Two letters from the same column on a very similar topic to each other

[conuly]

1. Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband and I are currently planning a trip to Taiwan, where I emigrated from as a young adult, to visit my parents and extended family. We have two children, 16-year-old “Ada” and 13-year-old “Megan.”

Since Ada was little, she has always been an incredibly picky eater. She is quite sensitive to the different textures of food, and there are some foods she refuses to try at all. When she was little, we thought she may have autism or a related condition, but ruled that out with her doctor. She is much more open to trying new foods than she used to be, and we are no longer overly concerned. However, she still dislikes most Chinese food.

Obviously, in Taiwan, the vast majority of our meals would consist of Chinese food. Yesterday over dinner, I mentioned this to her, and she joked that it would be a waste of money to take her to Taiwan, given that she wouldn’t enjoy it and would refuse to try most of the food there. I got mad, and told her that I would have to explain her “strange” eating habits to all of our relatives, and that I had no idea why she had to be so stubborn about the foods that she doesn’t want to eat.

After the blowup (which involved fighting about some other things), Ada won’t speak to me. According to my husband, she claims that I don’t “understand” her aversion to certain tastes and textures, and that she isn’t doing this to be intentionally rude to anybody.

What should I do?

— Frustrated About Food

Dear Frustrated About Food,

I am not a doctor, but your description of your daughter’s food issues immediately made me think of ARFID, or Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, a fairly new diagnosis that is often mistaken for “picky eating.” I wonder if you might want to take Ava to a behavioral pediatrician, nutritionist, dietitian, or food therapist who specializes in eating disorders, so that they can test your daughter for this condition. To seek out local resources, try contacting the helpline for the National Eating Disorders Association or any local eating disorder clinic.

I asked my friend Wayne Scott, who is a psychotherapist as well as the father of a son with ARFID, about parenting a child with this disorder and he added, “Many parents attribute these food particularities to temperament and personality, which leads to needless power struggles—and so much yelling!—when something is in fact an organic disorder.” For foreign travel, which he says can be very difficult, Wayne suggests loading up a suitcase with enough of your daughter’s “safe foods” to last your trip as a backup. For them, doing so actually decreased their son’s anxiety, and he was willing to try more things as a result.

Whether or not your daughter has a disorder, given that she’s struggled with her food sensitivities her whole life, I think it’s best to believe her when she says it’s not something she can help. Things like travel, social occasions, and holidays can be extremely stressful for kids with any kind of eating issues, since they often revolve around food and they may feel pressured or shamed into participating. If family members inquire, I’d just say explain her eating habits are nothing personal and shut it down as a continued topic of discussion. As long as she’s not underweight and she’s getting the nutrients she needs, her eating, while perhaps inconvenient, really isn’t hurting anyone.

********************

2. Dear Care and Feeding,

I have a strange problem with my teenage daughter. This may sound gross, but for years now, she has had this bad habit of picking at the skin around her fingernails. She started doing this when she was around four years old and over a decade later she still hasn’t stopped. As a result, her fingers have horrible-looking cuts on them that are often bleeding. When she was younger, her father and I would try to scare her by telling her no one would want to be her friend if her fingers looked like that or how open wounds could lead to serious infections but nothing has stopped her. She claims that picking at her fingers makes her “feel better,” which is such a crazy thing to say. It makes me so angry that she keeps making excuses. Our daughter claims that she has been trying to stop, but she has been saying that for years and there have been no changes. If she can’t even stop this simple bad habit, how will she do more difficult things in life in the future? What should we do about our daughter’s problem?

— At My Wit’s End

Dear At My Wit’s End,

Rather than getting angry about your daughter’s “bad habit,” consider the fact that it may have an underlying psychological cause. Behaviors like skin-picking, hair-pulling, cheek-biting, etc., when taken to the extreme, are called body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) and may be related to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Feeling a sense of pleasure or relief after picking is absolutely normal for people struggling with this issue, not “crazy.” I suggest you first educate yourself on these behaviors—you can find more information from the TLC Foundation for BFRBs and the International OCD Foundation. Then I suggest using one of their resource directories to find her a therapist, before finding yourself one to also help you to understand mental health issues, cope with your daughter’s problem, and figure out how to be a source of support to her, which she so desperately needs.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/04/when-in-laws-cross-boundaries-parenting-advice-from-care-and-feeding.html

Comments

[conuly]

Some people shouldn't be parents, honestly. My advice to these two LWs is broadly the same, so let's do that: Your child is not deliberately doing these things at you. Don't you think that first child would rather be able to just casually go out to get food with her friends afterschool without first having to worry about whether or not she could eat the food? That, perhaps, it's even a little embarrassing for her to be the only one at school who can't eat what everybody else eats, even if what everybody else eats is cafeteria food? Don't you think that second child would rather have some other way to feel better that isn't objectively painful? And for crying out loud, how dare that LW get mad at this child for trying to feel better. It's been a decade, and in the past decade it hasn't occurred to the parents that a child shouldn't need to feel better so often, and that this might be a sign of a medical and/or psychological problem?

