Should I be concerned about difficult child weight?

[Marguerite]

A big part of the problem, Sara, (at least as I understand it) is that he was like this with food BEFORE any medications were given.

WYS, is part of your concern that the doctors are trivialising this? Not taking your concerns seriously?

Try this - keep your own food diary of what he eats and when. Write it down exactly, and calculate the calorie intake. The info on calories you can generally find online, there are lots of references. Also, the various containers, foods etc often have the info on them. For example, half a peanut butter sandwich - work out how many calories in one slice of bread. Estimate how much peanut butter and how much dairy spread you used and get the calorie rate from the packaging. Add it up and write it down in the food diary.
Then take the food diary to the doctor. Make sure you leave a photocopy of it with the doctor, in fact. That way if there later turn out to be serious problems with nutritional intake and the doctor COULD have done something earlier and didn't, then the doctor knows he's at risk of being sued.
Knowing this, the doctor is more likely to respond to your concerns. If the doctor STILL insists your son is OK, then chances are you really don't need to be too concerned.

It also sounds like you are concerned at your son's unwillingness to try different foods.

Here's what we tried. It was actually easy child & BF1 who came up with this one last year, while we were all on holiday. There were new foods to try and difficult child 3 had fewer options. No home-cooked meal options to fall back on.
So he had to have tastes, at least. Often, most of the time, he would say, "I don't like it." But easy child & BF1 both insisted tat he had to explain exactly what it was he didn't like. We were happy to accept that he didn't like a new food and we didn't make him eat it, but he did have to explain. This was good at making him more aware of what his feelings on the matter were, as well as working him with his need to express himself more effectively. I also found the information useful, because if he said he didn't like something because of the texture, I had clues to go on as to what he MIGHT like.

We've kept this up and it seems to help a lot. For example, if difficult child 3 said he didn't like brussels sprouts, he had to explain why, something like, "I don't like them because they have a bitter aftertaste."
Often he was saying he didn't like something, because it was just too confronting to even think about eating something new when the usual foods made him feel much more secure.
difficult child 3 found he doesn't like kumara (orange sweet potato). But he had to explain why. He said he finds the texture too mushy and the slight sweet taste in something supposed to be savoury, bothered him.

So give those two things a try - the food diary (do it for at least a week - everything that passes his lips) and getting him to explain what it is he dislikes about a particular food. Make him work at his communication a bit more.

Here's hoping you can get some improvement.

Marg

 

[whateveryousay2007]

He hardly ate before the medications started. BUT...of all the medications they've tried him on Focalin has been a Godsend! Enormous results as far as attention goes. Without the moodiness & aggitation that Adderall caused.

So, with that being said his teacher saw him last night at TKD. We were talking about his eating not picking up. Lack of him avoiding food...unless it's what he demands at the moment. (odd demands that can't always be accomidated at the moment....he'd rather go hungry than eat what's available!)

Anyway, she told him that they give shots to people that don't eat. Does he really want to be pumped full of vitamins instead of eating?

She told him she knows what it's like not to be hungry but you still have to eat anyway. (From what I've gathered his teacher was anorexic when she was younger...she's kinda little now) That she was going to pick him up for breakfast every morning if he doesn't start eating better. That she wants him to eat and grow tall!

The child wanted Subway after class. He ate an entire bacon footlong! Shocked me!

We've also come to the agreement that he has to eat breakfast before he's allowed to play the gameboy. He has to eat lunch before he's allowed to play with his cars & so on. I feel kinda bad for threatening to take away some of his livelihood but he has to eat. So far it's working.


by the way....I've also found that he does eat a little better later in the day after medications have wore off. But still very small quantities!

 

[Marguerite]

THat was still good news though, that he ate so well after the talk with his teacher.

We've found we've had best results when we involve difficult child 3 in his own management. Same with the other kids - once they understand the situation, they become active participants. It's like difficult child 3 when he was on the elimination diet - I expected mutiny over the things he wanted but couldn't have. But he really got the idea that the sooner we finished the whole project, the sooner we'd know what was making him sick and the sooner we could put the whole experience (including e deprivation) behind him. difficult child 3 lost weight on the elimination diet, which worried all of us (including him).

If a doctor asks me how heavy he is, or how tall he is, difficult child 3 always knows the answers.

Something else you might try to get him more willing to try other food - involve him in cooking and planing meals. Tell him that you cook his meals, it would be good if he could learn to cook other people's meals. He doesn't have to eat them, just know how to cook them.

I've also found that if you work together as a team, you get better cooperation from them. With difficult child 3, we cook together sometimes and I get him to do one task while I'm doing another. A fun project is to make biscuits, or cupcakes. I bought some fun decoration items so difficult child 3 (or easy child 2/difficult child 2) can have fun playing with food.

Those microwave meringues of mine might be a fun thing for him to make - they cook in a minute and it's like a magic trick.

Recipe - one egg white. Mix it with pure sifted icing sugar (NOT icing mixture - and make sure the icing sugar is very fine). You might need as much as 4 oz of sugar.
Add food colouring if you like - make it a stronger colour than what you want to finish with.
You should get a consistency like play doh.

To cook: make sure the microwave oven plate is clean and dry. Put a sheet of baking paper on the plate and put five balls about walnut-size VERY FAR APART on the baking paper. Cook on HIGH for a minute (time may vary depending on the power of your microwave oven). Watch closely because they go from done, to burned, very quickly. They burn from the inside.
You don't want them to brown at all.
What should happen - they puff up about five times bigger and then hold their size. At a certain point they stay that shape and size. If you turn off the power too soon they go flat (but still taste good). You need to get the timing right but it's fun to play with.

When they're cooked you let them cool a little on the paper, then carefully peel the baking paper off. Put the meringues on a plate to finish cooling. Meanwhile you can use the same baking paper to make more - just put the next batch on the same place on the baking paper.

To serve - these are very brittle, if you take a bite out of them they almost explode into a shower of sugar. But Aussie-style, put one on a plate, cover it with whipped cream and top it with chopped fruit such as strawberries or passionfruit, and serve it with a spoon for a mini pavlova.

A fast, tasty and fun summer dessert. Great for a kids party, a dinner party or just for fun.

Any mixture not used (and there will be plenty) will keep forever in the fridge. I've never had it go off. It CAN dry out a little in the fridge, though, getting a bit granular around the edge and the colour sags down a bit into the mixture after a month or so in the fridge. Just mix it with a spoon again and it will be fine.

Even if he doesn't eat these, he might have a lot of fun making them.

Playing with food is a good way to gently introduce other ingredients.

Marg