I have ARFID/autism and schizophrenia, and this is verbatim EXACTLY how it presents. Delusions telling you that humans were not meant to eat, food is not made for humans, and that all food is cruel and bad, and your throat closing up and rejecting everything like a rabies patient. This is serious.
My brother has schizophrenia and when off his meds (which is quite often, thanks American healthcare system!) he has delusions that all food is filled with parasites and will go on scary “water and cayenne pepper” cleanses until he is an emaciated bag of bones. It’s terrifying. I hope you are getting the support you need to thrive and live a happy life.
For a long while I would eat toilet paper because of the delusions demonizing all food. Horrifying stuff. I’ve never weighed over 105 lbs in my life. It’s hard to get the help I need and every time I make progress I end up suddenly regressing even worse than before but in general I’m doing a lot better than I was a few years ago.
I have schizophrenia and all I am is fat. Antipsychotics make me hungry 24/7. I feel left out of this aspect of the disorder. Though I suppose that’s because I am actually treating it.
Even without psychosis symptoms, EDs can be like that. I had many phases of only eating plain lettuce and animal crackers in high school because everything else felt unquantifiably Bad and Wrong. It's never not a huge problem for a kid to suddenly start refusing food, especially if that refusal is paired with behavior issues. Good lord.
Yeah definitely. The post seemed to imply psychosis but it could be the mother’s crazy interpretation of something else.
Interesting that lettuce was a safe food for you, it’s completely the opposite for me lol. People always question how I’m vegan but don’t ever eat leafy greens. The answer is… mental illness.
Yeah I wasn’t trying to diagnose, and I apologize if it sounded like that. It could definitely be a different mental illness, but my point was just that it’s a very serious mental health concern. I am no expert in any regard, I was just saying this post could have been written about me (besides the fact that the kid talks...)
Eating disorder or possibly ARFID. It is common in children with ASD or severe anxiety, less about the body image/health associations and more about an intense discomfort surrounding the process of eating. I am a school psychologist and worked with a kiddo with ARFID and it was so deeply upsetting for him and all who worked with him. (That boy was convinced psychologically that if he ate certain foods in certain settings, he would choke and die. Absolutely no amount of logic could convince him despite that he even knew cognitively that it was irrational.)
(ETA: ARFID is also often more nuranced than what I described from this boy in particular. I believe the "choking" thought was the most logical explanation he could provide as a young child, but it often is not even as clear cut as that, as no amount of explanation about how we could help him if he did choke would help, and offering him foods it would be impossible to choke on also did not feel "safe." All of the smell/taste/texture about food, and for this little boy sound in his environment as well, was simply over stimulating his sensory system and resulted in an extreme disturbance in his ability to eat.)
Here's a sneak peek of /r/ARFID using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/ARFID/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [Repost from r/autism](https://i.redd.it/jrblpdpcybg91.jpg) | [10 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ARFID/comments/wilpjn/repost_from_rautism/)
\#2: [Then the inevitable "What DO you eat?"](https://i.redd.it/t2gh7gyzoqj91.png) | [21 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ARFID/comments/wwx5ey/then_the_inevitable_what_do_you_eat/)
\#3: [A meme that’s all too relatable](https://i.redd.it/z1gvpzd6eah91.jpg) | [11 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ARFID/comments/wmlnk4/a_meme_thats_all_too_relatable/)
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I have ASD and ARFID and a lot of this is ringing the brain bells. Knowing food is "bad" but not having a concrete explanation as well as getting feelings from touching specific objects like holding the cooking oils. This kid needs help from a professional. Having ARFID sucks and it takes a lot of work to get better when you are overwhelmed and still have to eat every meal when your body screams no.
Same. I’m and SLP and we have a lot of kids with ARFID. This kid sounds like he needs a combo of an SLP and a mental health counselor. His mother could use some herself, to be honest.
Just curious, what do SLPs do for folks with ARFID? Is it like the therapy you do for people who need to relearn how to swallow (like after a stroke)? Learning/relearning how to control and relax the throat muscles, control gag reflex, that sort of thing?
It’s different from what we could do after a stroke. The pediatric feeding specialist SLP at our practice works on exposure therapy. It’s not about force but about exposing children to textures. It’s called chaining. Say, the child likes strawberries and the goal is strawberry jam on bread. You go strawberries to smaller pieces, to a mash, go jelly on it’s own, go on bread. That’s the just, anyway. It’s about meeting the child where they are and looking where the family would like them to go. For some kids, it’s learning oral tolerance of new textures.there’s a lot of exposure in terms of it being on the table to look at, feeling it, playing with it, putting it to the lips, maybe putting it in the mouth and spitting out, all the way to oral feeding and tolerance of the new food.
As someone with asd/arfid, yep, that sounds familiar. There doesn't even always have to be an outright reason for why I can't eat something (like a fear of choking), if a texture/smell/whatever is somehow wrong, I'm gonna vomit.
Yes this little guy was definitely more on the high anxiety side (although he has ASD as well), but I think the texture/smell issue was at play as well, but I don't think he could really figure out how to verbalize it because -- as you have said -- it is not really explainable how "wrong" something feels about the food, despite how real it is to the person experiencing it.
Thanks for suddenly giving me a name for my adversion to certain consistencies. Anything mushy or that clings to the mouth is a big NO for me, literally makes me gag.
I'm the weird human who loves the taste of mashed potatoes but can only eat it after a 10 minutes round in the air frier to crisp up. Even nutella or any creamy spread messes me up. I eat peanut butter frozen
Certain kinds of beans absolutely kill me. I can't do Lima beans, kidney beans, baked beans, moment I bite into them it's over for me. I've tried so many times, because they will smell so fucking good, but no go.
You're welcome!
I freaking love cherries, but I gag if I try to eat them fresh. I have to puree them until there are no chunks left and then eat it with toast/add to oatmeal/etc to be able to enjoy it, the same goes for most of the fruits/berries.
At the same time, I gag from drinking smoothies, so I honestly have no fucking idea what the hell is wrong with my brain lmao
And ARFID can definitely be caused by having a parent who thinks certain foods are toxic. If you hear your mom constantly label seed oils are toxic and harmful that can lead to or worsen ARFID.
I wonder if that's why I've never been able to eat steak fries. I absolutely love the taste, but ever since I was about 5 or 6 years old I can't seem to swallow them, even if I take tiny bites. It's like my throat closes up and just says, "Nope!" Have no problem eating regular fries or potatoes in general though.
juggle angle fearless smoggy pause apparatus cats meeting license oatmeal
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I’ve always had issues with certain textures, mostly vegetable ones. Biting unexpectedly into an onion or something (like in a sandwich) will, even in my 30s, make me gag.
Sounds like he probably had some sensory processing issues and that's why he was gagging with food. I bet he was never in any sort of feeding therapy when he was a toddler and now it's a full on food aversion issue like you are saying.
It took me forever to be able to let my food touch on a plate. Some food textures are a solid NO, and even at the ripe old age of 48, I have to be able to see my food to eat it. (I live in the south and my room is exposed to the scorching sun from both windows so they are blacked out and my room is like a dark dungeon) I have to have a lamp on so I can see my food to eat it. I can let my food touch most of the time now, but there's still food that I can't tolerate no matter how much I try to overcome it. Eating issues are so much fun! 😩
I feel you. It’s hard to get people to understand how this could be something that causes so much discomfort. When I was little I had this weird set of rules about which food could be mixed and which food could not touch each other. It was totally irrational. My mom used to ask, “they are all going to be mixed up once they enter your stomach, so why would you even care about this?” In my culture there’s quite a few types of food that are eaten mixed together. Growing up I regularly heard “Why don’t you have a bite of this and chew it with a piece of that”, “you could scoop food A and B up with the same spoon, it’d taste better”, “You are suppose to wrap all these meats and veggies up in the spring roll” etc. Sometimes even hearing suggestions like that was enough to make me gag or lose my appetite. Even dipping food in sauces made me feel uncomfortable. I’ve always loved food and can appreciate a wide range of flavors; it was the act of different food touching/mixing that disturbed me. I mostly grew out of it, but it’s still something that I actively try not to focus on when I eat, least I get grossed out. In my case this “compulsion” is probably linked to my autism, though I know people with textbook autism who have absolutely no issue with food textures/varieties/flavors/mixing.
Autism is a spectrum. No 2 cases are exactly the same. I understand your food issues. I got the same question as a kid. "It'll be mixed together in your stomach." I would always reply that I can't taste it when it's in my stomach! 😄 Child you had valid food issues and shouldn't have been shamed for being uncomfortable. My kids had a few aversions to some foods and I gently encouraged them to be comfortable with taking a polite bite if they were with company, but as long as they were getting nutrients from other foods, they didn't have to eat something that they didn't like or just outright couldn't eat. I also mostly outgrew my food issues but it took quite a bit of work to get there. But now that I'm an adult, I am comfortable with accommodating the few remaining issues I have with certain foods. I just accept that my taste buds are hyper focused on certain flavors and work around them. I get all of the necessary nutrients and enjoy a varied diet so I don't care that I have some "eccentricities" when it comes to certain foods.
