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Friday 23 August 2013

Food, Glorious Food (Or Not)

 There was a time when I envisaged myself happily preparing food for my family in my kitchen. My kids would eat what I put before them and ask for more. There would be no separate meals prepared. My children would not love all vegetables of course, and I would be okay with this and simply dish up those that they would eat, just as my mum had for me, and I would not worry about their nutrition because fussy kids only became that way because their parents let them. Right?

And then I had a child with severe autism and sensory issues.

The Bubbly One didn't always have a limited diet. I admit to being very pleased with my three year old who would eat a napoletana pasta with baby spinach at the shops instead of McDonalds. He may have had autism, but he was a "good eater". I'd worked with adults with autism who had limited diets, but it never occurred to me that my own child would head down this path. As a toddler he ate most of what we ate, though I had to cut his vegetables really small and mix his food together. But from the age of about three he began to drop things from his diet, just a few things at a time. It was subtle at first. He'd "go off" something for a while, then eventually he'd take it back up again, but then he wouldn't do that either. He just kept on dropping foods until he go to the point where we are at now. His paediatrician has told me not to worry as long as we are supplementing those things he lacks, but it's still stressing me out in a big way. We are hopeful that we will be able to participate in some feeding therapy at school over the next year or so, but that's still depending on funding and we can't afford to do it privately at this stage.

The Bubbly One's diet is as follows (and yes, I know it could be worse, that's what I am afraid of):

Fruit
Thank God he eats fruit! Watermelon, rockmelon, kiwifruit, red grapes and berries are in. Apples and mandarins are on their way out. Green apples, green grapes and bananas (except in cake form) are offensive. I am grateful that he eats fruit as he eats no vegetables except for cucumber, which must be quartered, sliced and the skin left on so that he can then bite the flesh, leaving the skin. If he was a celebrity this would totally be on his rider! He also likes to chew on raw carrot but spits it out, leaving chewed carrot everywhere- but I let him in the hope that he may actually swallow some.

Breads
White bread, raisin bread (untoasted at the moment), toast with jam, peanut butter or vegemite. Cheese has disappeared from his repertoire unless it is baked on in copious amounts on a cheese and bacon roll or a cheesymite scroll (which must be from Bakers Delight and NOT home made). I suppose pizza probably fits here too sometimes, but I'll get to pizza in a minute.

Snacks
Plain chips, Doritos, popcorn, biscuits. He'd also eat lollies or chocolate all day so they are literally locked away if we buy them.

Dairy
Ice cream, Ice cream and more ice cream (thank goodness as his meds go in there), flavoured milk and thickshakes. If not for Sustagen he'd have nothing for breakfast some days.

Drinks
Diet cordial, flavoured milk, juice- yes I tried juicing fruit and veg. He took a few sips, was finished and then the kilo of food we'd juiced went to waste. He does drink V8 fruit and vege juice so I stock up when they are on special. He has his iron supplement in a small amount of coke. Likewise if he needs medicine, it goes into coke. Don't judge. We tried EVERYTHING and desperate times call for desperate measures! Incidentally, caffeine does not affect his behaviour, which old schoolers will say is typical of those with ADHD.

"Dinners"
McDonalds Cheeseburgers (but hold the bun) and fries, fish and chips, KFC popcorn chicken. I make damn good burgers, fish, chicken schnitzel and fries, but these are all unacceptable. He was having oven fries, fish and chicken nuggets but he's recently gone off them too. So most nights, toast and fruit it is. No meat, no rice, no pasta, no vegetables.

Cakes, biscuits and muffin bars
I need to return to work to keep up with his demand for these things, BUT miracle of miracles, he will deign to eat my baking, which brings me to my mission of the moment: hiding vegetables, fruit and whatever the hell else might be a little bit good for him in all manner of cakes, biscuits and slices (without Daddy and I gaining ten kilos each from sampling them!).