I haven't checked the comments at slate. I can guess what they're like all too well. For some reason, people are really obsessive about gatekeeping who "really" has an eating disorder or food aversion and who's just "picky like a baby". I don't get it, I really don't.

[synecdochic]

My mother harped on me for being a "picky eater" all my life and never remembered the major restriction (I don't eat leftovers). Turns out I'm actually an incredibly adventurous eater once I figured out that half the foods they were trying to feed me (including the leftovers) trigger my major autoimmune disorder that's basically my body being allergic to histamine.

My mother and I have not spoken since December of '21 when she tried to calorie police me over the "you literally cannot consume enough calories to sustain life after this major spine surgery you had because of all the meds and how difficult it is to make safe food when you can't fucking stand up" cupcakes my sister sent me and she still thinks I'm being ridiculous. She can fucking die mad about it, literally.

[green_grrl]

At least the printed answers are useful and help focused. (I would be tempted to just yell, “Quit being an asshole to your kid!”)

[jadelennox]

My reaction to LW1 was "your first doctor was wrong" (not to say the kid is neuroatypical, but ruling it out was still wrong). And McCombs is right that whether it's a medical issue or not, food is an incredibly ridiculous thing to have a power struggle about. (Although I suspect there's an immigrant parent thing happening there, too. Aargh my parents are going to see what a picky American I have raised, I will be so humiliated.)

My reaction to LW2 was that they should yeet themselves into the sun. "Nobody would want to be her friend"? What is this, the 70s?

[lethe1]

All of this.

[conuly]

My reaction to LW1 was "your first doctor was wrong" (not to say the kid is neuroatypical, but ruling it out was still wrong).

Yes. The pediatrician is not really the person you go to for this sort of diagnosis, especially when you're looking very narrowly at one particular thing.

[cereta]

Every time I see something about picky eaters, I think, so what if they are just picky? It's still an unpleasant sensory experience. Yes, it can be a problem when a person's list of acceptable foods is extremely small, and yes, it can be a problem when they can't find anything out of the available menu to eat, but it's not the world's worst problem.

Also, I was seven when I realized that if my father or mother didn't like something (say, liver or brussel sprouts), we never had it, whereas I was routinely forced to eat food that made me gag. My mother did, by the time my younger sibs were old enough for it to matter, accept that there was no point in making someone eat food they hate, but it was a journey.

[melannen]

Yeah, the immigrant issues complicate LW1, so I will just add: LW, they have picky eaters in Taiwan, too. She might not like a lot of things that are considered "Chinese food" but there are probably foods that picky eaters eat in Taiwan that she would be okay with (and are very similar to foods she eats here.) Do some looking at foods she can eat that might overlap with things you can get in Taiwan, and work together on figuring out how to make sure she can eat while she's there, and what local foods might be things she would like to try *before* the trip, so that she can have some definite OK options she knows about. Talk through what things she could request at places like a restaurant that might help (like, for me, "hold the sauce" helped a lot with Chinese food; or if it's mostly a texture thing, avoiding most vegetables for awhile won't kill her.)

Also, be prepared to be a barrier between her and any relatives in Taiwan who aren't going to be willing to work with her.

[conuly]

You know, I deliberately cooked mushrooms a few times a year when the kids were little, for two reasons.

First, my mother and sister both wanted to eat mushrooms a few times a year. They'd probably have been happier to eat them more often, but as they both could do their own cooking and shopping that wasn't a consideration.

Second, I wanted to be able to honestly say that I had not infected my niblings with my dislike of mushrooms. Neither of them *do* like mushrooms, as it turns out, but it's not because I never gave them a chance to like them.