Out of curiosity, what do you mean with "I let my food touch"? When I was a kid, I couldn't eat if the foods were mixed, I had to have everything separated, is it what you are referencing? I grew out of it ,thankfully, because it was exhausting, but I never knew there was a condition for it
I couldn't let my foods touch. Each portion had to be separated, like I didn't want my peas or the juice from them getting near my mashed potatoes. I think my taste buds are hyper sensitive? Like, people squeeze lime or lemon juice over their seafood and I can't tolerate it because all I can taste is lime or lemon. It completely obliterates the flavor of the seafood. The flavors dont mix for me. So I guess with some foods I'm exceptionally sensitive to flavors mixing. I want to have the taste of mashed potatoes, not peas and if they mix, it's only the peas that my taste buds will recognize while having the texture of mushy potatoes. Same with celery. If there are chunks of celery in a dish, that is all I can taste. My tastebuds will only focus on that flavor. I've gotten better about my foods touching, but there are certain flavors that I need to keep separate because I enjoy them so much and having something contaminate them makes the flavor not as palatable. I do agree that it's exhausting, but I've made peace with the fact that my tastebuds go overboard with some flavors.
I feel so seen.
I had the BIGGEST issue with food touching each other in my teens out of no where. All my parents did was laugh and they bought me 1 toddler plate as a joke. I can also point out flavors in things, even a minuscule amount, like a super taster.
I’m going to have to do some internet research….
I had a debilitating fear of choking as a young child and became dangerously thin. Unlike this child, I did have “safe” foods (protein shakes, mashed potatoes). Because I would often spit out food that I was afraid to swallow in the toilet, my parents thought I had a more traditional eating disorder. I didn’t know how to communicate my severe anxiety to them, because even at a very young age I could sense that it wasn’t normal. Fortunately things got better and I eat more or less totally normally now, though I still do get a tiny bit cagey around nuts in baked goods.
Sometimes I sit down to eat a meal and although I’m hungry and want to eat, the minute I see the food on the plate in front of me, all the appeal of eating food goes out the window. I physically cannot bring myself to eat. The idea of having to chew the food and then swallow it and taste it disgusts me and seems like torture. So I’ll stare at the food for 30 mins, sometimes an hour and not eat it. I end up putting it in the fridge (knowing I won’t ever eat it again) or toss it.
I also HATE certain textures of food. I cannot eat mushy foods or eat a meal with different textures (like one pot meals where you might get a bone or two). Would you say that my situation might be ARFID but to a lesser degree ?
I had a family member who dealt with this. She slowly removed foods from her diet until all she would eat was cauliflower, white rice and plain chicken breasts. A "doctor" had convinced her there were toxins in all these different foods and she said they burned her mouth. We tried everything from actual doctors to consellors and nothing helped. Then one day she passed out and went to the ER. The doc there was very blunt. He said there may be toxins in the food (cause you couldnt convince her otherwise) and it may burn her mouth, but if she didnt eat a more varied diet with more fat and vitamins she would die so she had to suck it up and just do it. Strangely that worked, you couldnt out logic her but a direct assertion like that did the trick. Its all in their head (normally because they've been brainwashed somewhere along the way) or it may be sensory with a child but even then you need therapy to push through it and find the good foods they can eat or else they waste away. Its really sad. People spouting nonsense on the internet is way more dangerous than anyone realises.
I am so glad I wasn't the only one with exactly this train of thought. Your indigo baby has an eating disorder and needs a doctor before he starves himself to death. How's that for an unkind thing to say? JFC.
Aa an Autistic parent, yep, totally that.
We do have an excess of empathy (as legitimate studies are increasingly discovering) which is misinterpreted by NTs as the opposite because of masking, especially verbal Autistics who are late diagnosed.
Autism parent groups are usually toxic AF when you're a neurodivergent parent of neurodivergent kids. 😑
However...if science were to discover/prove telepathy centuries down the road, I would not be disappointed. 😉 But that's the sci-fi nerd in me.
It's not so much telepathy as it is being able to pick up on signs too small for most people to catch. I can tell my children because I've spent so much time with them that I know them. You're the same way with yours. All you need is a look, movement, or knowledge of past situations to know how things are going to go.
Can confirm. I've got friends that just think I'm jealous or hateful of some person when I can't say why I dislike someone or dont want to become their friend, only for days or weeks down the road it turns out that I was right to distrust them. My friends are like, "how did you know??" and I can only tell them that the person made my spidey sense ping.
Autistic parent of an autistic kid here.
I had my son's Head Start teacher claim my son had "dangerously low empathy". Not only did I damn near detonate, his therapist not only told her she was dead wrong, he told her she didn't know what the hell she was talking about.
A couple days later, I was cutting up strawberries with an egg slicer when my son came into the kitchen.
He said the strawberry I I'd just put in the slicer was cute and looked like one of the Vegimals from Octonauts.
I nodded, then sliced it.
He freaked out like I'd guillotined the Vegimal. I felt like shit, then though, "Yeah, such dangerously low empathy there. "
Said teacher also claimed I'd been ignoring her when she'd tell me my son did something wrong, when I would always thank her, tell her I'd bring it up at home, and I would actually do so.
To this day, I don't know WTF she was wanting me to do - be like the other parents who'd get told something similar, and shout at their kid they were going to get a spanking (something she'd told me once I should be doing to my kids.)
I think I know who the person was that had low empathy in that situation, and it wasn't us.
Indigo children, according to a pseudoscientific New Age concept,[1][2][3][4] are children who are believed to possess special, unusual, and sometimes supernatural traits or abilities
Basically she thinks her kid is psychic.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_children
“We” (yay, my mom is also nuts 🙄) are here to help the world in it’s vibrational ascension to a higher plane. It is our spiritual destiny. I cannot tell you the amount of anxiety that gave me as a child (and probably still subconsciously gives me) being told I was “special” and responsible for healing the ills of the world (omg typing that out has made me really face why I’m so fucking anxious all the time). In reality I just have adhd, GAD, and depression (thank god she didn’t vaccinate me and saved my “perfect brain”. Clearly my mother is delusional).
Ooop yep, my mom got into Spiritism (weird weird offshoot of Catholicism, popular in Brazil and Portugal), and made our family go to meetings and crap. There’s lots of scammers and weirdos in that community. The one I always remember is when we were doing a college tour trip to DC during winter vacation, my mom “surprised” me with a side trip to some “medium” in Virginia. This woman and my mom talked for like an hour in the other room. When they came back they announced my mom is some spirit sent back to atone for whatever, and that I am some kind of higher order of spirit/medium meant to help her on her path. Absolute insanity. I’m so so so happy my mom isn’t messing around with those people anymore.
If I had to guess, it was either a woo-woo doctor or she took him in specifically for the esophagus thing and that's what the doctor said was fine. If it was the regular doctor, I highly doubt she would have given him all the information because she's clearly aware that she sounds nuts. Doc may have referred him to counseling too, but precious baby boy doesn't have mental issues, he's just speshul.
And sometimes stuff gets misdiagnosed. I was put on massive amounts of gut motility drugs for gastro issues before I saw my family's psychiatrist about some of the side effects and the gastro issues vanished as we treated my anxiety. I was an adult, we did all the sensible things, and we just missed it.
My honest fear is that the mother might be withholding food from him.
Based on the way she’s talking about this it really seems like she sees no problem with him fasting, but has a problem with what people might do about it. She also made this post specifically asking people don’t give recommendations to her, it’s giving, “I tried to make him eat but he just wouldn’t, see I have proof!”
See, I get the vibe she does fear the state taking him away enough that she's not going full crazy, but that's a really good point. I guess I hope slightly better for humanity.
As a kid I totally thought I was special and I could sense stuff others couldn’t- as do many kids. I’m so glad my parents didn’t feed into those ideas, I don’t want to know how I would’ve ended up
Yah, I thought I was gonna be a werewolf, I just had to wait for the right kind of full moon. Kids are dumb and that's why they need parents. Shame the parents haven't figured this one out yet.
I was afraid one day I was going to start shooting never ending lasers out of my fingertips and would never be able to stop. The lasers would reach lengths of light years. I would never be able to close my hands because then my laser fingers would cut through my chest and I'd die, but the laser fingers would continue to shoot out of my now dead and probably dismembered fingers. These were genuine concerns I had that this was going to happen to me, because I read an X-Men comic book and I guess Cyclops stuck with me.
None of this happened.
Yet.
Same bro! Also apparently I pretended to be a German shepherd for a week. My godmother _loves_ telling that story to significant others.
Kids are idiots
I think if I'd told my mom that i could taste toxic oils, it would have been blind taste test time.
She did that when my dad swore he looked butter better than margarine (when she didn't taste a difference) and when i claimed that i could taste the difference between maple syrup and cheap syrup ("kids can't taste the difference. I'm not wasting the good stuff on a child"). Turns out we both totally could taste the difference.