So as you can see, his diet is not totally limited. It could be a lot worse and I'm sure I will hear from those whose kids only eat 3-5 foods, or have had to move to tube feeding because they eat nothing. Likewise, I'm sure that I'll hear that gluten and casein are evil so let's get my thoughts on that out of the way:

I've seen "the diet" help where GI issues do exist, which makes sense to me. If you feel like crap all the time then obviously you're going to struggle to do things, and if you can't tell anyone that you feel like crap you're obviously going to act out to communicate that. But, I've seen adults with autism and no GI issues put on the diet after years of "regular" eating, stick to it religiously for years, and guess what? It made no difference to them whatsoever (except for when their friends had McDonalds and then it was ON!). Except for the bonus of having a healthier diet because fast food was off the menu I honestly didn't see an improvement in their communication, nor a reduction in stimming and challenging behaviours. So I'm a little bit cynical about the whole diet theory and while we have considered it, we don't feel there is enough evidence that it will help our child. Bit if it's worked for you then I'm very happy for you.

Now that's out of the way, back to my new mission. 

I'd pretty much given up on the idea that anything I cooked would be appealing to my son. But then, not so long ago I bought this book that I'd heard so many great things about and I began to hope a little. I won't name it, but it was all about making the good stuff that we want our kids to eat undetectable in those foods that our kids supposedly love. There are heaps of The Bubbly One's sweet treats in there, but I was determined that what he ate at least looked like dinner. So we started with pizza (oh so healthy, I know). The Bubbly One loves garlic and will happily eat a cheese and garlic pizza, so I followed the instructions and made a mixture of white, supposedly mild tasting vegetables (yes, I had my doubts also). I then mixed minced garlic into the mixture and made my boy a cheese and garlic pizza. When it was cooked I tasted it first. The garlic was too strong for me, but how he liked it, and knowing that it was there I got a very mild taste of the vegetable mixture. I presented it to a hungry Master Bubble who took a bite. He chewed. He swallowed and he looked at me. He took another tiny bite. Lifted the cheese and showed me the base with a look that clearly said "I KNOW it's there". Then he ate the cheese and went and dumped the vegetable-laced base in the kitchen sink.
Mum:0
Bubbly:1.

I tried several of the hidden vegetable recipes with foods that he liked, and I stopped keeping score because he knew every single time that I cheerily served him something I'd made that it contained something he wouldn't normally eat. Not only did I stop keeping score but I kicked myself for even attempting it because I now had a food sleuth on my hands who suspected foul play at every meal time, and we suddenly were limited to toast and fruit for dinner. Which brings me to the next stage: forget "real food". Let him eat cake!

The Bubbly One's snack foods were sending me broke so I thought I'd start baking again, and why not try to get something extra into him when he least suspects it! 

I found a recipe for chick pea and choc chip cookies, and since I had an oversupply of chickpeas thanks to that book which swore they were easy to conceal I thought "Why not". Last night when the kids were in bed I cooked up a batch. They smelled great, looked unassuming, and I found a willing guinea pig in Daddy. He took a tentative bite, inhaled the rest and reached for another one.
"Can you taste the chickpeas?" I asked him.
"The what? They taste like Subway cookies!"
That was a good sign. I tasted one and could absolutely tell they were there. What a way to ruin what was otherwise an awesome cookie! Still, I figured I had nothing to lose and "accidently" left the container on the bench for The Bubbly One to find. I acted like I was grudgingly giving him one when he demanded it in the morning (you should see the con job I do to get meds into him!). He took a good long look. He ate the choc chips off the top, and then he polished off the rest in Cookie Monster fashion leaving crumbs everywhere. So I offered him another and he ate that too. Win!!

Of course, my next step was to brag about it on my Facebook page, then I packed some for his lunchbox and wrote a note for his teacher in case they thought they contained nuts, also asking her to let me know if he ate them or just crumbled them up. At the end of the day his teacher told me "He loved them, but he picked out the chickpeas".

Mum: 0 
Bubbly: 543.

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