[ambyr]

This! This! Maybe the kid has a diagnosable disorder, maybe the kid doesn’t. And for people who actively want to learn to eat more foods than they currently enjoy, I am glad doctors exist with diagnoses and strategies. But for everyone else…what if we just let people eat what they wanted to eat and stopped judging them for it?

I was a wildly picky eater as a child. I eventually taught myself to eat more foods, cooked and seasoned to my taste. I credit my ability to do this entirely to my parents never making food an area of conflict; I ate what I ate, and if that meant I had cereal and a banana for dinner more nights than not, oh well, I knew where the milk was in the fridge. Friends who struggled with their parents over food as a kid have, in my observation, so much more accumulated trauma that it’s harder for them to expand their diets as an adult, because everything is tangled up in anger and shame instead of neutral, “huh, I didn’t like this before but it’s been a few decades; maybe if I sautéed it instead of eating it raw the way my mom likes to serve it, it could be okay? Oh, it’s not, oh well, guess that goes in the trash and I’m having cereal tonight.”

[ysobel]

I had no idea why she had to be so stubborn about the foods that she doesn’t want to eat. [...] she claims that I don’t “understand” her aversion to certain tastes and textures

I mean, you literally don't???

*stares hard at LW*

[shanaqui]

When she was younger, her father and I would try to scare her by telling her no one would want to be her friend if her fingers looked like that or how open wounds could lead to serious infections but nothing has stopped her.

You absolute fucking assholes. Get in the bin.

Struggled with skin-picking my entire life. One of the last times I travelled to an event pre-pandemic involved multiple people coming up and either asking me if I had chicken pox (or another infectious disease) or strongly intimating that I should leave or cover myself since I was making them uncomfortable by existing with scars and scabs. Kid really doesn't need their parents getting in on the act.

[redbird]

Meanwhile, "Ada" probably has no idea why LW1 is so stubborn about trying to get Ada to eat foods that she already knows she hates, instead of giving her things she likes.

[cereta]

YES! It has taken me a lifetime to learn things like, "Oh. I actually really like meatloaf if it's got onion and garlic and flavor in it." It turns out I just don't like my mom's cooking. But after so many nights of having to sit at the table until I choked down meatloaf soaked in Worcester sauce, I was sure I would never again eat it of my own volition.

[viggorlijah]

Taiwan has plenty of fast food! Almost every Chinese restaurant can do plain rice with an omelette! I spent my childhood eating plain rice with egg while my family ate everything and the eyeballs because I have a lot of food sensory issues - and kids with similar issues so we just… order around them.

[ashbet]

OMFG, I’m so sorry :/

And, yes — people are not having their own body struggles AT you. A bit of compassion and flexibility goes a long freaking way.

[starwatcher]

<snicker> You remind me of a time I was eating out with my sis. She's a much more adventurous eater than I am; I won't try anything if I don't know what it is. (Too many instances of "new" foods making me physically ill when I was young. I've mostly outgrown it, but the caution remains.)

It was a self-serve buffet-style place, and she came to our table with her plate piled high. She said about one of the items, "You know, I think this is squash, and I don't much care for squash." She ate a bite and decided, "But breaded and fried with extra calories, it's not bad." It also makes a difference, as you point out, if no one is forcing you to eat whatever it is.

[lilysea]

I still remember when I was in hospital age 10 (not for food issues)

and the staff tried to use me as a good example for a 12 or 13 year old girl with anorexia.

They tried to get me to eat cauliflower/broccoli with cheesy sauce in front of the anorexia patient.

I told the nurse that I couldn't eat that, I'd be sick. (I could tell from the smell of the food that it would make me vomit.)

She insisted that I eat it.

I immediately vomited cheesy broccoli/cauliflower everywhere.

Then the nurse yelled at me for vomiting and acted as though I had done it *ON PURPOSE*

I hadn't, it was completely automatic/involuntary

[lilysea]

As someone with

a) genuine food allergies; AND

b) genuine food intolerance; AND

c) foods that are migraine triggers; AND

d) sensory aversions to some foods/textures

I would really like it if the way that people talked about what foods people can/do eat changed to be non-judgemental and non-shaming.

Also, sensory aversions are ***involuntary***.

I can eat omelettes (and I actually quite enjoy omlettes if they are thin/firm/hard enough)

but I really struggle with scrambled eggs and can usually only cope with scrambled eggs if I have chewy toast and also distract myself.

I can eat hardboiled eggs, but soft poached eggs are out of the question.

