What's on your Child with Autism's Food List?
If you feel like your child is stuck in a rut, eating only 1 or 2 foods meal after meal, then let’s make your child with autism a food list - including their favorite foods.
Many of the families with whom I work with autism and picky eating struggle with knowing what to present at mealtimes. Their child refuses new foods, gets stuck in a routine-only eating their favorite thing at every meal-and is lacking variety. Today, I’m going to offer you one simple tool you can use right away to avoid this pattern. I’ll also share several other ways you can use this tool to support your child with autism and picky eating.
Create your Child with Autism’s Food List
First things first, let’s start listing. Write down anything that your child eats with regularity or that you’re confident that your child will eat when you present it. This doesn't have to mean your child eats this food 100% of the time, but MOST of the time. Also, be specific. You have a restrictive eater, so, I want this list to be all-inclusive. Please record every type and brand of food your child eats. For example, if your child is currently eating yogurt, please be super detailed in your list about which yogurt: Tillamook vanilla, Yoplait 2% strawberry, Yoplait full-fat strawberry, Brown Cow lemon, etc. Write down every type, flavor, and brand of yogurt they eat. This applies to any category of food (think: crackers, cookies, squeeze pouches…the works).
Organize your Child with Autism’s Food List
The next thing you can do is organize your food list by food groups. Now, I am NOT a dietician, and if you have a child with restrictive eating, a dietician is a really important part of your child’s feeding team, and I highly recommend that you consider seeking one out. You can read all about that here. So, again, I’m not a dietician, but I am a mom, and to me, it’s important to try to present balanced meals whenever I can. Therefore, I suggest that you take your list of your child’s preferred foods and you break it up by food group. The groups that I like to prioritize are the ones I learned from a very talented pediatric dietician named Barb. They are 1) protein, 2) starch and 3) fruit or vegetable.
Want this free worksheet to help you make your child with autism a food list? Click here.
Start Putting your Child with Autism’s Food List to Work!
1. Use your list to help you rotate through your child’s (limited variety) of preferred foods. Challenge yourself to offer as many different things on the list as possible across the day and week. Your child with autism is more likely to have patterns of rigidity such as needing to complete routines in a particular order, lining up their toys in a repetitive way, repeating conversations, or generally insisting on sameness. These patterns of behavior can pop-up at mealtimes, too. You can help your child avoid getting into rigid patterns around eating by presenting them with the full range of things they like to eat in frequent rotation.
2. Use your list to support you with grocery shopping and meal planning. The next time you are wondering what you need at the store or what to fix for a family meal, pull out this list and use it to plan. Heck-keep this list on your fridge so it’s always available.
3. Share your child with autism’s food list! Do you feel like you’re the only person who can feed your kiddo or who truly knows what your child will actually eat? Share this list with other people who feed your child: grandparents, babysitters, the nanny and your spouse. This can take the weight off of you and help other people to support your child at mealtimes.
4. Take this list to your next appointment with your pediatrician and dietician…or anyone else on your child’s feeding team, for that matter. This can help the professionals in your child’s life to better understand their feeding challenges as well as to clue them into patterns in your child’s eating. They can use this insight to determine assessments that might be helpful and/or to create goals with you for your child with autism’s feeding therapy.
5. Analyze your list for holes or imbalances across the food groups. If you have several food options in one category but few or no choices in another food category on your list, start making a wish list of foods that would help balance your child’s food list. Getting to a place where your child will accept these “wish list” foods is something that will take time, but writing down which foods you hope to add to their diet can help guide your journey to getting there.
So there you have it, three simple steps to create and use a food list for your picky eater with autism. Families are often amazed at how clarifying it is to have this list. To be completely honest, seeing the exact number of foods your child predictably eats can also be really validating - feeding a restrictive eater is hard because you don’t have tons of choices. If you’re looking for some extra guidance for getting this done, I encourage you to download this worksheet with all of the most important steps broken down for you in one pretty page that will look classy on your fridge.
*This information is not medical advice and is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. As I describe here, please only consider any kind of changes to your child’s mealtime after they have had a thorough assessment.
