Whitterer on Autism

If your home houses a picky eater, you may find yourself spending an unnatural amount of time with fictitious conjectures into the future. [translation = my own food fetish] If your picky eater is also autistic, then the problem magnifies itself into catastrophic proportions. In my son's particular case, he is the worst kind, worse than a picky or fussy eater. He is a neophobe. That's right, he's afraid of neo's. “What pray?” I hear you cry, “is a 'neo?'” For current purposes, we'll say that it is something 'new,' which means that he is phobic about eating new things.

A neophobe eats less than 20 different items of food. Currently, he eats 9 ‘foods,’ a considerable improvement on he previous 3 foods, although it has taken us 3 years to reach this staggering pinnacle. Parents should note that it is cheating to count different varieties of Milano cookies. It is cheating to count different brands of cookies that are like Milano cookies, but hopefully cheaper. It is cheating to count Saltines or other crackers. Why does he have such expensive tastes? Who was the idiot who first gave him one of those biscuits? [translation = cookies]

Yes, life is very unfair for the parent desperate in the desire to re-catogorise the primary food groups of the world. If you can call 'cookies' a food 'type,' [please?] then, whatever configuration they might take on, they still only count as ONE.

For the sake of the mathematically challenged, such as myself, I feel it's safer to round up, to be cautious. Certainly more optimistic than to round down. So lets say that he's six years old, give or take a couple of months, so that's not too much of a stretch. Hence if a six year old manages to consume one new 'food' during a three month campaign, this would mean that, all things being equal, during the course of a whole year, four additional foods would be added to his diet. Ergo, by the age of 18, projecting forward, we might reasonably expect that he will have achieved a diet of 48 foods. If we add those foods that he has already managed to acquire during the prior six years, and we must, 'add' that is, that would reach a grand total of 57 foods. Could that really be possible? Maybe I should ask “Mr. Big brain,”, but since he is also a Brit, I think that automatically disqualifies him, as ‘Beanz Meanz Heinz’ ain’t gonna cut it.

I glug another bottle of Ensure, strawberry flavour, to nourish the body, if not the soul. If I continue to consume my current 5 flavours of Ensure, I guarantee that I will die of terminal boredom. Why are there not 57 varieties of Ensure? Would be possible to survive on 57 flavours of Ensure for an additional 12 years?

However, such projections as to his future gastronomy, fail to take into account risk; risks of failure, unexpected hurdles that can't be overcome, which wouldn't be a very thorough job.

Keeping the food seasonal might help with both establishing realistic goals, as well as minimizing costs, as strawberries in February, even in California, are not to be encouraged. My experiments with spinach and brownies have been a culinary coup, but when eccoli invades the crop, the campaign disappeared down the drain very swiftly. There again, the chance of me getting him to eat a vegetable, let alone something green, is probably still several life times away. I wonder how many leap years there are in the next 12 years? Perhaps I should count in light years?

Now I know what you're thinking, so don't just start in on me, as to be honest, I really don't have a leg to stand on. The thing is, you have to work with what you've got, and at the moment, all I have to work with is chocolate.

I mean, when did you last go down on bended knee to your child, beg, plead and implore to them, to just take a little nibble of chocolate ……..and then they can get down from the table? Not recently I would venture to suggest.
Rather you had whip your hand back quickly before they bit your fingers off. Me? I have to restrain mine in his chair to prevent escape. Actually, three of my other ones would be the latter category too. We only have one true deviant about these parts. Well maybe two, but leave me out of the equation.

The fact that he eats chocolate at all, is something that I relish, because in theory it opens the door to a myriad of possibilities. Did you know that they make such a thing as chocolate covered pretzels? Unlikely I know, but it's perfectly true. There are other more obvious choices, such as chocolate covered peanuts and raisins. Then there are lots of different varieties of chocolate itself. I have a big pool to draw upon here. Thus far, our success rate is a big fat zero. As noted in previous posts, the issue of texture is always our downfall. There again, appearances can be deceptive. Merely changing the shape of the ‘food’ in question is enough to upset the applecart.

He eats pretzels, ergo he should be able to eat chocolate covered pretzels, ditto chocolate covered raisins, but unfortunately these happy combinations have evaded him. We'll gloss of the chocolate covered poison packs for obvious reasons. [translation = peanuts are in their own sub category of poisonous foodstuffs, even though I'm fairly confident that technically speaking, he is not allergic to them]

The idea in principal, is to pick a desirable food, such as broccoli, where the ratio of chocolate covering to vegetable matter would be beneficial and then get him to eat it. That is what we're aiming at. I know that goal is a long way off, but it is better to travel hopefully than to……….. something or other, I forget.

I think, realistically, that since he eats chips [translation = fries] that a chocolate covered potato might be a good starting point. However, that might be a biased Irish gene providing undue weight in the decision making process. Spouse, another non vegetable eater, pointed out that we might be better fixing our sites a little lower. He was wise to avoid mentioning chocolate infused pasta and expose his own gene pool bias. Hence, as always, heeding to his superior grasp of the situation, I managed to hunt down a variety of different shaped chocolates as a stage one. Remember if a food changes shape from cube to stick, or quarters to halves, it effectively changes category too. It becomes ‘new food’ as a result. Stage two would be to try different types of chocolate such as Ghiradelli's or Hershey's.

Thus far the prospects are not propitious, but we'll keep you posted. I will be the one in the kitchen trying to make chocolate trapezoids as a dodecahedron is way beyond my skill set.

“What is dat?” he asks breathlessly.

“It is a sweet potato,” I explain, worryied whether it is indeed a sweet potato or whether I am unwittingly providing him with false ammunition to beat me with later.
There seems to be a great deal of confusion between what is a yam and what is a sweet potato? I have never sought to clarify this deficit, despite having been a resident for more than a decade and a citizen for a few years, because they are both loathsome. As a vegetable they are vile because they are sweet, but to put them in a pie is equally as reprehensible. Who ever heard of carrot pie? [Translate = a transvestite of a flan]

“No, it is a humungeous lemon!” he announces. That probably means that it is a yam and not a sweet potato? What on earth have I purchased, and why did I listen to the advice of the checker. [translation = probity of checker dubious due to the fact that she was unfamiliar with Swedes. {sub translation = rutabagas]

“It is a potato lemon?” he blurts, raising his eye brow, hoping for a hit.
I prod it, to see if the skin will come off yet.
“May be,” I add dubiously.
“It is disgusting anyways, any road up!” [Aside = gosh he automatically translated himself!] Soon junior son will be five.

For the first three and a half years of his little life he ate almost an exclusive diet of sweet potatoes, as only orange food was acceptable by that time. As he reached his fourth birthday, pureed carrots were out and he had an orange aura about his person. [translation = carrotine poisoning?] He would surely have perished without the intake of the humble sweet potato in such vast and exclusive quantities. I can't say that I view little orange gold fish crackers as a nutritional advance, orange or not.