Would you let them tell you what to pack? | Autism PDD

When my son was little, I sent in some of the things they thought they could get him to eat. Well, one or two vomiting episodes taught them differently.

They CAN'T tell you what to send in. HOwever, if they think your daughter needs to eat different foods, call an IEP meeting for the express purpose of putting "feeding therapy" into the IEP. There IS such a thing and it entail extra OT or speech time. When it starts COSTING the District extra money to get your daughter to eat right, they'll tell the aide or teacher to shut up.

I have the right to change my mind right? We discussed that I would put left over dinner in her lunch box,but I did not sign anything stating this is what we are now doing. Thanks Tzoya I will be telling them that at the next IEP meeting we need to have feeding therapy . She sent me home a reminder note stating please put left over dinner in your dd lunchbox like we discussed. Grrr why cant they be happy with a banana or an apple thrown in there? Why does it have to be a whole meal.It is your child, just call and talk it out with the teacher.

I know i sound like a broken record, but I would write a fomal letter to the teacher and cc: the principal, all therapists, aises, and special ed personnel involved with your daughter. Start by stating the facts:

Dear xxxxxx:

As you know, my child xxxxx, who has the diagnosis of XXXXX, also has eating/sensory/appetite/digestive issues. I had chosen to send her to school with lunch from home consisting of xyz because she has an affinity for salty/sweet/crunchy foods, and these choices have worked for us. To make the meal more healthy, I try to add a piece of fruit each day.

I would like to inform you that I have thoroughly considered your suggestion of sending my child to school with leftover dinner and basically only heathy foods, but I have chosen not to. The reasons for this are xxxxxxxx. So that we can be on the same page, I am requesting that "feeding therapy" be added to her IEP, so that this issue can be addressed by professionals who are specifically trained to deal with children like xxxxxxxxx. I do not want any meal to become a negative experience for my child.

Thank you for your understanding and prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

xxxxxxxxx

Of course, this is just an example that I wrote off the top of my head, but personal I have found formal letters to be one of my greatest tools.

I have enough on my plate I shouldnt have to deal with this also. The teacher thinks that she can get my dd to eat different things besides her "comfort food". But I dont want my dd going to school and have to deal with a teacher trying to get her to eat something and her not eat anything because the teacher couldnt get her to eat what she wanted her to eat. Does that makes sense?

Basicly it boils down to the teacher not liking what my daughter eats for lunch and wants to get her to try and eat other "Healthy food". I just didnt like the fact that she kind of got rude with my husband on phone about her lunch today when I did put a banana in there and I didnt know what else to pack. I dont want to send food and it get wasted.

know you don't liek school dictating to you what your child should eat. know with my son he would eat things at school before he would eat them here. they helped a lot with eating issues. try and not be so defensive about it. call the teacher and work something out with her. i send my son leftovers every day for lunch. he knows if he doesn't eat it he will be hungry. you don't want your dd to be hungry but believe me she will learn. see if teacher will allow " healthy food" and one of her comfort foods.

My son's teacher is doing the same thing. She's not restricted what I send him with, however when they go on trips to restaurants or if they make something for the class like a pot luck, she INSISTS he try it. She told me she has a rule that they "must" try whatever she has(which upsets him alot). That's well, and fine, but if a child has sensory issues with food, forcing them like this will cause them to stop eating all together. This is not a game they should be playing with. You as her parent have the authority to decide her diet. They are NOT MEDICAL PERSONAL, and until they show you a license of dietary education they shouldn't be harassing you about it. Tell the teacher you will handle her diet, and that she is also medically supervised and her physician is well aware of what she's eating.

My son also eats way better at home. He likes alot of pasta , yogurt, pizza, etc. But it has to be heated up and made a certain way or he won't eat it. They should leave well enough alone and stop interferring with something they have no right to control.

