Grandmother of grandson with autism

Many thanks for your helpful reply....

in my experience many kids like ours have food issues ,some with the colour ,some the texture and some dont like food touching ,or even what shape it is and these issues may be very difficult to deal with but for me as long as my son was eating which he didnt do always i was happy with that ,

try and find out what he likes play games with him setting food out or even allow him to put the food on his plate so if he has ssues with how its set out you can see this first hand and if its a case of he doesnt like food touching etc then buy pates with sections so they cannot touch ,and yes other family members may say its weird and why does he need a special plate but who cares as long as he is eating right ?

if its more complex and he doesnt like the shapes,textures or even colours of food it may be more difficult but again play games put lots of small amouts of different foods out and allow him to taste test them in his own time he will only eat what he wants and it will allow you to see what he naturally has a liking for ,

do this test type thing with all the food groups and make notes and at the end of the week you should have a good list of what fruits,veg,meats ,cearals etc he will eat and then you have  some form of a diet to work on

but it doesnt always stop there ,he may like like 50 individual items whch is great but then whe you put 3 of them together on a plate he may ot eat them because of the way they touch or look when together

so it can be a long process all you can really do is identify what he likes first and if you can buy one of those sectional plates right away it cuts out even having to deal with the issue of touching food or gravy spreading across the plate onto other food etc etc ,if that is dealt with straight away and you know what he likes it will make life alot easier

he is 2 so his food intake s some what still limited right now anyway as far as what different things he will try so as he gets older do it again try the test thing put food out in small pieces and allow him to taste ,do this regulalry and you will find you can add more and more food to his diet

for me fighting about eating dinners was just something else i didnt want to have a meltdown happen about ,

so spending a few days recordig what he likes etc etc and removig possible problems like bringing in the sectional plate makes things alot easier

and does it really matter if he wont eat the same veg as the rest of the family as long as he is eating veg ,

he may only like yellow veg in which case when you make him a meal cook a weeks supply and divide it into tubs and then its very simple to simply grab a spoon full of each thing when you need to make dinner and heat it up for him

also i found that pick boxes were good again sectional boxes where you can cut fruit up and put it in and keep it in the fridge so when he comes home from nursery or school etc you just get out the box and put it on the table a small reminder to him there is some bits you can eat here if your hungry is fine ,never push it he will do it better if allow to take himself and as its fruit it doesnt matter if he eats alot or alittle its fine and he wont get all hyper from a sugar rush of sweets which can agrivate him also

hope this really long post gives you some ideas , good luck :)