Last November 2023 my darling 5 year old daughter stopped eating. No trigger, fully abruptly. Over the course of about 2 weeks, she lost almost 8 lbs, eating less than 200 calories a day. Boom, ARFID diagnosis. Our child psych and doctor recommended letting her go to the grocery store and letting her pick out anything she wanted to eat.
Prior to this, we are an anti inflammatory gluten free whole foods based diet. I cooked everything from scratch. My daughter was always picky, but this was something else entirely. At this point, we were desperate. We just wanted her to eat. So we took everyone’s advice and added processed food to her diet, alongside more vitamins. It was slow work but everything she gained back some of the weight. She never really thrived, though.
That brings us to this summer. She stopped eating again. I was basically bringing her with candy to eat processed waffles and was like- this is crazy. Enough is enough.
My daughter is level 1 and 2 (different areas), with a communication processing delay and sensory processing disorder. She was completely non verbal until 2 weeks before her third birthday. Now she speaks freely and is understood well. Her child psychologist agrees she fits the PDA profile. She very likely has ADHD too.
We hypothesized that even when her body demands something- like “feed me, I’m hungry”- she avoids the demand. The paralysis of food choice made her shut down. She’d go 8-10 hours without eating. Her negative behaviors and meltdowns increased. Her vocal stimming (screaming) was relentless.
So I made magnets for every food item she liked, and many others — to encourage just the mere idea that non preferred food choices are potential options, too. The silver stars denote “portable foods” that I can pack for car snacks, school lunches, dinners-on-the-go.
Now, we communicate about food mostly non verbally. If she starts to scream cry that she doesn’t know what’s wrong, hasn’t eaten, doesn’t know what to do. I say something like “I’m going to choose a snack, perhaps you’d like to join me” and go on about my business. Most of the time she will MAKE A SELECTION (!!!!!!!) and then ACTUALLY EAT IT (!!!!!!!!).
She has gained FIVE POUNDS in ONE month, people!! Five pounds!! Her face looks fuller, she is so much happier, and she’s sleeping better.
Finally. Finally, there’s a smidge of hope for peace in my home. Even a momentary reprieve is welcome. I thought I would share in case this helps someone else, too.