Using food as a negative reinforcer to an already picky ASD child is wrong! I'd call, and try to explain it to her as nicely as possible, and see if that doesn't get you anywhere. If it doesn't, then I'd request an IEP meeting immediately. You can even make it an emergency meeting, because her physical safety is at stake. She should not have to be hungry all day, just because the teacher doesn't understand autism. Not only that, my son will quit eating if it turns into a powerstruggle. I'd get a note from your daughter's doc stating that she has sensory issues, and that she should be allowed to eat whatever you send for her to eat. I'd also look up some articles about sensory issues, as related to food, and present that at the meeting.I'd also print some articles that discuss positive reinforcement. Then ask them to show you their data that supports using food as a neg reinforcer to help an autistic child eat a more balanced diet. They can't, because there isn't any.

in my sons daycare they supply lunch,most he wont eat for a while he was eating only bread ,he was loosing weight,I sat down with his teacher ,I tryed to come up with some foods i could send,when he would not eat there lunch.

I send Chief boyardee,mac & cheese for days when there having pasta,if he wont eat the kind there having.

Tomato soup for soup days, Apple sauce for fruit, at snack time.ect..since the pressure is off ,he will try more of there food ,more often.

Linda

It should be up to you what you send in your child's lunch. It's one thing for them to make a suggestion but that is as far as it should go. I would be mad if my son's teacher told me what to put in his lunch. I send what I do because he is also a picky eater. Sometimes what I send comes back so I know how much he's eaten but they never say anything about his food choices.

Good luck!

Laurie

Stick to what you know works for you and your child. Go with the formal letter. Let us know how it goes, I'm really interested to see wether they push the issue.

Good Luck

Can this school just give me one break. Now there having issues about what I send my dd for lunch. Ok we all know that autistic children are extremly picky eaters. Well my daughter loves all the crunchy salty things. So she gets peanut butter crackers,chips,fruit juice,fruit snacks. At home its another story. She still likes those foods but she will eat bananas,strawberries,peas,carrots,mac and cheese. I have tried putting a banana in her lunch or an apple along with her snacks that she likes to eat and the apple or banana wont be touched. So she eats lunch with the special ed lady and she wants me to send left over dinner in her lunch box. Well I did that the first day she wouldnt eat it and she was starving when she came home that day,because they didnt give her any of the other snacks that I also sent. Then the next day they told her if she wants to eat the snack that the rest of the kids are eating and wants to go to recess and play with her friend she needs to eat her mac and cheese and veggies. I am scared to think that if she didnt eat them would she have been stuck inside and not been able to go outside?

I dont want to send her mac and cheese and veggies,because when it does come to dinner time she will not eat it because she just had it for lunch. I dont know if I like this idea. What would your view be on it? Well I got a little miffed because I didnt send left overs today because there wasnt any so I put her regular food in with a banana and I guess that wasnt good enough because we get a phone call.

What would ya'll do ? If you would continue to do what should I send? She doesnt do peanut butter or jelly because its sticky. I just dont know what to send.

I am so sorry. My son's school tried this with me about a year ago. I would send him with lunchabes that the little candy bar in it and they had a fit, not because it wasn't healthy but because the other kids made a big deal out of it. I told the sch ool that he is my child I bought his lunch with my money not theirs and this was something I knew he would eat. I then told them that they where wrong for punishing my kid because they didn't agree with his food choices and if they continued to with hold snacks that they give everyone else or don't alow him to go outside that I would be calling the superattendent. Good luck and I hope you find the advice that you need.

Are eating issues something in her IEP? Personally, I don't see how they can dictate what your daughter is given to eat in a lunch packed from home. If you were asking for something special served from the cafateria, that would make sense.

When Tony was in K, we did have some eating goals in his IEP. Therefore, I did NOT pack his lunch in order for the teacher to try to introduce new foods to him by way of the regular school menu. Yes, he came home hungry almost every day. But I know (and the teacher knew) he would NOT try anything new if he had his "secure" food in a lunchbox. Eventually, he did try a few things, but never learned to "globalize" in this area... if he ate corn, it was ONLY at school. He is like that to this day, and he is 12.