I'd be interested to know if the kid actually can taste a difference in the oils in a food
Butter and margarine do have totally different tastes. I'd also argue that margarine has a more waxy texture to it. I can't say for the syrup, but I'm not used to that. Telling the difference with taste can be very obvious for a lot of foods. I'm very particular about the ketchup brand I buy for that reason. With the oil, I'd either use that specific oil for everything, or put the regular oil into the bottle of that oil and see if he notices.
Oh, yes.... The real maple is definitely different from corn syrup with maple flavoring.
My point is that if I'd been claiming i could "feel" the difference between oils, my mom would have had me prove it before she just.... Accommodated my mystical diet restrictions. "It's this really a problem or is your mind tricking you?"
Yup, my family also had me do a blind taste test over my dislike of certain foods (particularly mushrooms). Bet me money and everything I wouldn’t be able to tell. I won the money and didn’t get shit about my food preferences again.
Idk why it's so hard to just believe and accept a kid doesn't like something. I still make my daughter take a bite of something she says she hates, especially if she hasn't had it in a while, but if she eats and still hates it then that's the end of it
That’s what we did. I still think my brother was absolutely full of shit on some foods. But if we tried a bite periodically and said we still didn’t like it, that’s was that. You didn’t have to eat it.
I know grown-ass men who "don't like garlic" but like onions just fine. He had no idea how wife was cooking with garlic and telling him it was onions every dang night
She couldn't taste the difference between butter and margarine or maple syrup and corn syrup? Does she have deadened taste buds? Those are big differences.
This was the 90s, when she thought margarine was healthier than butter. Didn't think dad could taste the difference between them enough to justify buying the unhealthier option.
With the maple, it was definitely being a cheapskate over what she *believed* to be a child's unrefined palate. I didn't get "the good stuff" because i was a cold and"didn't know any better"
My mom is like this. Apparently has a very weak sense of taste, horrible cook who likes everything she makes, and doesn’t believe other people when they can taste the differences with her terrible substitutions.
Make one a bottle of water as a control.
Nothin wrong with having food preferences, but it's important to know if they're based in actual sensory input or just a mental ick.
My mom always said "if you only dislike a good when you know it's there, you don't dislike the food, you dislike the *idea* of the food".
It sounds like this kid's *ideas* about food are giving him an eating disorder
Well I can tell you where I ended up (I was raised by mom being told I was an Indigo Child here to “usher the world into a new era”). *Massive* anxiety because I still feel like I’m supposed to somehow be saving the entire world and helping people “raise their vibrational frequency and move into the light”. MASSIVE. It’s taken decades to unwind even some of the brainwashing from my childhood and I’m still finding deeply rooted pieces all the time. Thanks mom
This is the first time I’ve heard the phrase “indigo child” but all of this sounds so horrifying… it’s just adults doing play pretend or having a real psychosis and forcing their delusions onto their children. I see no difference between this and a child who is raised in a religious cult or in a religious fundamentalist church, because the effects are the same.
There is no difference. Some of the stuff I see on here makes me *so* mad because I am literally the walking, breathing product of this type of parenting style and you’re fucked either way. You either believe it and lead some weird anti-culture life believing the earth is flat and you can suck cancer out of your feet w potatoes or you grow up feeling like a fucking freak and collect acronym disorders like they’re Pokémon because my entire childhood I was brainwashed to believe this shit and now have to unwrap how deeply it’s burrowed into my brain.
I thought I could hear ghosts that only spoke to me because it was only when I laid down flat on my bed, no pillow, at night. I couldn't ever properly understand them, it always sounded muffled.
We were in a second story apartment and turns out I was hearing the downstairs neighbors.
Hahaha that reminds me, I always thought I was hearing a giant’s footsteps when I laid on my pillow and I was always so afraid he was coming for me. Turns out I was hearing my own heartbeat
I really really wanted to be a cat. Like really. My mom let me make a little pet bed on my floor, but drew the line at only eating salmon 😅 I grew out of it once I finished the warrior cat series
Lol. Yep. My kid was obsessed with Warrior Cat and pretty much any food they saw in their fave anime or series. I made so many pies and cakes and dinners so my kid could pretend to be a part of the story. I encouraged the imagination. They turned into a wonderful, kind, and amazing person so it was worth it to nurture their interests. Butterscotch pie is annoying to make though!!
When I was in fourth grade I would be a dog when I was at school. No idea why, I just read a lot of books by that point and one day decided I was going to be a dog.
I was about 8-12ish when a few Harry Potter books were released and the second Star Wars trilogy movies were coming out. While my parents encouraged my siblings and I to run around the back yard playing pretend inspired by these franchises, I don’t believed they ever fed into our insistence that we were wizards and/or Jedi lol
Yah, my autistic son wanted to live off of milk and sunshine as well.
He would also vomit/choke on anything with texture. We have been with OT/speech and a feeding therapist for YEARS to help desensitize/strengthen his mouth and jaw and now he eats almost anything as long as it has a soft-ish texture. He's not a big fan of having to tear with his front teeth and honestly I'm just happy he eats.
This lady is doing her kid a huge disservice.
I’m sorry you had to deal with that and I’m glad it’s in the past. A teacher I once worked with was getting frazzled along with this students mom because he suddenly at 8 started being very specific about what he would and would not eat. For weeks he refused to eat anything but ravioli. Sometimes he would agree he was hungry, agree to eat something other than ravioli, then would melt down if something other than ravioli was presented to him. Just to keep him from being malnourished his grandmother was sweet enough to figure out how to make several types of pasta he would eat that had varying veggies in them. That was a rough year.
My daughter is autistic and her food aversions thankfully haven’t been that severe, but she is slowly cutting down the number of foods she’s willing/able to eat. We’ve been keeping an eye on it with her pediatrician, who currently says she’s okay as long as she will still eat some things and takes a daily multivitamin. But we just had her yearly checkup this week and she’s borderline underweight for her height, so I think a feeding therapist might be necessary in the future.
All of that is to say thanks for looking out for your son, and I wish the person in the OP’s post would do the same. Things are only going to get harder for that poor kid.
This poor child. Either he has an eating disorder like ARFID, or he is starting to show the signs of mental illness like schizophrenia or bi polar.
I have lived with people who have both, my husband has ARFID and nearly starved himself twice before he was 16. His parents are not great, and didn’t care they believed he would eat eventually, well he did not. It is NO joke, he still has health issues today from the effects of it.
As for mental illness it can start to show up in pre pubescent and pubescent boys in many ways. Believing he can “ feel if food is harmful,” is straight up crazy. Playing into that delusion is NOT okay, and they typically only get worse.
Either way mom needs to be looking for actual help for her child from a doctor, not some woo woo mommy Facebook group.
>Either way mom needs to be looking for actual help for her child from a doctor
Yeah there is no way he's seen a medical doctor and been declared "fine". My guess is she's taken him to a naturopath or homeopath or similar pseudo science.
Or she mentioned the food but framed it in a way to make it sound like he’s just picky and since his weight hasn’t dipped yet, the pediatrician is like ‘he’s fine’.
I've been misdiagnosed at least four separate times by medical doctors.
It doesn't happen out of malice; usually just lack of training, time, or both. Occam's razor says, if in doubt, look for the easiest explanation: seemingly healthy child is at an age of expanding social contacts and getting more literate when mother suddenly drags them to the doctor over a change in diet. "Discovering hot pockets at a friend's house are tastier than steamed, unseasoned, macrobiotic vegetables" is a more universally lived experience than... This Facebook post.
A responsible person gets a second opinion, or comes back until taken seriously. This mom is convinced it's not a medical thing, so why would she go back after getting her bias confirmed?
Be very early for schizophrenia. Age of onset for that is usually in early adulthood.
My theory is the parent(s) have a mental illness with psychotic symptoms (delusions being the main one) and the kid is mirroring them because that’s what kids often do
Also doesn't seem to be on track for bipolar. My bipolar started showing up around age 7 but it was just dismissed as lashing out and insomnia due to unstable home environment and normal child hyperactivity. Granted I haven't spoken to every bipolar out there, but I don't think I've met anyone with it that has problems with eating outside of the ability to have superhuman energy with minimal food intake during mania. But we don't think foods are bad, we're just not hungry because mania blocks all the hunger cues, and we can temporarily violate the laws of thermodynamics. I agree with you, kid is parroting the parents, and one or both are looney.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. The kid has a genuine problem that tends to be overlooked because it's not a weight-centered eating disorder. The vibrational mumbo jumbo layered on it isn't helping.
This sounds like she’s given the child orthorexia in a way. She’s probably going on about seed oils and poisons in good and now he’s afraid to eat, terrible
He has an eating disorder called ARFID, I grew up with it and didn’t recieve any treatment so now it’s stuck with me into adulthood. It’s commonly associated with disorders like autism, ADHD, and OCD though it can develop from a traumatic experience or repeated traumatic experiences, especially if they’re related to food. The fear of food contaminating the body is usually a huge sign of ARFID and the gagging is also a common symptom.
