#AskingAutistics #Neurodivergent #AuDHD #ADHD #ActuallyAutistic (that's me)
Subject: Food/eating
Tell me..
- one thing that helped you as a child (or would've helped)
- one thing that didn't help you at all
...around eating & food, when you were a child.
Reboosts also appreciated ☺️
Things parents should know:
Sensory stuff can hugely exaggerate tiny(to you) differences in textures or flavours. This means that even a safe food can be wrong if cooked differently, prep'd differently or even just left too long (cold/hot affects textures and mouthfeel). Different brands might as well be different products. Mixing foods affects textures 'ruining' them.
Fruit and veg can vary in feel/texture withal/ripeness, so can easily trigger texture sensitivities.
worst for me was 'but you like *this* food' - it was different and wrong, but I didn't have the language to understand *why* and how it was different (texture variations, or mixed textures are a huge turnoff for me).
To reduce stress at mealtimes, focus on consistency and predictability.
Same plate, forks, cups is a cheap way to help sameness.
Use kitchen timers and microwaves to maintain same cooking times.
Don't 'experiment' with recipes unless planned, or provide a safe option (e.g. split and experiment with just half).
Beware contamination and 'bits' - finding a bone or gristle can put me off a food for weeks.
use a stick blender to create soups, and adjust texture/consistency with boiling water to keep things the same. I can deal with quite a range of tastes, it's the textures that trigger me.
@RenoirDana
Oh my!! So much interesting and useful info!
Thank you so much 😊
I read the 'CW' and title, and got extremely happy - evening before opening it. Something about the word 'infodump' and then prefixed with a topic I'm truly interested in.
Fabulous. You've made my evening 😍
These food issues had side effects.
In the 70's in a not-rich family, the social rules were:
"If you are given food, you should eat it all (clean plate)"
"If given food, it is impolite to refuse"
School dinners were not fun: the rules were that you had to finish what you were given, or sit on the teachers table. I just sat there until the end of lunch break and it seemed a reasonable tradeoff : the 'punishment' was a lot less than the issues with eating.
I was paranoid about anywhere we went that would require meals out. If we visited friends, trips out, I would get very anxious about mealtimes and what would be presented.
This carried over to celebrations. Christmas was about Christmas pudding and Christmas cake, both definite 'no's from me (rasins). Even birthday parties - what if the other person has a birthday cake with raisins? It became easier not to go. to find excuses. I would even get anxious around meal times at a friend's house : what if they have an unsafe meal and offer me dinner?
I had a lot of "not hungry" and "I have something at home" or I would make excuses and leave.
I had 'internalised' the rules so much that it felt like a huge struggle : I felt compelled to follow the 'rules', but the sensory issues were worse. It took a long time to realise that I could refuse to eat things and it wasn't rude, it wasn't a problem. The early school dinner experiences of being 'strongly encouraged' to eat everything really stuck with me for a lot longer than it should have, and became exaggerated and overthought in my mind.
Even now, for team meals out I will lookup the menu in advance and pre-calculate and select safe foods. I tend to have a few very safe foods that I stick to : I have eaten the same breakfast and lunch for the last 3 years or so, and the number of days different is probably less than 20.
K.J. Elphinstone
Renoir Dana 