[minoanmiss]

*bangs LW1 & LW2's heads together*

[kiezh]

It's so depressing to read the POVs of parents who literally cannot see their children as *people*. Both of these LWs are determined to resist the idea that their kid has their very own set of sensory experiences, which are not LW's, and that a kid who habitually does something (that their parent finds inconvenient) is VASTLY more likely to be reacting to their own actual lived experience than plotting against their parent's supposed authority.

Making sure there are safe foods to fall back on and establishing standard "plain" restaurant orders (like the rice-and-egg viggorlijah mentioned) will help Ada a lot, especially if LW1 can get her head out of her ass about maliciously misinterpreting Ada's sensory issues as "stubbornness."

Also, LW2, you fucking asshole, get your poor kid some fidget toys. It might not stop the picking entirely! But *something* to redirect the twitchiness to might help minimize open wounds. There are definitely toys out there that are meant to be picked at, stretched, etc. (And hey, consider that if the pain and inconvenience of having constantly injured hands is NOT ENOUGH to stop the picking, there must be some kind of distress that's WORSE if she doesn't? Or possibly an impulse that's so strong it bypasses choice entirely. In any case, shame and pressure are the worst choices and the opposite of helpful.)

[raven]

If I had immigrated to [the US? she doesn't say, but probably] from a non-white culture as a young adult and was taking my children to my homeland for the first time, and was then told by my child that it wasn't worth taking her there because she wouldn't enjoy it, I would blow the hell up too. The food stuff seems to be where everyone's rage is centred, but it feels to me that both parent and child are fighting over that because it's easier to fight over it, rather than a bigger thing.

[shanaqui]

I don't know if you've ever had any food issues or sensitivities, so you may know this, but they can be very serious. There are textures I can't eat without literally gagging, for example -- it's not something I can control. So I can well imagine that if this person has something like that going on, and her parent is being so insensitive about it, she joked in a way that was intended to sting.

I also think it's possible that she spoke what feels like the truth. Not being listened to, not being believed, when you have an issue like that -- it can be devastating, and for someone to just expect you to lol get over it for their convenience is... well. And if that person just won't fucking let go and let you eat when you are eating (note that she brought this up over dinner), I can see why the child in this scenario would blow up.

I really disagree with you that the food thing is necessarily a "smaller" thing that's "easier" to fight over. Eating disorders and difficulties with certain flavours and textures can be huge. Please don't be dismissive of that.

[raven]

I'm aware of that but I think you've missed my point in any case. All of that can be true, and the parent can still have blown up for reasons of real pain connected to history, identity and home, which are big things. Eating disorders and food are less nebulous than identity and history, so the parent's mind focuses on food and yells about why the kid can't just eat what other people eat, but that rage seems to me that it's actually coming from somewhere else.

[summerstorm]

I don't have allergies, but there are things I hate that are very prevalent in Spanish cuisine, and my father kept trying to catch me out whenever he'd bother to cook a meal. As I grew up I discovered many foods I actually loved, just not the way my parents prepared them: pasta and rice being two of them.

I'm actually a pretty adventurous eater, much more so than my parents were: I love Japanese food, I love bibimbap, I've eaten and enjoyed a lot of weird types of meat (and one, duck, became my favorite), and I'm always more than happy to go to a restaurant and try something within my parameters of edible (so, no onion taste, no mound of onions on it, no mushy stuff, no bell peppers, no peas, etc). I won't always like it (e.g. labneh was meh for me, but in that same meal I found out I like beets) but I will give it a go.

My father was awful for more than this reason, but he literally died mad about it. And about other things. My life is so much better with him out of it.

[summerstorm]

I agree with you completely. It's honestly so hurtful when people keep insisting that you HAVE to like a thing (and even try to lie to you so you'll try it without realizing... which is so stupid to me, I don't care if you put onion in a stew as long as I don't find the onion and have said so a million times. I LIKE garlic as long as I don't get a whole clove in my mouth. Etc.) because at some point it becomes disrespectful and sometimes borderline gaslighting.

And anyway, if someone knows they don't like something, would you rather look at their trying-not-to-puke face rather than get them something else? How is that preferable?

[summerstorm]

Ugh. I have trich and it's mostly under control now but for a few years I basically had no eyebrows, and my parents kept telling me that they would not grow back. They absolutely fucking grew back.

She claims that picking at her fingers makes her “feel better,” which is such a crazy thing to say. It makes me so angry that she keeps making excuses.