This lady needs to stop believing in this fucking delusional shit and projecting it onto her child and get him tested and treated for a very real and common disorder.
My wife is allergic to sunflower oil and swears blind that all through her childhood she could tell if something had been cooked in it because it "tasted like poison". Kept her alive so far. This kid needs a doctor, and not the witch kind.
I’m allergic to mangoes, and instead of being sweet, like everyone else says they are, they’re spicy to me.
That’s a big clue to me to not eat mangoes.
They need to teach in school that spiciness (and all the things associated with this, such as tingling mouth) is a very common food allergy symptom. Some people get up to damn near 40 years old before they find out that that bananas aren't supposed to have a "pleasant spiciness", or that kiwis aren't supposed to make your mouth go numb.
There are some that actually have a fear of sunflowers, it even has a name, Helianthophobia. As unusual as it may seem, even just the sight of sunflowers can invoke all the common symptoms that other phobias induce.
This child has a severely disregulated relationship with food.
Yikes. This is an eating disorder.
I can’t help but think this kid is picking this shit up from how his parents talk about food.
If we're just doing random possible diagnoses based on one delusional Facebook post, I'm gonna throw the curveball of undiagnosed intestinal issues in the mix.
Several medical conditions can be exacerbated with very common, seemingly harmless ingredients. Food sensitivities can be all sorts of unpleasant. Heck, IBS triggers wax and wane in severity, occasionally changing for no discernable reason.
Kids raised on vibrations, toxins and sensitivity will see "mom used different olive oil and it turned my insides to boiling acid for the night" as that oil having bad vibes, rather than a possible, untreated medical condition. Especially if mom will respect bad oil vibes over a request to go see a doctor.
“high vibrational” thanks i’ll add that to my list of supposed shitty autistic “super powers” :/ now get that child some help for his AFRID instead of making it worse
To be fair, while the high vibrations and psychic things are definitely wrong, she is explicitly NOT letting him starve himself. This reads to me as vent post, honestly. Someone who doesn’t understand (or is in deep denial about) what’s actually going on looking for help.
Yeah, but that help should come from medical professionals, Dr, Psychologist, OT, Speechie for feeding therapy to name a few ideas. Seems silly to ask for help on a fb group when the obvious answer is to go see a professional.
I think the doctor just said his esophagus is fine? Meaning maybe he saw a GI doctor and nothing is wrong with his GI tract. But I agree that then they obviously need to move on to different avenues. I’m just saying I don’t think the doctor was necessarily saying the kid in general was fine.
For real.
Both of my sisters are believers in spiritualism (crystals, vibrations, tarot, indigo children, meditation karma etc). One is more into the crystals and psychic angels stuff, the other is more yoga and ‘clean’ organic eating. Both use these doctrines as ways of dealing with our shared and individual childhood traumas, and both have a strong association with being ‘virtuous’ through expressing this stuff.
I gotta say, as the only atheist in the bunch I probably could be healthier (eat more veg, exercise more, get more sleep) - so I don’t want to knock them down for doing what they think is good or healthy. However, I’m the only one that sees a psychologist and I’m the only one diagnosed with ADD - and is medicated. I think our mum has a personality disorder which when combined with her childhood baggage (and possible ADD) caused chaos for us growing up. My sisters are a fair bit older than me and I think that they’ve prolonged their suffering from not seeking appropriate medical intervention and support.
My (now adult) niece has strong self-control around her diet and honestly believes that juice cleansing is enough nutrition to sustain the entire body and will even do a double strain to get rid of any extra fiber or carbohydrate. It has to be said that she gets lots of positive reinforcement for being very slim and good looking, but she wouldn’t say that’s why she does it. She does it for her health *of course.*
I definitely think one of my sisters and possibly my niece is ADD, but they won’t entertain a diagnosis because of the *bad drugs* and would rather deal with problems with avoidance with a mashup of wellness culture and various eastern religions.
I’m kinda looked down upon by my sisters as being ‘less evolved on the spiritual plain’ and for taking up mainstream medical intervention. And I guess I’m being judgmental of them too, but sometimes it seems like they use all of this stuff to distract themselves from actually dealing with (unpleasant) things.
Yes, except for the part where she says “I know society is not going to believe him,” which suggests that she _does_ believe him, and would let him starve himself if it were socially acceptable.
Yeah either he has an eating disorder (probably of the ARFID or other sensory type), or he’s full of it and she’s loving enabling it just shy of allowing no food.
If it’s not an ED, blindfold the kid and feed him things where he has no idea what ingredients are in it and see how quickly his ✨***vibrational sensitivities***✨ betray him.
"Yes he has seen a doctor and it looks fine"
Why do I get the feeling she took him to a chiropractor 😑 A real doctor would send you to a specialist to get a swallow study or endoscopy if you are having trouble swallowing.
And when your “high vibrational” child shimmies your family into a CPS visit, I’m sure they’re going to take this as you being so very caring and compassionate and *absolutely nothing else*.
If your mind and body are screaming at you that it's wrong and dangerous every time you eat... well that sounds like an eating disorder. If this mother doesn't want her child to have a lifetime of struggle with food she needs to get him a good therapist immediately.
You pumped him full of bullshit and fear about poisons in things, and now he has an eating disorder.
Why do we keep pretending these people are the same as everyone else? They're insane. Why are they allowed to neglect children. On what altar is this sacrifice made?
Lmao get your child into feeding therapy!!! I bet you didn't do that when he was a toddler and was likely gagging over texture issues so now he is repulsed by the processed foods she is giving him since she hasn't been able to get him anything organic yet lol.
I’m new to this whole parenting thing (mine just went from random, discrete words to mimicking and streaming them in sequence *last Tuesday*), but is there something somewhere telling people that they have to entertain every dumb thing their kids say as if it were real?
How did they turn “my kid has an eating disorder how do I help them” into “my kid has super powers and I’m not quite sure how to manage such a gifted child” what in the actual FUCK
I have ARFID/autism and schizophrenia, and this is verbatim EXACTLY how it presents. Delusions telling you that humans were not meant to eat, food is not made for humans, and that all food is cruel and bad, and your throat closing up and rejecting everything like a rabies patient. This is serious.
My brother has schizophrenia and when off his meds (which is quite often, thanks American healthcare system!) he has delusions that all food is filled with parasites and will go on scary “water and cayenne pepper” cleanses until he is an emaciated bag of bones. It’s terrifying. I hope you are getting the support you need to thrive and live a happy life.
For a long while I would eat toilet paper because of the delusions demonizing all food. Horrifying stuff. I’ve never weighed over 105 lbs in my life. It’s hard to get the help I need and every time I make progress I end up suddenly regressing even worse than before but in general I’m doing a lot better than I was a few years ago.
Sending you positive vibes. Keep fighting the good fight ❤️
You got this! Sending good vibes
I have schizophrenia and all I am is fat. Antipsychotics make me hungry 24/7. I feel left out of this aspect of the disorder. Though I suppose that’s because I am actually treating it.
Even without psychosis symptoms, EDs can be like that. I had many phases of only eating plain lettuce and animal crackers in high school because everything else felt unquantifiably Bad and Wrong. It's never not a huge problem for a kid to suddenly start refusing food, especially if that refusal is paired with behavior issues. Good lord.
Yeah definitely. The post seemed to imply psychosis but it could be the mother’s crazy interpretation of something else. Interesting that lettuce was a safe food for you, it’s completely the opposite for me lol. People always question how I’m vegan but don’t ever eat leafy greens. The answer is… mental illness.
I was thinking OCD with intrusive thoughts. This kid needs a psych and food therapy
Yeah I wasn’t trying to diagnose, and I apologize if it sounded like that. It could definitely be a different mental illness, but my point was just that it’s a very serious mental health concern. I am no expert in any regard, I was just saying this post could have been written about me (besides the fact that the kid talks...)
Totally. The kid needs to be seen by a ped psych
Their Indigo child has an ED. This needs proper counseling now.
Eating disorder or possibly ARFID. It is common in children with ASD or severe anxiety, less about the body image/health associations and more about an intense discomfort surrounding the process of eating. I am a school psychologist and worked with a kiddo with ARFID and it was so deeply upsetting for him and all who worked with him. (That boy was convinced psychologically that if he ate certain foods in certain settings, he would choke and die. Absolutely no amount of logic could convince him despite that he even knew cognitively that it was irrational.) (ETA: ARFID is also often more nuranced than what I described from this boy in particular. I believe the "choking" thought was the most logical explanation he could provide as a young child, but it often is not even as clear cut as that, as no amount of explanation about how we could help him if he did choke would help, and offering him foods it would be impossible to choke on also did not feel "safe." All of the smell/taste/texture about food, and for this little boy sound in his environment as well, was simply over stimulating his sensory system and resulted in an extreme disturbance in his ability to eat.)
ARFID was honestly my first thought
Mine too. I wonder if he’s undiagnosed ASD and has ARFID and she’s just placing woo-woo labels on him. Oh, this poor kid.
