Advice for a mum from your past experiences please

Yeah i thought that might be the case, i think ill just persevere for now and see how he gets on. Thank you!  

I was an extremely fussy eater as a child and teen. Would spit foods out, point blank refuse to try anything I wasn't familiar with. I'm still fairly fussy and like to eat the same few meals, but I've grown out of a lot of it. I will now try many more foods than I would have done when I was younger. In respect of the eating, it may just be a waiting game.

its bizarre youve just said that because hes pretty much the same apart from the baby food, its always fish fingers, chips, pizza cheese sandwiches. ill keep at it, did you just make her something else if she didnt like the mouthful?

I'm autistic and have an autistic daughter. My daughter, at one stage, would only eat cheese sandwiches and one type of processed baby food and only drink water and milk. We found that grinding persistence, offering different foods and bargaining - "try one mouthful, if you don't like it, that's fine" - worked in the long run. However, it requires a lot of patience and never taking the easy option of giving in entirely in to the child's narrow preferences. At 20, she now has a very varied diet and will eat things like squid (a favourite), fish, paella, roast dinners and a wide variety of pasta dishes. She still dislikes anything with hot spiciness, like curries, and dislikes some vegetables, like peas and sweetcorn. However, she has an essentially normal diet.

It's a bit of both. If you've bad experiences of being forced to try new things you instantly are on your guard the moment its suggested. You can also infer something about a foods texture by looking at it. Like I said just looking at a slice of sponge cake or a fruit cake you can tell they have quite different textures.

My personal bias is towards starchy foods, bread and potatoes type stuff. Stuff you can chew or crunch. Processed foods often have added sugar which in large enough quantities can cover up almost any unpleasant flavour. If you add enough sugar and or salt you can over power very bitter tastes.

Like ribena. Blackcurrant tastes awful. It's a fairly bitter berry. But by adding tons of sugar it can be marketed to kids as ribena. (even after all the sugar they add I still can't stand it though)

Orange juice is actually a bit bitter too. Try drinking it after cleaning your teeth (toothpaste suppresses the sugar receptors in your tongue). But natural orange juice has more sugar in it than coca cola so the bitter flavours are normally overpowered by the sweetness.

If you want to make home cooked meals more palatable but still low calorie you might experiment by adding artificial sweeteners to your meals. Sucralose and Steviol glycosides are available for home cooking under various brand names. Of course making the cooking sweeter won't help with texture and many sweeteners can have unpleasant after tastes.

Hi! Thats a good idea, ill speak to the GP and see if they have any suggestions. i only got a diagnosis on Monday and im still waiting for the report to come through so its all brand new and hazy at the minute. theyve not really given me any guidance on how to help him so this is useful thank you! 

Hi! its usually only really loud noises, like hand dryers. hell clasp his hands around his ears like its painful, as far as im aware background noise doesnt really disturb him but i will ask. The food, i try to make a range of things but half of the time he wont even try it. im not sure if its how it looks? but its definitely a struggle. Hes more keen on processed foods and things like toast which isnt an ideal diet. ill keep a diary of the foods hell try and wont try to see if that will help. it feels like its things hes never seen before or new 

I suffer from sensitivity to noise and have found ear plugs really helpful, especially when I put the hoover round. I definitely recommend them. It might be worth talking to the gp and getting a specialist to help with eating. I did that for myself and now eat lots of different foods. 

Sorry I can't be more help. I hope this helps you. 

Also there is certainly a pattern to his eating. He could probably eat a lot of other foods but trying new foods makes him anxious. Why? If you make him a whole meal with a new food he will feel under pressure to eat it all if he doesn’t like the first bite. And if he does reject it after the first bite adults tend to say ‘but you haven’t really tried it.

when you introduce him to new foods make sure you only put one mouthful in front of him and make it clear he’s only expected to take one bite.

also try and observe the pattern. Did he reject fish fingers? Try avoiding serving him oily sea food. Did he reject curry? Maybe spicy food just isn’t for him. Pay attention to texture, bitterness, spice etc. Note the way in which custard is gooy in a different way than thick milkshake (one is shear thickening the other shear thining)

A lot of foods will be rejected for their texture not flavour. A dry chocolate cake may be received very differently than a moist fruit cake. but flavour can make a difference too. The difference between green and red grapes is important to me.

Ear plugs. I don’t have noise sensitivity but I had a friend who did. He wore ear plugs often even in every day situations, even having conversations. Makes the background noise of traffic and bars more bearable for him. Also unlike headphones less conspicuous and often designed to let mid range frequencies through enough to have a conversation.