Autism and picky eating

• How I support my autistic son’s fussy eating and expand his limited diet
• Tips on how to encourage your child to eat things they don’t like

Like many children with ASD, my son is extremely sensitive to the smell and texture of foods, and likes only a small selection of meals, snacks and drinks.

Here’s how I discovered my son’s very specific preferences in the early days, and helped him eat a wider range of foods through trial and error in the years that followed.

Prepare food so that’s easy to eat

My son will not eat something if it’s prepared in a way that makes it difficult to eat or unpleasant to touch and smell, even if it’s a dish that he likes. So I developed the following techniques over time:

• Cut things to bite size
  For example, my son likes sausage, but when I gave him one in its original long shape he wouldn’t eat it. I realised this was because he struggled to tear bites off with his teeth. So I chopped it up to bite size pieces, which he ate happily. I also chopped up pasta and noodles so he could eat them with a spoon.
• Hot or cold matters
  Pasta bolognese was one of the few things my son would eat at preschool age, so I saved some from dinner and put it in his lunch the next day. But when he got home I saw that he hadn’t touched it. I realised he was put off by the smell and texture of cold pasta. It was the same with rice — he loved it hot in a bowl but wouldn’t touch it cold, rolled up like sushi.
• Using utensils can be difficult
  My son wouldn’t eat something if it was difficult to bring it to his mouth. As part of his ASD diagnosis he struggled with his fine motor skills, so he had trouble coordinating his hands and applying pressure with his fingers. This meant it was too hard for him to chase a piece of food around the plate and stab it with a fork. So at meal times, I guided his hand to help him use his utensils, gradually building up over time to using them independently.
• Slimy and sticky is a no-no
  Even if it’s chocolate — which my son loves — he will not touch a snack if the part that his hand or lips touch is soft or sticky. Cream, icing sugar, sauce — all no. So I take off any offending bits and present him with a plain, non-sticky version.

Match the colour of vegetables to the sauce

One of the most important items in my kitchen is a food blender/chopper, as I use it to I chop vegetables to hide in my son’s bolognese sauce. But in the early days, my son was very sensitive to any ‘foreign’ bits in his food and tried to avoid them if he could see them.

So I tried to choose vegetables that matched the colour of the red sauce, for example carrots and paprika. Onion was great because it blended into an invisible white slush!

To make meat for dumplings, I blended onion and mushrooms, which camouflaged fairly well in the grey-brown pork mince.

Alternate with things they like

Every weekend we had fish and chips. My son loved chips, and just about tolerated white fish. He did not like lettuce.

So, at the dinner table, I would pass him two chips, then a small mouthful of fish, then a tiny bit of lettuce. I repeated that throughout the whole meal, every weekend for what seemed like years!

While it took some effort, the prospect of chips did keep my son’s motivation and focus on getting through the fish and lettuce. Gradually over time, we increased the size of the lettuce and incorporated other vegetables.

I found that the key is to take it really, really slow, starting with tiny amounts and building up gradually over months and years.

Sing food songs and cook together

From an early age, my son loved singing kids’ songs about food and watching presenters cook on children’s TV. So when I had the time, I invited him to help prepare dinner or bake simple cookies and cakes at the weekend.

He wouldn’t go near a banana if I asked him to eat it, but he would peel and mash one if it was part of baking a banana and chocolate chip cake, which he liked.

Of course, just singing songs and cooking together doesn’t magically make a child eat things they don’t like. But I’ve found that knowing about food and touching it, preparing it, is an important step in demystifying it.

Summary

If your child refuses to eat something, change the way it’s presented. Chop it up, heat it up, remove any sticky or slimy bits.

Camouflage vegetables into your dish by choosing ones that are similar in colour.

Alternate food they like with food they don’t like, to motivate your child and develop a healthier eating pattern.