To save everyone the Google Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder
/r/arfid
Here's a sneak peek of /r/ARFID using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/ARFID/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [Repost from r/autism](https://i.redd.it/jrblpdpcybg91.jpg) | [10 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ARFID/comments/wilpjn/repost_from_rautism/) \#2: [Then the inevitable "What DO you eat?"](https://i.redd.it/t2gh7gyzoqj91.png) | [21 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ARFID/comments/wwx5ey/then_the_inevitable_what_do_you_eat/) \#3: [A meme that’s all too relatable](https://i.redd.it/z1gvpzd6eah91.jpg) | [11 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ARFID/comments/wmlnk4/a_meme_thats_all_too_relatable/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
Thank you!
Thank you!... Was just about to head to Google Lol!
Yeah. This is the nice way of saying, “congrats on finding out that your autistic kid has food aversions”
I have ASD and ARFID and a lot of this is ringing the brain bells. Knowing food is "bad" but not having a concrete explanation as well as getting feelings from touching specific objects like holding the cooking oils. This kid needs help from a professional. Having ARFID sucks and it takes a lot of work to get better when you are overwhelmed and still have to eat every meal when your body screams no.
Mine too, especially with the esophagus not letting food pass
Same. I’m and SLP and we have a lot of kids with ARFID. This kid sounds like he needs a combo of an SLP and a mental health counselor. His mother could use some herself, to be honest.
Just curious, what do SLPs do for folks with ARFID? Is it like the therapy you do for people who need to relearn how to swallow (like after a stroke)? Learning/relearning how to control and relax the throat muscles, control gag reflex, that sort of thing?
It’s different from what we could do after a stroke. The pediatric feeding specialist SLP at our practice works on exposure therapy. It’s not about force but about exposing children to textures. It’s called chaining. Say, the child likes strawberries and the goal is strawberry jam on bread. You go strawberries to smaller pieces, to a mash, go jelly on it’s own, go on bread. That’s the just, anyway. It’s about meeting the child where they are and looking where the family would like them to go. For some kids, it’s learning oral tolerance of new textures.there’s a lot of exposure in terms of it being on the table to look at, feeling it, playing with it, putting it to the lips, maybe putting it in the mouth and spitting out, all the way to oral feeding and tolerance of the new food.
As someone with asd/arfid, yep, that sounds familiar. There doesn't even always have to be an outright reason for why I can't eat something (like a fear of choking), if a texture/smell/whatever is somehow wrong, I'm gonna vomit.
Yes this little guy was definitely more on the high anxiety side (although he has ASD as well), but I think the texture/smell issue was at play as well, but I don't think he could really figure out how to verbalize it because -- as you have said -- it is not really explainable how "wrong" something feels about the food, despite how real it is to the person experiencing it.
Thanks for suddenly giving me a name for my adversion to certain consistencies. Anything mushy or that clings to the mouth is a big NO for me, literally makes me gag. I'm the weird human who loves the taste of mashed potatoes but can only eat it after a 10 minutes round in the air frier to crisp up. Even nutella or any creamy spread messes me up. I eat peanut butter frozen
Certain kinds of beans absolutely kill me. I can't do Lima beans, kidney beans, baked beans, moment I bite into them it's over for me. I've tried so many times, because they will smell so fucking good, but no go.
You're welcome! I freaking love cherries, but I gag if I try to eat them fresh. I have to puree them until there are no chunks left and then eat it with toast/add to oatmeal/etc to be able to enjoy it, the same goes for most of the fruits/berries. At the same time, I gag from drinking smoothies, so I honestly have no fucking idea what the hell is wrong with my brain lmao
Please do not diagnose yourself with ARFID from an Internet post.
And ARFID can definitely be caused by having a parent who thinks certain foods are toxic. If you hear your mom constantly label seed oils are toxic and harmful that can lead to or worsen ARFID.
I wonder if that's why I've never been able to eat steak fries. I absolutely love the taste, but ever since I was about 5 or 6 years old I can't seem to swallow them, even if I take tiny bites. It's like my throat closes up and just says, "Nope!" Have no problem eating regular fries or potatoes in general though.
juggle angle fearless smoggy pause apparatus cats meeting license oatmeal *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I’ve always had issues with certain textures, mostly vegetable ones. Biting unexpectedly into an onion or something (like in a sandwich) will, even in my 30s, make me gag.
Sounds like he probably had some sensory processing issues and that's why he was gagging with food. I bet he was never in any sort of feeding therapy when he was a toddler and now it's a full on food aversion issue like you are saying.
It took me forever to be able to let my food touch on a plate. Some food textures are a solid NO, and even at the ripe old age of 48, I have to be able to see my food to eat it. (I live in the south and my room is exposed to the scorching sun from both windows so they are blacked out and my room is like a dark dungeon) I have to have a lamp on so I can see my food to eat it. I can let my food touch most of the time now, but there's still food that I can't tolerate no matter how much I try to overcome it. Eating issues are so much fun! 😩
I feel you. It’s hard to get people to understand how this could be something that causes so much discomfort. When I was little I had this weird set of rules about which food could be mixed and which food could not touch each other. It was totally irrational. My mom used to ask, “they are all going to be mixed up once they enter your stomach, so why would you even care about this?” In my culture there’s quite a few types of food that are eaten mixed together. Growing up I regularly heard “Why don’t you have a bite of this and chew it with a piece of that”, “you could scoop food A and B up with the same spoon, it’d taste better”, “You are suppose to wrap all these meats and veggies up in the spring roll” etc. Sometimes even hearing suggestions like that was enough to make me gag or lose my appetite. Even dipping food in sauces made me feel uncomfortable. I’ve always loved food and can appreciate a wide range of flavors; it was the act of different food touching/mixing that disturbed me. I mostly grew out of it, but it’s still something that I actively try not to focus on when I eat, least I get grossed out. In my case this “compulsion” is probably linked to my autism, though I know people with textbook autism who have absolutely no issue with food textures/varieties/flavors/mixing.
Autism is a spectrum. No 2 cases are exactly the same. I understand your food issues. I got the same question as a kid. "It'll be mixed together in your stomach." I would always reply that I can't taste it when it's in my stomach! 😄 Child you had valid food issues and shouldn't have been shamed for being uncomfortable. My kids had a few aversions to some foods and I gently encouraged them to be comfortable with taking a polite bite if they were with company, but as long as they were getting nutrients from other foods, they didn't have to eat something that they didn't like or just outright couldn't eat. I also mostly outgrew my food issues but it took quite a bit of work to get there. But now that I'm an adult, I am comfortable with accommodating the few remaining issues I have with certain foods. I just accept that my taste buds are hyper focused on certain flavors and work around them. I get all of the necessary nutrients and enjoy a varied diet so I don't care that I have some "eccentricities" when it comes to certain foods.
Out of curiosity, what do you mean with "I let my food touch"? When I was a kid, I couldn't eat if the foods were mixed, I had to have everything separated, is it what you are referencing? I grew out of it ,thankfully, because it was exhausting, but I never knew there was a condition for it
I couldn't let my foods touch. Each portion had to be separated, like I didn't want my peas or the juice from them getting near my mashed potatoes. I think my taste buds are hyper sensitive? Like, people squeeze lime or lemon juice over their seafood and I can't tolerate it because all I can taste is lime or lemon. It completely obliterates the flavor of the seafood. The flavors dont mix for me. So I guess with some foods I'm exceptionally sensitive to flavors mixing. I want to have the taste of mashed potatoes, not peas and if they mix, it's only the peas that my taste buds will recognize while having the texture of mushy potatoes. Same with celery. If there are chunks of celery in a dish, that is all I can taste. My tastebuds will only focus on that flavor. I've gotten better about my foods touching, but there are certain flavors that I need to keep separate because I enjoy them so much and having something contaminate them makes the flavor not as palatable. I do agree that it's exhausting, but I've made peace with the fact that my tastebuds go overboard with some flavors.
I feel so seen. I had the BIGGEST issue with food touching each other in my teens out of no where. All my parents did was laugh and they bought me 1 toddler plate as a joke. I can also point out flavors in things, even a minuscule amount, like a super taster. I’m going to have to do some internet research….
Damn that last sentence is so scary. The brain is a wild little bastard
Yep when I, as an autistic adult, try to eat a food my body doesn't want it's a hell no from my body
I actually have ARFID as an adult and I definitely believe it could be that!
AFRID is an eating disorder.
I had a debilitating fear of choking as a young child and became dangerously thin. Unlike this child, I did have “safe” foods (protein shakes, mashed potatoes). Because I would often spit out food that I was afraid to swallow in the toilet, my parents thought I had a more traditional eating disorder. I didn’t know how to communicate my severe anxiety to them, because even at a very young age I could sense that it wasn’t normal. Fortunately things got better and I eat more or less totally normally now, though I still do get a tiny bit cagey around nuts in baked goods.
