Has anyone successfully improved picky eating?

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Has anyone here been able to increase the number of foods their picky eater will consume? How did you go about it?

DS is 6, and eats about 25 foods -- mostly carbs, dairy, and things like chicken nuggets. Produce is limited to bananas, strawberries, and corn on the cob. I've read Food Chaining and Just Take a Bite, and he doesn't seem to need the sensory program they advocate. He will willingly kiss, lick, and chew and spit out a bite of anything new, invariably followed by making a disgusted face. His speech therapist used to be on a feeding team, and she confirmed he does not have any swallowing issues.

I also read Child of Mine, but just can't believe her strategy (parents decide what to put on the table, kids decide which items to eat and how much) will ever lead to DS trying and liking new foods.

I want to get away from making DS a separate meal every night (popcorn shrimp or chicken nuggets), but don't know how to do so without having a knock-down dragout fight at the dinner table every night. I'd love to hear strategies that have worked for other families.

This is going to sound weird and may not help you, but it helped with my son. By the way, I have also tried all of those tricks, and my son has less of a repretoire of food than yours. What got him interested in trying and eating new foods was the show "Man vs Food". Adam gets so excited about the different foods he eats, and I also try to get excited as well by telling my son how good that looks. After a while I think he figured out that there must be something to this food thing, and he started eating actual meat!! ! OMG, he eats home made chicken tenders with REAL CHICKEN!! ! not that crap from McDonalds which was the only meat he would eat. Now I can finally eat places with Chicken Tenders. He also likes crab balls, and flavored noodles and fish, and he will try almost anything. Finally he is willing to get exposure to other foods. He's getting used to food differences (I feel his food thing is not sensory, it's routine and rigidity which is why the OT stuff doesn't work with him either) He doesn't eat huge portions of different foods yet, but he is making more progress than anything else I've ever done.

Sensory issues in children with AS tend to peak around 6-7 years old and if you try to force new foods on him now I think it's going to be very difficult and counterproductive.

A lot of foods are just going to taste bad and prove to be very noxious to him.

What you should do is encourage him to try a little bit of new things. Just a little taste, and you might start with things that have some novelty to them as kids can be enticed by curiosity about things that seem exotic. Two things I can recall that picked my interest were artichokes and spaghetti squash. I was very transfixed by the concept that the squash could be prepared and eaten like spaghetti, and I thought the artichokes were eaten in an interesting way.

I think the book, actually, has it pretty close. My picky eaters are growing out of it, simply over time gaining interest in more of the foods they see served around them, and asking to try them. At 6 both were very limited, I think it's natural for the age, and now my 10 year old (who last year was still fairly picky, she's my youngest) is trying everything and liking almost all of it. We never forced them, but we never had them living in a vacuum, either.

It will probably depend on how many sensory issues are involved but, honestly, most kids, if they are exposed to a variety of foods through a variety of ways, they'll eventually solve it on their own.

Having them involved with shopping and in the kitchen helps, seeing their friends branch out helps, and I think my daughter's sudden interest in the food network helps.

Man vs Food sounds like the kind of thing that might work for DS -- he always wants to re-enact things from his favorite TV shows. He's also interested in cooking, wish he would try tasting what he cooks...

What do you think about the spitting out a bite vs swallowing? DH thinks he should be required to swallow the bite...

My vote: anything that results in the child associating the sampling of new foods with stress equals bad. Too easy to win the battle and loose the war. Have I said that my kids like calamarie and spinach? My once limited kids now eat things my mother won't. Win the war, forget the battle.

I think just putting the bite in his mouth is GREAT! If he spits it out instead of swallowing it you should consider that a huge success. At least from my experience getting the bite to go into the mouth (or for us even getting it to be put on his plate) is a huge step forward. If you force the swallowing, I think you are less likely to get him to even put it in his mouth in the first place. If he knows he has an out if it does seem really gross to him he is more likely to at least try it.

My son used to eat 4 foods and is now up to about 12. Still not great items, but better than nothing. I went through the licking, sucking, etc stuff and that seemed to help out one problem. His gag reflex when trying new foods was horrible. But this helped that and since then, he's more apt to try things.

He has 2 playdates a week at a friend's house or at playgrounds. We always bring snacks and put out a little table. He chooses his little stuff. But he sees his buddies eating everything else and enjoying it. I think this has also helped my son.

Often he will still take only 2 bites of something and swallow it. The swallowing is what takes forever. Then overtime he'll eat more and more.

Funny you say that, my son likes to cook now too because Adam helps in the kitchen. He doesn't always eat what he cooks, but that is what helped with the chicken. Adam fries. My son breads and fry's his chicken and he loves to do it. He likes to make quesadilla's also, and that's a new thing, and it gets green and red peppers in him.

He tried a pulled pork sandwich one day because of Man vs Food. I told him that I would give him 10 dollars if he'd eat it. He didn't It was worth a shot...