This bit makes my blood BOIL.

[shanaqui]

Being "less nebulous" does not make eating disorders a "smaller" thing (as you called them).

[feast_of_regrets]

What were the "other things," LW #1?

Anyway. The only time I got to go to a different country, I spent six weeks in Brazil with a host family. Was I horrified and embarrassed that much of the local cuisine made me gag (huge textural issues/different flavor combinations)? Yes. Would I love to be able to change my food hang ups so I can enjoy more things? Of course. Did I eat a lot of bread and bananas and McDonalds while I was there? Yes. Did I have fun otherwise? Also very much yes. If LW #1 hadn't scared her daughter with the prospect of meals where no accommodation would be granted for her eating issues, her daughter would not have written off the whole idea of a trip to Taiwan with a joke. It does sound like mom and daughter have some pretty huge cultural issues going on, but also mom is being hugely controlling over food. She may not be an abuser, but she's doing an abusive thing. (Also, fist bump of solidarity to daughter, who probably won't get her ADHD or whatever it is diagnosis until she's in her 30s or 40s since one blasted doctor wrote it off.)

Just yeet LW #2 into the sun.

[feast_of_regrets]

Holy moly what an awful nurse! I'm so sorry that happened to you.

[raven]

OK.

[minoanmiss]

I am an immigrant to the US from the Caribbean, and very proud of and missing my island of origin. If I had gone to the expense and trouble to plan such a family trip and my child said that to me I'd really want to yell at them.

But the thing is, I'm the adult. They're the child. Ideally at least I will try to figure out why my kid feels that way and try to help them feel better about the upcoming trip, since I can't leave them and I don't want to cancel. Yelling their head off won't help us get there. I can always go, later, and rant to my partner/friend/diary about what the hell is going on with this kid, as long as I don't give my actual vulnerable child a tongue lashing.

[raven]

Yeah, that’s it, isn’t it? I’d hope I’d handle this the way you’ve outlined because it’s the only appropriate way to do right by the kid- deal with them reasonably and vent if necessary elsewhere. But dealing with it by yelling is understandable even though it’s not excusable.

[conuly]

LW is the one who brought up the food in the first place. How can LW be surprised that Daughter responded accordingly?

[conuly]

Everything about that story is medical malpractice.

[conuly]

Both of these LWs are determined to resist the idea that their kid has their very own set of sensory experiences, which are not LW's, and that a kid who habitually does something (that their parent finds inconvenient) is VASTLY more likely to be reacting to their own actual lived experience than plotting against their parent's supposed authority.

Every once in a while I marvel that certain parties manage to delude themselves into thinking that it's autistics who lack "theory of mind".

[lethe1]

When I was a young teen, a friend plucked my eyebrows so vigorously that on one side I only had half an eyebrow left. It never grew back completely. I am glad that your eyebrows did, but it isn't guaranteed.

[summerstorm]

Fair. I mentioned it largely because it’s such a bad way of stopping someone from doing something they do out of anxiety — like, they were causing me MORE anxiety by saying that.

[lethe1]

Oh, agreed.

[laurajv]

yeah, both my kids I was told to my face weren't autistic and that i was overreacting to their restricted eating. in general i think our pediatrician is pretty good but wow was he wrong as fuck about those things.

[yalovetz]

Solidarity. I pick at the skin around my fingers, just like the kid in L#2. My mum used to bat at my hands and hiss at me to make me stop.

I didn't know until I got diagnosed as autistic as an adult that skin-picking is a common autistic stim. Now that I know what I'm doing and why, I've been able to seek out stim toys that meet the same sort of sensory needs and don't make my fingers bleed at the same time.

If picking her fingers makes her feel better, it's obviously serving a purpose. Help her figure out what that purpose is and find her a wait to meet that need without doing herself damage.

[shanaqui]

I didn't know until I got diagnosed as autistic as an adult that skin-picking is a common autistic stim

It is?!

(Context: people very frequently assume I'm on the spectrum or tell me that they think I am, because of a bunch of common behaviours that I share. I've never been diagnosed and I don't know that it'd be useful to me, but the long list does make me feel curious! That said, lots of overlap with anxiety disorders, including OCD. I just always wonder about the OCD label for me, though it fits in other ways, because I don't "feel" anything about the picking. There's no "I must pick because xyz" compulsion, it just happens, as unconsciously as someone jiggling their foot or fidgeting with a pen.)