I would also be concerned in the consequences rolling over to other areas of the day (other snack, recess). Any idea WHERE the teacher is trying to go with this?

Mary

Talk to the principal or couselor. If you get desperate, get a note from your pediatrician. It is ridiculous that with all the struggles we have as parents of kids on the spectrum, we would have to deal with something so stupid. It isn't like you are sending coke and candy. My son eats crackers and cheese for lunch every day.

I wouldn't put in the food choices as dictated by my dd's teacher. My first priority is providing my dd as stress free lunch as possible with as much nitritional value as I can get into her. The goal is eating lunch with as much independence as possible.

I would think, if the teacher wants to judge my lunch making she'll likely move on to suggesting dinner menus shortly behind once they start coming to school.

Considering alot of nights my dd dinner is doritos and hodogs and some pieces of orange; she wouldn't eat a full course roast beef dinner or poatoes or cassorole. There often really aren't leftovers for her.

Just cover the 4 food groups in her lunch at least it's available to her and add a desert if you wish; they can eat crow.

I just skimmed over the posts, so I think by now you know that you DO NOT have to send what they request for you to send. First of all, they are paying for your food bill. So you don't need wasted food. Second of all, they are starving her. They CAN NOT do this.

In the past when I have wanted to try and get kids to eat differently, I would talk it over with the parents and have them send one lunch one one box and the lunch we knew they would eat in another. We put the "new" lunch items in the regular lunch so that hopefully the kids would think that was all they had to eat. BUT after we saw if the kids were gonna eat or not, we got out the food we knew they would eat. YOU DO NOT FORCE CHILDREN TO EAT, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY HAVE FOOD AVERSIONS, AND YOU CERTAINLY DON'T KEEP THEM FROM SNACK AND GOING OUTSIDE AND NOT LETTING THEM EAT.

There are other ways to address this and I think Tzoya said the right thing to do. I would follow up on that tomorrow.

You can change your mind about anything at any time.

See, for me, I just feel that that adds to one more stressor on our children. Why do we have to do that to them too? I am not about coddling our children, but there are some times when pushing too much can have a very negative affect on them. Something will have to give unfortunately.

When DS was little and was the PBJ boy, I made the decision that we had far bigger fish to fry than getting a healthy, growing boy to eat what WE wanted him to eat. I agree that that was one more stressor and I chose to ignore it (except I kept a careful eye on his getting enough calcium). DH and I didn't even make him come to the table to eat, partly because we had to eat much later than would be good for him, anyway. I wondered if he would EVER eat anything different.

Fastforward to last night. He's now almost 16. About a year and a half ago he started eating more things, a result of having gone to sleepaway camp for a week and been exposed to lots of different foods and all the kids eating everything. Anyway, last night my DH was not going to be home until late, so I told Jamie we would go get Chinese food after swim practice. In my mind, we were just going to our little Chinese take-out place (they have a separate diningroom, too, which is a treat for him). Anyway, after practice, he kept trying to tell me something about the restaurant and managed to convey that he really wanted to go to a Chinese buffet we hadn't visited in YEARS (since before he would eat much there, but they have chicken nuggets and fries). Well, he seemed to want to go there SO much and had struggled valiantly to explain this to me, so I decided to reward him by going there. He was THRILLED. He ate the usual chicken nuggets and fries but also green beans and broccoli and shrimp and dim sum and EVERYTHING! He was like a human vacuum after all that swimming! And THIS is the boy who go no encouragement to speak of in the eating area. He just eventually changed. When he was little, everyone said this would happen, but I was a doubter. Still, I didn't push the food issue in the slightest and look what happened. Of course, I would have been far more concerned if he had real nutritional holes in his diet, but he did eat something from all the food groups.

Try to relax about the food. The way I figure it, we all should get a "pass" on some things since we and our kids both deal with SO much. For me, it was the food issue and it worked out just fine.