I think it's OK to let a child spit out food. It's a start.

I'm all for letting him spit it out too. It's great that he will try new things! My boy (3.5, and still dropping foods from his list rather than adding them) will sometimes try something new but only rarely. And if you can't get them to even try it you don't have a chance of them finding they actually like it.

My son is more likely to eat in no pressure situations, e.g. he likes snow peas, and will eat them readily if I leave the packet open on the kitchen bench while he is next to me "helping" me cook his instant noodles (*urk*). He will turn down carrot on his plate, but ate the entire nose of the snowman that we built last week when he found it in the garden. He also started eating cucumber after his grandfather peeled one onto the grass in the garden when we were picnicking, and C was curious enough to pick up the peel and eat that.

I read the book 'Can't eat won't eat' written by a mother of an autistic child, and including info from lots of other parents. At the very least you find yourself in very good company, but actually I found lots of useful tips in there that had worked for other people.

Having said that I am too scared to ever let my son eat in a fast food restaurant. I am worried that if he ever tries McDonalds or the like, then that will become all he will eat. As it is he has just dropped crumbed chicken from his list of acceptable foods, and so the only meat on there is salami. That and peanut butter and egg (but only in baking) are his only protein sources. *sigh*

Ok.. this is one thing I dont stress on too much. I was an extremely picky eater until my mid to late teens when peer pressure kicked in and I started trying new foods. As I child I would not try anything and would prefer to go hungry than eat something I did not want. I also still remember every single incident of someone trying to force me to eat something. So I keep things in the house Jordan likes and I cook separate for her and encourage her to try things, offer stuff, etc but that is it.

What I have done is split up meals into the food groups and you have to have something from the food groups in a balance at every meal and snack. I dont care if dinner is cheese crackers fruit and milk but you have to have proteins, carbs, and 2 fruits/ veggies every meal. She is diabetic and her nutritionists also agrees that as long as there is a balance on the groups the choices even if very limited dont really matter a lot.

Smart

My biggest bit of advice is to encourage him to try a lot of new foods. Don't force him to eat them, as this will make him afraid of new foods because he might be forced to eat something he hates. I've found I can usually tell whether I'll like a food or not simply by sniffing it - I've encountered foods that smelt good but tasted bad (straight vanilla extract) but never a food that smelt bad and tasted good. So with a new food, I'll sniff it, and if it smells OK I'll take a bite. A few foods with subtle tastes, I'll eat half of them before I realize I don't like them. But most that one bite determines it.

Note: when trying out a new food, make sure you also have something you know he'll eat, so if he refuses the new food he doesn't go hungry.

Same here.

I think my parents did a lot that backfired. They meant well, it was standard to the time, but it backfired.

I do not feel I grew up with a healthy relationship with food. I am still pickier than I'd like to be, but my husband eats everything, and I've been blunt with my kids when they see me skip something, that I have a hard time with food. But my kids ARE developing a healthy relationship with their food, and despite VERY narrow food preferences around 5 to 8 they are getting pretty broad. Their doctor told us early on that they will be natural, heathy eaters if we let their instincts be primary and don't force it or drown out the inner voice. He told us not to panic as normal childhood phases kicked in, etc. It was stuff I really needed to hear because I had no model for it.

Some ASD kids will fail to eat in their own best interests, not just as a phase, but as a real issue; I understand that. But I think those cases really jump out at you.

And then you have to be even more careful that what you do doesn't backfire.

I love this! I am going to do it too now. I'm excited. AND it's a craft project for us. Maybe make a spinning wheel. WOOT!

Cheers

What helped me overcome being so picky was actualy listning to me about what foods I truely couldn't stand. I hated spagatti as a kid and it seemed as if that's what we had every night. I would complain and my dad would reply, "Well maybe tomorrow we'll have something you'll like!" We usualy just ended up having left overs of what I didn't like or another meal I didn't like. I think I hated spagetti becuase of the smell of the sause. The smell of the brand my mom used most often was so strong I could litteraly smell it from the other end of the house. My mom started using a brand from Italy and I never had any problems again. I still wish she would make the sauce from stratch now and then. My mom also started asking my insight for suggestions on what to have for dinner. I usualy actualy requested spagetti quite often. I was obsessed with the cartoon Invader Zim for a while and I would often joke about needing tacos because I would explode if I didn't get them. My mom knew it was a joke but would say things like, "Tacos is actualy a good idea."

Anyway, actualy taking me serious about which foods I truely couldn't stand and taking into consideration why I couldn't stand them helped. One food I could never eat without throwing up was tuna noodle casserole. We haven't had that in years since my mom started listning to me but if we do my mom lets me have McDonalds or pizza instead. Asking my opinion about weither or not we should have something or not helped and letting me have another option if it was something I truely found revolting.