he misses meals. Seriously. That's what someone said to me today. I've been sitting and stewing about it since it happened. Now that I have this, I figure I can write out some of my frustration.
Usually when you think of a Feeding or Eating Disorder, you think of a thin, frail, malnourished person. It's hard to explain to people about Jack's eating. Most people aren't aware that this can even happen to a toddler. But it can and in our case, it has. And its affected our entire lives. We don't really go out to eat with him. He finds eating anything (other than a popsicle) to be a chore, something he's required to do but doesn't want to. If we do go out to eat, we try to either go to a place that has something else for him to do (ie, Chik Fil A has a play place that he'll play in while we eat) or we try to be in and out in 30 minutes or less. For awhile we were doing okay just avoiding restaurants but we've recently cut out going to birthday parties to. It seems that people just can't help themselves to try to get him to eat something, even after we've told them that he doesn't and asked them to not. They just don't understand. To them they're just trying to get him to try pizza or whatever. They don't understand that just by offering him a non preferred food, it could cause him to refuse preferred for a day or so.
As annoying and frustrating as the previous situation is, NOTHING makes me madder then when someone finds out about his PFD (Pediatric Feeding Disorder), looks him over and says that he LOOKS like he's NEVER missed a meal. Seriously? You can tell by looking at someone that they've eat 3 square meals a day? My son isn't thin or frail or malnourished because we work hard to make him NOT. He gets a PediaSure a day to pump him full of calories and give him vitamins. Without that he loses weight. Starts having worse behavior. Looks sick. We take steps to make sure he's as healthy as he can be given that he doesn't eat a balanced diet. I hate the general sterotype that to have an eating disorder you have to be thin.
Sorry for the ranting and the venting. I guess part of this blog is to educate people. So that another Mom doesn't have to be told by a stranger that her son is "too big to supposedly not eat."
some people have no couth! don't let them get to ya girl. Ignorance!
ReplyDeleteThey don't understand and they don't know how to filter, either. Write about it here. Hopefully people will learn about feeding disorders through things like this blog, and come to understand that you can't judge a person's life unless you've walked in their shoes.
ReplyDeleteIf it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't have started researching FDs, so you've already begun to educate one parent. <3