
Things that work for some kids don't work for all kids.
Very well thought out response, I appreciate it. I think it's easy for people to form strong opinions about things they are shielded from the consequences of.
When I made that comment I lacked all of this context of being underweight, having already struggled with this for so many years and also regularly seeing all the different types of doctors that you go to, so without that information I think it's easier for people to jump to conclusions, but I understand it can be time-consuming to add all that context every time you want to comment. As you can imagine a lot of people are quick to call out things that might look like bad parenting when they assume none of that context exists.
Thanks, and this is exactly why I took the time to type out the longer reply. I could tell from your phrasing of the question that it was made in good faith, and was not an unreasonable question in the abstract. I figured giving a more detailed reply would help you and others see all of the things that make the real situation more complicated than it might seem on the surface.
Hi. I am told that this was basically me when I was young. Picky eater, vomiting, consistently 5th percentile on the growth charts. And to top it off my favorite food was, you guessed it, McDonald's chicken nuggets. My parents tried all sorts of things–making my "favorite" foods, repeatedly serving the same food until I would eat it (I wouldn't), begging and pleading, various punishments. None of it really worked.
Well, I grew out of it in my teenage years. No guarantee that your daughter will too but I figured you might want to hear that there might be hope in your future :)
Kids will definitely reduce how much they eat to the point when you take them in for their annual checkup, you will be asked why your child is underweight. The doctor will call it "failure to thrive". Depending on your relationship with your doctor, they might suspect neglect or abuse.
Our daughter went through a phase were there were only a few things she wanted to eat. Our pediatrician said to feed her what she will eat and be patient because her tastes will change. He was right.
Our final diet for her was based on recommendations from her pediatrician, dietitian, and therapist.
While she might not have starved if we withheld chicken nuggets, she became extremely distressed and disregulated, which lead to other problems.
She has moved on from chicken nuggets, but her eating pattern is still the same. She will have only one food at a time that she will eat for proper meals, and that food will rotate every few months. After a few months of only eating one type of food, she will suddenly declare she does not like it anymore and move on to something else.
Her current food is actually Chicken Tikka Masala from one particular restaurant. Hopefully somewhat healthier than nuggets, although it gets expensive.
Not the OP, but I do have an food sensitive autistic son. He will absolutely not eat rather than eat something he despises. There are obvious moral limitations on testing his resolve, but he has skipped meals (without causing a fuss) plenty of times.
