UK teenager loses sight from poor diet
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
This child is autistic and has an eating disorder called ARFID - Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoidant/restrictive_food_inta...
England currently has a pretty severe problem with paediatric mental health services (which is where paediatric autism diagnostic and support services would normally sit), and with providing community support for people.
Is his thinking the product of parents who allow anything, teachers who have to allow everything, the entitlement culture?
It's hard for me to accept that the boy is not tolerating any kind of vegetable in the biological sense of the word.
Combine that with food allergies (severe to the point of causing seizures in childhood) and it's pretty reasonable to not be super into wanting to try lots of new stuff and eat it after it makes me feel bad, no?
Sometimes I go out to eat with people even though the restaurant doesn't have anything safe to eat, you know, out of courtesy? I guess that's entitlement culture.
Some foods we can get him to eat by being insistent.
But with some types of food it's pointless. He will try them if we are insistent enough, but it makes him gag and regurgitate.
His one year younger brother eats pretty much anything, so I don't think it has anything to do with us being too lenient.
Ha. That never stopped my mother. Her approach (in the 70's mind), was, "You won't eat it your lunch? Fine, you'll get it again at dinner (cold). You won't eat it at dinner? Go to bed hungry, and you can have it for breakfast in the morning".
I learned to suppress my gag reflex. My sister learned to smuggle food out in her pockets and dispose of it in the garden.
Then I hit puberty and for the life of me couldn't remember why I was being so fussy. I ate everything over four meals a day.
When I became a parent we both swore we wouldn't do that to our kids. We were sensitive to the fact kids often don't like strong flavours, or certain textures, and the only rule we had was, if you didn't eat a minimum of veg and fruit, you'd get no "treats" (which were always doled out in small quantities). The kids are now adults and have a good sense of what a healthy diet is.
One day parents left him with me for the weekend. I told him he could eat the beans I made (something he would never eat usually) or he could stay hungry I didn't care - took him like 30 seconds to start eating - difference was he knew I was serious and he couldn't get anything else. He cried to mom about it when they got back etc. but still no vomiting when he had to eat it :)
NB: Not a parent yet so don't take anything I say to seriously.
Also, you need to decide at what point you’re going to have that fight as a parent — because you will be having that fight. So you need to decide if it’s better the drag it out and let them get more set in their ways, or spend maybe a few weeks in hell and then finally be done with it. It’s not going the get easier if you wait until they’re in middle school.
DanBC's comment cleared it up for me, he has a mental illness, not biological intolerance. I was interested in what happened to him, and how common it is, as I personally know somebody who knows that she's not eating healthy (to the point of vitamin deficiency), yet she still doesn't change her diet. Also she isn't mentally ill.
Saying that you find this hard to understand, and "what causes this" is an open ended question of curiosity, instead of "Is this because parents are too lenient" which is pointing towards what you expect the answer to be.
ARFID (Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder) is common in autistic people.
The article points to a collapse in the support available to young people with mental ill health or autism or learning disability.
There's too much "my son won't eat that" while forgetting how the older generations dealt with that. Guess what, tough love is needed sometimes.
For the amount of things parents shouldn't compromise on, eating a varied diet is one important thing.
"Won't tolerate" is 99% of the time just a matter of sticking up to it. A couple of years ago I just wouldn't tolerate unsweetened coffee. Now that's all I drink for the most part. (There are very few specific foods that I won't tolerate but nothing to the point of having an extremely deficient diet)
Edit: while there was an underlying issue that was absent from the story, the point stands, nobody will "magically" start tolerating foods they don't without some active effort.
Responding to the downmods: I don't mean to imply that everyone in the UK acts this way. However if you've spent time here, particularly if you're from overseas where these things are not common, the experiences above should be familiar.
Edit: This is NOT a recommendation, nor intended as a diminishment of the suffering alluded to in the article. I just find this relative's bad diet and excellent health an interesting curiosity. They do eat chicken and eggs also, but not the yoke of eggs.
There are people who have lived for years on nothing but potatoes without seasoning. Their health is outstanding. I'm on mobile but you can google it easily - potato diet.