Can’t eat wont eat

Can’t eat, Won’t eat. 

Our fae has the most esoteric eating habits. She will go through phases where it doesn’t matter what I put in front of her, she can’t eat it fast enough. It puts me in my happy place to watch my stringbean of a child scarf nutritious food down as fast as I can make it.

Then there is the rest of the time, where it doesn’t matter what it is, she won’t touch it. Which not only is frustrating from the point of effort and waste, but more importantly, she can go days with only sniffing food in passing. It is very stressful. Food that she found perfectly acceptable one day is now shoved aside without even being looked at. It can drive you to despair. We have tried begging, cajoling, bribing but nothing works.   

I have tried afternoons with a grumpy hungry fae child who hasn’t been given snacks, and she still won’t eat her dinner. I have tried afternoons where she has had fruit or crisps and eaten the lot and then eaten dinner. It makes no difference. 

Recently I started to wonder whether she had PDA and this led us down a rabbit hole, to a very useful book titled “Food refusal and avoidant eating in children, including those with Autism spectrum conditions. A practical guide for parents and professions” written by Gilian Harris and Elizabeth Shea. 

I wholeheartedly recommend it to any parent of fae children who struggle to feed them: aside from alleviating a great deal of guilt I had of the feeding habits of my daughter, it also gave some good practical advice, backed up by peer reviewed evidence (which made the scientist in me squeal with delight). It also introduced me to a new term: neophobia – which, apart from being a high score in scrabble, explained a lot that was going on with the thought processes of our daughter. 

Since reading and – if you pardon the term – digesting the information in the book, we have altered some of the interactions we have over dinner, which means we no longer comment or focus at all on our fae’s eating: if she eats, great; if she doesn’t then, well, at least we tried. 

It has a significant positive effect, as our little child is now investigating new foods and even taking the occasional bite of new things! She is also eating more consistently, so that’s a win too. The amazon link for the book is below if anyone is interested, and please do comment if you read it I would like to hear what you think.