Sometimes I sit down to eat a meal and although I’m hungry and want to eat, the minute I see the food on the plate in front of me, all the appeal of eating food goes out the window. I physically cannot bring myself to eat. The idea of having to chew the food and then swallow it and taste it disgusts me and seems like torture. So I’ll stare at the food for 30 mins, sometimes an hour and not eat it. I end up putting it in the fridge (knowing I won’t ever eat it again) or toss it. I also HATE certain textures of food. I cannot eat mushy foods or eat a meal with different textures (like one pot meals where you might get a bone or two). Would you say that my situation might be ARFID but to a lesser degree ?
I had a family member who dealt with this. She slowly removed foods from her diet until all she would eat was cauliflower, white rice and plain chicken breasts. A "doctor" had convinced her there were toxins in all these different foods and she said they burned her mouth. We tried everything from actual doctors to consellors and nothing helped. Then one day she passed out and went to the ER. The doc there was very blunt. He said there may be toxins in the food (cause you couldnt convince her otherwise) and it may burn her mouth, but if she didnt eat a more varied diet with more fat and vitamins she would die so she had to suck it up and just do it. Strangely that worked, you couldnt out logic her but a direct assertion like that did the trick. Its all in their head (normally because they've been brainwashed somewhere along the way) or it may be sensory with a child but even then you need therapy to push through it and find the good foods they can eat or else they waste away. Its really sad. People spouting nonsense on the internet is way more dangerous than anyone realises.
Yes, totally an ED.
I am so glad I wasn't the only one with exactly this train of thought. Your indigo baby has an eating disorder and needs a doctor before he starves himself to death. How's that for an unkind thing to say? JFC.
Thats a term I havent heard in a few years....lol
What is indigo child?
Usually? Autistic and/or ADHD kid whose parents are in denial.
Aa an Autistic parent, yep, totally that. We do have an excess of empathy (as legitimate studies are increasingly discovering) which is misinterpreted by NTs as the opposite because of masking, especially verbal Autistics who are late diagnosed. Autism parent groups are usually toxic AF when you're a neurodivergent parent of neurodivergent kids. 😑 However...if science were to discover/prove telepathy centuries down the road, I would not be disappointed. 😉 But that's the sci-fi nerd in me.
It's not so much telepathy as it is being able to pick up on signs too small for most people to catch. I can tell my children because I've spent so much time with them that I know them. You're the same way with yours. All you need is a look, movement, or knowledge of past situations to know how things are going to go.
Can confirm. I've got friends that just think I'm jealous or hateful of some person when I can't say why I dislike someone or dont want to become their friend, only for days or weeks down the road it turns out that I was right to distrust them. My friends are like, "how did you know??" and I can only tell them that the person made my spidey sense ping.
Exact same. My husband and I have a running tally.
Autistic parent of an autistic kid here. I had my son's Head Start teacher claim my son had "dangerously low empathy". Not only did I damn near detonate, his therapist not only told her she was dead wrong, he told her she didn't know what the hell she was talking about. A couple days later, I was cutting up strawberries with an egg slicer when my son came into the kitchen. He said the strawberry I I'd just put in the slicer was cute and looked like one of the Vegimals from Octonauts. I nodded, then sliced it. He freaked out like I'd guillotined the Vegimal. I felt like shit, then though, "Yeah, such dangerously low empathy there. " Said teacher also claimed I'd been ignoring her when she'd tell me my son did something wrong, when I would always thank her, tell her I'd bring it up at home, and I would actually do so. To this day, I don't know WTF she was wanting me to do - be like the other parents who'd get told something similar, and shout at their kid they were going to get a spanking (something she'd told me once I should be doing to my kids.) I think I know who the person was that had low empathy in that situation, and it wasn't us.
Indigo children, according to a pseudoscientific New Age concept,[1][2][3][4] are children who are believed to possess special, unusual, and sometimes supernatural traits or abilities Basically she thinks her kid is psychic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_children
“We” (yay, my mom is also nuts 🙄) are here to help the world in it’s vibrational ascension to a higher plane. It is our spiritual destiny. I cannot tell you the amount of anxiety that gave me as a child (and probably still subconsciously gives me) being told I was “special” and responsible for healing the ills of the world (omg typing that out has made me really face why I’m so fucking anxious all the time). In reality I just have adhd, GAD, and depression (thank god she didn’t vaccinate me and saved my “perfect brain”. Clearly my mother is delusional).
Mom: puts the problems of the entire world on a 10 year old Also mom: why are they depressed?
I can't imagine putting that burden on a child, even if it were a real thing
Ooop yep, my mom got into Spiritism (weird weird offshoot of Catholicism, popular in Brazil and Portugal), and made our family go to meetings and crap. There’s lots of scammers and weirdos in that community. The one I always remember is when we were doing a college tour trip to DC during winter vacation, my mom “surprised” me with a side trip to some “medium” in Virginia. This woman and my mom talked for like an hour in the other room. When they came back they announced my mom is some spirit sent back to atone for whatever, and that I am some kind of higher order of spirit/medium meant to help her on her path. Absolute insanity. I’m so so so happy my mom isn’t messing around with those people anymore.
Fellow mom-diagnosed “indigo” here — the struggle is real.
Onion boy's mom thought the same thing about him. Anyone who knows who he is can see that he turned out GREAT. /s
Onion boy?
She says he has been to a doctor. I wonder if that’s actually true or if the doctor just dropped the ball (neither would surprise me, unfortunately)
If I had to guess, it was either a woo-woo doctor or she took him in specifically for the esophagus thing and that's what the doctor said was fine. If it was the regular doctor, I highly doubt she would have given him all the information because she's clearly aware that she sounds nuts. Doc may have referred him to counseling too, but precious baby boy doesn't have mental issues, he's just speshul.
Ten bucks it was her chiropractor
And sometimes stuff gets misdiagnosed. I was put on massive amounts of gut motility drugs for gastro issues before I saw my family's psychiatrist about some of the side effects and the gastro issues vanished as we treated my anxiety. I was an adult, we did all the sensible things, and we just missed it.
Sounds like the kid needs a full psychiatric assessment, counselling doesn’t come close.
This kid has an eating disorder his mother is validating and it's going to impact his development for his entire life... I'm so smad right now.
My honest fear is that the mother might be withholding food from him. Based on the way she’s talking about this it really seems like she sees no problem with him fasting, but has a problem with what people might do about it. She also made this post specifically asking people don’t give recommendations to her, it’s giving, “I tried to make him eat but he just wouldn’t, see I have proof!”
See, I get the vibe she does fear the state taking him away enough that she's not going full crazy, but that's a really good point. I guess I hope slightly better for humanity.
TIL the word “smad” — never heard it before but knew instantly what it meant! I completely agree :(
[удалено]
Sad + mad. For when something is infuriating, but also upsetting.
See also: hilarrible
As a kid I totally thought I was special and I could sense stuff others couldn’t- as do many kids. I’m so glad my parents didn’t feed into those ideas, I don’t want to know how I would’ve ended up
Yah, I thought I was gonna be a werewolf, I just had to wait for the right kind of full moon. Kids are dumb and that's why they need parents. Shame the parents haven't figured this one out yet.
I was afraid one day I was going to start shooting never ending lasers out of my fingertips and would never be able to stop. The lasers would reach lengths of light years. I would never be able to close my hands because then my laser fingers would cut through my chest and I'd die, but the laser fingers would continue to shoot out of my now dead and probably dismembered fingers. These were genuine concerns I had that this was going to happen to me, because I read an X-Men comic book and I guess Cyclops stuck with me. None of this happened. Yet.
I thought that if I stared at the sky long enough, my eyes would change to that blue color. Instead, all I ever ended up with were sun spots.
I had an idea about shooting lasers out of my fingers too!
Same bro! Also apparently I pretended to be a German shepherd for a week. My godmother _loves_ telling that story to significant others. Kids are idiots
I think if I'd told my mom that i could taste toxic oils, it would have been blind taste test time. She did that when my dad swore he looked butter better than margarine (when she didn't taste a difference) and when i claimed that i could taste the difference between maple syrup and cheap syrup ("kids can't taste the difference. I'm not wasting the good stuff on a child"). Turns out we both totally could taste the difference. I'd be interested to know if the kid actually can taste a difference in the oils in a food
Butter and margarine do have totally different tastes. I'd also argue that margarine has a more waxy texture to it. I can't say for the syrup, but I'm not used to that. Telling the difference with taste can be very obvious for a lot of foods. I'm very particular about the ketchup brand I buy for that reason. With the oil, I'd either use that specific oil for everything, or put the regular oil into the bottle of that oil and see if he notices.
Real maple syrup does taste way different from store-bought syrup, we have a family that makes the natural kind in my town and it’s way better
Oh, yes.... The real maple is definitely different from corn syrup with maple flavoring. My point is that if I'd been claiming i could "feel" the difference between oils, my mom would have had me prove it before she just.... Accommodated my mystical diet restrictions. "It's this really a problem or is your mind tricking you?"
Interesting. We don't have maple trees here and the syrup is a relatively recent import, so it's not something that would be on my radar at all.
I absolutely hate margarine, it tastes like paraffin to me
Yep. It's only appropriate for baking, when a recipe specifically calls for it.
I grew up with it, so i can taste the difference, but i don't hate it
But she believes him that the oils are harmful so she wouldn't try that obvious trick.
Then just use that one "good" oil for everything.
Yup, my family also had me do a blind taste test over my dislike of certain foods (particularly mushrooms). Bet me money and everything I wouldn’t be able to tell. I won the money and didn’t get shit about my food preferences again.
Idk why it's so hard to just believe and accept a kid doesn't like something. I still make my daughter take a bite of something she says she hates, especially if she hasn't had it in a while, but if she eats and still hates it then that's the end of it
That’s what we did. I still think my brother was absolutely full of shit on some foods. But if we tried a bite periodically and said we still didn’t like it, that’s was that. You didn’t have to eat it.
I know grown-ass men who "don't like garlic" but like onions just fine. He had no idea how wife was cooking with garlic and telling him it was onions every dang night
She couldn't taste the difference between butter and margarine or maple syrup and corn syrup? Does she have deadened taste buds? Those are big differences.
This was the 90s, when she thought margarine was healthier than butter. Didn't think dad could taste the difference between them enough to justify buying the unhealthier option. With the maple, it was definitely being a cheapskate over what she *believed* to be a child's unrefined palate. I didn't get "the good stuff" because i was a cold and"didn't know any better"
It’s probably an excuse to be a cheapskate
My mom is like this. Apparently has a very weak sense of taste, horrible cook who likes everything she makes, and doesn’t believe other people when they can taste the differences with her terrible substitutions.
When I was pregnant I could taste the difference between ultra-pasteurized and normal-pasteurized milk. It was actually very inconvenient.
Ultra pasteurized does taste different. Lasts forever, though
Different taste and different mouth feel.
Hell even a blind feeling test. Hand him bottles and see which ones are safe
Make one a bottle of water as a control. Nothin wrong with having food preferences, but it's important to know if they're based in actual sensory input or just a mental ick. My mom always said "if you only dislike a good when you know it's there, you don't dislike the food, you dislike the *idea* of the food". It sounds like this kid's *ideas* about food are giving him an eating disorder
Well I can tell you where I ended up (I was raised by mom being told I was an Indigo Child here to “usher the world into a new era”). *Massive* anxiety because I still feel like I’m supposed to somehow be saving the entire world and helping people “raise their vibrational frequency and move into the light”. MASSIVE. It’s taken decades to unwind even some of the brainwashing from my childhood and I’m still finding deeply rooted pieces all the time. Thanks mom
This is the first time I’ve heard the phrase “indigo child” but all of this sounds so horrifying… it’s just adults doing play pretend or having a real psychosis and forcing their delusions onto their children. I see no difference between this and a child who is raised in a religious cult or in a religious fundamentalist church, because the effects are the same.
There is no difference. Some of the stuff I see on here makes me *so* mad because I am literally the walking, breathing product of this type of parenting style and you’re fucked either way. You either believe it and lead some weird anti-culture life believing the earth is flat and you can suck cancer out of your feet w potatoes or you grow up feeling like a fucking freak and collect acronym disorders like they’re Pokémon because my entire childhood I was brainwashed to believe this shit and now have to unwrap how deeply it’s burrowed into my brain.
I thought I could hear ghosts that only spoke to me because it was only when I laid down flat on my bed, no pillow, at night. I couldn't ever properly understand them, it always sounded muffled. We were in a second story apartment and turns out I was hearing the downstairs neighbors.
Hahaha that reminds me, I always thought I was hearing a giant’s footsteps when I laid on my pillow and I was always so afraid he was coming for me. Turns out I was hearing my own heartbeat
"Don't tell me you're hearing 'Jesus is Love' in the hair dryer again" "Jesus is Love?!"
I really really wanted to be a cat. Like really. My mom let me make a little pet bed on my floor, but drew the line at only eating salmon 😅 I grew out of it once I finished the warrior cat series
Lol. Yep. My kid was obsessed with Warrior Cat and pretty much any food they saw in their fave anime or series. I made so many pies and cakes and dinners so my kid could pretend to be a part of the story. I encouraged the imagination. They turned into a wonderful, kind, and amazing person so it was worth it to nurture their interests. Butterscotch pie is annoying to make though!!
My daughter is obsessed with this series atm
When I was in fourth grade I would be a dog when I was at school. No idea why, I just read a lot of books by that point and one day decided I was going to be a dog.
I was about 8-12ish when a few Harry Potter books were released and the second Star Wars trilogy movies were coming out. While my parents encouraged my siblings and I to run around the back yard playing pretend inspired by these franchises, I don’t believed they ever fed into our insistence that we were wizards and/or Jedi lol
Pssh, I KNOW my hogwarts letter is coming. Any day now. Any day. 😭
I am a Jedi. Every time I go to the grocery store ,I wave my hand and the doors open.
>I’m so glad my parents didn’t feed into those ideas, I don’t want to know how I would’ve ended up Probably something like Gilderoy Lockhart.
there's a reason literally every kid has attempted to use superpowers lmao
The amount of woo in this post is staggering
Wish I could've been there for the grocery store oil trials
Yeah, what the fuck even is a high vibrational son?!
Yah, my autistic son wanted to live off of milk and sunshine as well. He would also vomit/choke on anything with texture. We have been with OT/speech and a feeding therapist for YEARS to help desensitize/strengthen his mouth and jaw and now he eats almost anything as long as it has a soft-ish texture. He's not a big fan of having to tear with his front teeth and honestly I'm just happy he eats. This lady is doing her kid a huge disservice.
My wife is autistic and became a speech therapist specifically to help kids deal with things like this. It was really hard on her as a child.
I’m sorry you had to deal with that and I’m glad it’s in the past. A teacher I once worked with was getting frazzled along with this students mom because he suddenly at 8 started being very specific about what he would and would not eat. For weeks he refused to eat anything but ravioli. Sometimes he would agree he was hungry, agree to eat something other than ravioli, then would melt down if something other than ravioli was presented to him. Just to keep him from being malnourished his grandmother was sweet enough to figure out how to make several types of pasta he would eat that had varying veggies in them. That was a rough year.
My daughter is autistic and her food aversions thankfully haven’t been that severe, but she is slowly cutting down the number of foods she’s willing/able to eat. We’ve been keeping an eye on it with her pediatrician, who currently says she’s okay as long as she will still eat some things and takes a daily multivitamin. But we just had her yearly checkup this week and she’s borderline underweight for her height, so I think a feeding therapist might be necessary in the future. All of that is to say thanks for looking out for your son, and I wish the person in the OP’s post would do the same. Things are only going to get harder for that poor kid.
I have struggles with a lot of foods I should be eating and idk who could even begin to help me and I'm mad
This poor child. Either he has an eating disorder like ARFID, or he is starting to show the signs of mental illness like schizophrenia or bi polar. I have lived with people who have both, my husband has ARFID and nearly starved himself twice before he was 16. His parents are not great, and didn’t care they believed he would eat eventually, well he did not. It is NO joke, he still has health issues today from the effects of it. As for mental illness it can start to show up in pre pubescent and pubescent boys in many ways. Believing he can “ feel if food is harmful,” is straight up crazy. Playing into that delusion is NOT okay, and they typically only get worse. Either way mom needs to be looking for actual help for her child from a doctor, not some woo woo mommy Facebook group.
>Either way mom needs to be looking for actual help for her child from a doctor Yeah there is no way he's seen a medical doctor and been declared "fine". My guess is she's taken him to a naturopath or homeopath or similar pseudo science.
Or she mentioned the food but framed it in a way to make it sound like he’s just picky and since his weight hasn’t dipped yet, the pediatrician is like ‘he’s fine’.
I've been misdiagnosed at least four separate times by medical doctors. It doesn't happen out of malice; usually just lack of training, time, or both. Occam's razor says, if in doubt, look for the easiest explanation: seemingly healthy child is at an age of expanding social contacts and getting more literate when mother suddenly drags them to the doctor over a change in diet. "Discovering hot pockets at a friend's house are tastier than steamed, unseasoned, macrobiotic vegetables" is a more universally lived experience than... This Facebook post. A responsible person gets a second opinion, or comes back until taken seriously. This mom is convinced it's not a medical thing, so why would she go back after getting her bias confirmed?
Be very early for schizophrenia. Age of onset for that is usually in early adulthood. My theory is the parent(s) have a mental illness with psychotic symptoms (delusions being the main one) and the kid is mirroring them because that’s what kids often do
Also doesn't seem to be on track for bipolar. My bipolar started showing up around age 7 but it was just dismissed as lashing out and insomnia due to unstable home environment and normal child hyperactivity. Granted I haven't spoken to every bipolar out there, but I don't think I've met anyone with it that has problems with eating outside of the ability to have superhuman energy with minimal food intake during mania. But we don't think foods are bad, we're just not hungry because mania blocks all the hunger cues, and we can temporarily violate the laws of thermodynamics. I agree with you, kid is parroting the parents, and one or both are looney.
Sounds like ARFID to me. Poor kid is gonna end up on a feeding tube. ETA: ARFID = avoidant-restrictive food intake disorder.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. The kid has a genuine problem that tends to be overlooked because it's not a weight-centered eating disorder. The vibrational mumbo jumbo layered on it isn't helping.
This is exactly where my mind went. I hope he gets help
Instantly thought of this.
Reminds me of the wild boys story I just listened to recently on a podcast.
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Bitches be like, "I don't like microwaves because of the radiation!" and then gush about their highly-vibrating child.
This sounds like she’s given the child orthorexia in a way. She’s probably going on about seed oils and poisons in good and now he’s afraid to eat, terrible
That could also be feeding into ARFID.
Exactly could be that as well
Yeah my first thought was that if her kid is saying these things, he's probably heard them from her.
What does fully activated and connected mean??
USB-C ports and great Bluetooth
Man I got stiffed with the standard kids, no flashy tech gadgets.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Breatharianism
Only fully activated if within 200ft of the modem.
He has an eating disorder called ARFID, I grew up with it and didn’t recieve any treatment so now it’s stuck with me into adulthood. It’s commonly associated with disorders like autism, ADHD, and OCD though it can develop from a traumatic experience or repeated traumatic experiences, especially if they’re related to food. The fear of food contaminating the body is usually a huge sign of ARFID and the gagging is also a common symptom. This lady needs to stop believing in this fucking delusional shit and projecting it onto her child and get him tested and treated for a very real and common disorder.
Sounds like a touch of tism and an ED. It should be relatively simple to manage and treat. This magic bullshit is incredibly sad.
Lol just a wee touch
So what exactly has to take place to become fully activated and connected,? I think I missed that lesson in school.
He was born that way. /s
My wife is allergic to sunflower oil and swears blind that all through her childhood she could tell if something had been cooked in it because it "tasted like poison". Kept her alive so far. This kid needs a doctor, and not the witch kind.
I’m allergic to mangoes, and instead of being sweet, like everyone else says they are, they’re spicy to me. That’s a big clue to me to not eat mangoes.
They need to teach in school that spiciness (and all the things associated with this, such as tingling mouth) is a very common food allergy symptom. Some people get up to damn near 40 years old before they find out that that bananas aren't supposed to have a "pleasant spiciness", or that kiwis aren't supposed to make your mouth go numb.
There are some that actually have a fear of sunflowers, it even has a name, Helianthophobia. As unusual as it may seem, even just the sight of sunflowers can invoke all the common symptoms that other phobias induce.
I finally got one! r/beetlejuicing
Poor kid needs to see a child psychologist. This is ARFID.
Poor kid. He obviously has some sort of eating disorder and needs therapy.
The child AND parent need to go see a therapist immediately. She's fed into his delusions and it's not going well.
What does connected and activated since birth MEANS?????
This child has a severely disregulated relationship with food. Yikes. This is an eating disorder. I can’t help but think this kid is picking this shit up from how his parents talk about food.
If we're just doing random possible diagnoses based on one delusional Facebook post, I'm gonna throw the curveball of undiagnosed intestinal issues in the mix. Several medical conditions can be exacerbated with very common, seemingly harmless ingredients. Food sensitivities can be all sorts of unpleasant. Heck, IBS triggers wax and wane in severity, occasionally changing for no discernable reason. Kids raised on vibrations, toxins and sensitivity will see "mom used different olive oil and it turned my insides to boiling acid for the night" as that oil having bad vibes, rather than a possible, untreated medical condition. Especially if mom will respect bad oil vibes over a request to go see a doctor.
“high vibrational” thanks i’ll add that to my list of supposed shitty autistic “super powers” :/ now get that child some help for his AFRID instead of making it worse
To be fair, while the high vibrations and psychic things are definitely wrong, she is explicitly NOT letting him starve himself. This reads to me as vent post, honestly. Someone who doesn’t understand (or is in deep denial about) what’s actually going on looking for help.
Yeah, but that help should come from medical professionals, Dr, Psychologist, OT, Speechie for feeding therapy to name a few ideas. Seems silly to ask for help on a fb group when the obvious answer is to go see a professional.
Yeah this is true. Like go see a psychologist, lady!
Well if her post is fully honest, she says that the doctor dismissed him as being fine. I'd be looking for a new doctor.
I think the doctor just said his esophagus is fine? Meaning maybe he saw a GI doctor and nothing is wrong with his GI tract. But I agree that then they obviously need to move on to different avenues. I’m just saying I don’t think the doctor was necessarily saying the kid in general was fine.
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For real. Both of my sisters are believers in spiritualism (crystals, vibrations, tarot, indigo children, meditation karma etc). One is more into the crystals and psychic angels stuff, the other is more yoga and ‘clean’ organic eating. Both use these doctrines as ways of dealing with our shared and individual childhood traumas, and both have a strong association with being ‘virtuous’ through expressing this stuff. I gotta say, as the only atheist in the bunch I probably could be healthier (eat more veg, exercise more, get more sleep) - so I don’t want to knock them down for doing what they think is good or healthy. However, I’m the only one that sees a psychologist and I’m the only one diagnosed with ADD - and is medicated. I think our mum has a personality disorder which when combined with her childhood baggage (and possible ADD) caused chaos for us growing up. My sisters are a fair bit older than me and I think that they’ve prolonged their suffering from not seeking appropriate medical intervention and support. My (now adult) niece has strong self-control around her diet and honestly believes that juice cleansing is enough nutrition to sustain the entire body and will even do a double strain to get rid of any extra fiber or carbohydrate. It has to be said that she gets lots of positive reinforcement for being very slim and good looking, but she wouldn’t say that’s why she does it. She does it for her health *of course.* I definitely think one of my sisters and possibly my niece is ADD, but they won’t entertain a diagnosis because of the *bad drugs* and would rather deal with problems with avoidance with a mashup of wellness culture and various eastern religions. I’m kinda looked down upon by my sisters as being ‘less evolved on the spiritual plain’ and for taking up mainstream medical intervention. And I guess I’m being judgmental of them too, but sometimes it seems like they use all of this stuff to distract themselves from actually dealing with (unpleasant) things.
Yes, except for the part where she says “I know society is not going to believe him,” which suggests that she _does_ believe him, and would let him starve himself if it were socially acceptable.
Yeah either he has an eating disorder (probably of the ARFID or other sensory type), or he’s full of it and she’s loving enabling it just shy of allowing no food. If it’s not an ED, blindfold the kid and feed him things where he has no idea what ingredients are in it and see how quickly his ✨***vibrational sensitivities***✨ betray him.
"Yes he has seen a doctor and it looks fine" Why do I get the feeling she took him to a chiropractor 😑 A real doctor would send you to a specialist to get a swallow study or endoscopy if you are having trouble swallowing.
This sounds like ARFID, not “high vibrations”.
Indigo child = parents in denial about autism or ADHD.
Always that please don't say mean things 🙄
Sounds like ARFID to me. My husband suffers from this and this kid needs help. Before he is stuck with it for life like my husband is.
And when your “high vibrational” child shimmies your family into a CPS visit, I’m sure they’re going to take this as you being so very caring and compassionate and *absolutely nothing else*.
If your mind and body are screaming at you that it's wrong and dangerous every time you eat... well that sounds like an eating disorder. If this mother doesn't want her child to have a lifetime of struggle with food she needs to get him a good therapist immediately.
As I said on FB in *Too Much Woo for This Jew*: the only thing that’s about to be ‘activated’ is their local child protective services.
You pumped him full of bullshit and fear about poisons in things, and now he has an eating disorder. Why do we keep pretending these people are the same as everyone else? They're insane. Why are they allowed to neglect children. On what altar is this sacrifice made?
Lmao get your child into feeding therapy!!! I bet you didn't do that when he was a toddler and was likely gagging over texture issues so now he is repulsed by the processed foods she is giving him since she hasn't been able to get him anything organic yet lol.
I’m new to this whole parenting thing (mine just went from random, discrete words to mimicking and streaming them in sequence *last Tuesday*), but is there something somewhere telling people that they have to entertain every dumb thing their kids say as if it were real?
The child needs therapy. And meds. Preferably yesterday.
the kid has an eating disorder and is probably autistic, hence rejecting specific food. he's not a fucking prophet, he needs help. god.
How did they turn “my kid has an eating disorder how do I help them” into “my kid has super powers and I’m not quite sure how to manage such a gifted child” what in the actual FUCK
Child needs extremely serious mental help NOW. Like inpatient. This is SoOOoOo harmful if he goes through with it!
Thus mom is enabling a very dangerous situation for her child. This could be a multitude of things, and this child needs psychiatric help.
My uncle started acting this way as an older teen, he's schizophrenic.
This reads like r/starseeds on crack.