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Yep! We keep Gatorade around for if we are sick. That shit is in my closet until someone is sick!
Things also got a lot easier when my older son wanted to get a job at 15. He now buys all his snacks and eats dinner at work a lot. He works at Chuck E Cheese, and he LOVES IT. He is high functioning autistic and he is always given the parties with special needs kids. He is so good he gets ripped 100s regularly.
When he gets a whole bill as a tip, he offers to buy pizza or fast food for all of us.
It will get better, OP. I'm so sorry to hear the mental load of poverty is mostly being put on you. That is a really, really heavy load I also carried being a single mom for 13 years. I'm finally remarried. You're gonna make it 🙌🏻❤️
I’m a 40-something woman, but I’m very jealous of your son’s job LOL. I always wanted to work at CEC. I had my bday parties there into my 20s, and still drag my (now adult) daughter to go play the games. I had no idea the party people got tipped.
This is the way. My 15m will snack and snack and snack. Now there's fruit, cut up veg and cereal bars for snack. The good stuff stays in my car and doled out 1 per evening as dessert
I literally don’t buy snacks. Snacks are not a necessity. If they cannot control themselves, then just stop buying them. Especially since they’re complaining about “no food”.
There's always popcorn kernels. OPs family can use the stove or the microwave to make popcorn, and the additional time and prep it takes to make it could cut down on mindless eating.
That’s what I do, and it’s the tastiest way! Sooo crunchy :D (to make it extra crunchy just lift the lid a millimeter a few times to vent out the steam while it’s popping).
I have a collapsible silicone one that doesnt require any oil, but you can use it if you want. I love it, its easy. For my 18 year old great-nephew that lives here, its too much trouble. So, like OP, I get the, *no food in the house,* thing all the time. Since everything is something you have to make.
Thats the nice thing about the popcorn kernels, you get to customize and create flavors yourself. If snacking has become a subconscious hobby, having to create your own snack will take up a good chunk of time that might have otherwise been spent scrolling and eating. It's also probably going to be more fun.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/is-hot-food-more-filling-than-cold-food
This one may be paywalled: https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article/47/4/523/5815985
I recommend popcorn kernels (and not prepopped popcorn or microwave bags) because they're a more involved way to make popcorn and they'll be warm. Hot food is often perceived as more filling and the act of making food will break up the ~~monotype~~ monotony of eating and scrolling or eating and watching tv.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7744612/
I got one of the silicone popping bowls and we use it probably 3-4 times a week. I use all kinds of stuff to dress it up... ranch powder, cheese powder, garlic salt, parmesan, nutritional yeast, ramen seasoning packets, cinnamon sugar... you can do so much with popcorn!
This. My current favorite snack. Big pot with avocado oil and season it with sea salt and ghee. Once in a bowl I eat it with a hot sauce like Valentina. Leftover popcorn goes to a gallon Ziploc for me to enjoy the next day. A lot cheaper than the microwavable too.
I was raised in a house where there were a few snacks every shopping trip - maybe a bag of chips and a container of ice cream. Mom shopped every two weeks. There were two kids and two adults.
The rule was that anyone could snack on what they wanted, but when it was gone, it was gone. Complain all you wanted, but it was everyone's fault if you ran out of snacks. Not mom's fault. She didn't eat 2/3 of the chips an hour after she got home from the store. You and dad did that. It's your fault. You get no more snacks. OR you use your allowance to buy your own snacks.
Yep! My home was the same way. The only difference was that my mom always kept juice, soda, and chocolate milk on hand and I don’t even do that. It’s either milk or water, but when the milk is gone, it’s gone.
This is what I'm having to do now because I have a 6 yo that likes to wake up in the wee hours of the morning and eat all the snacks he can. It's kind of working now that neither he nor his brother haven't had any snacks for the last week and a half. When he whines, I can only tell him, "I'm sorry buddy, but that's what happens when you eat half a box of crackers to yourself when everyone else is sleeping."
Awww that sounds totally fair, but if I were a kid, I would have been so sad. As a kid, I wasn't one to snack so much (thank god). So a pint of ice cream could sit in the fridge for a month or 2. Now as an adult it's another thing entirely.
It taught me to budget my snacking, that's for sure! It also taught me to save some for myself. I would take a bowl of chips, for instance, and save them for later, so that if my brother hogged all the chips, I'd still have some the next day for when \*I\* wanted chips.
Send them both to extra curricular cooking classes. Put an emphasis on them being self sufficient in preparing their own meals. It makes no difference how old they are. If they are old enough to use a knife, they are old enough to cook.
I could try, but without an interest, neither one of them would do it. I’ve been trying to teach my kid how to cook since she was a toddler. Unless someone’s interested in something, you can’t teach them. And it’s harder because she has autism, adhd, executive functioning disorder and pathological demand avoidance. She will be doing cooking in school this year so I’m hoping she might become interested then. She can cook chicken nuggets and chips (the international food of the autistic kid), make toast and make pancakes with a lot of supervision but Will honestly go hungry and complain rather than make herself something to eat.
And your husband is just "guess I'll just die" in all of this? If you are sick for a whole week, ya'll just starve to death? He just stares at the pantry and hopes food appears out of thin air?
Not OP but in a really similar situation and...my husband does exactly that. With random bouts of anger at the "no food" mixed in. i'm here hoping someone has an idea i *haven't* tried because i am SO burned out.
Wow... ok so I thought my GF was pretty bad because she
1. Doesn't know how to cook much
2. Refuses to use the gas stove because it scares her
However, she will make simple things and is starting to learn using her electric griddle, the oven, and or the microwave (she can make a great breakfast actually).
She is amazing at eating left overs. So very little goes to waste as she will gladly finish off the last of that thing I made the day before as a snack.
She is also ok to just make herself a cold cut sandwich or toast if all else fails. So she doesn't whine at me when I don't cook (although much prefers when I do).
I am not sure I would feed someone that just whined there was no food. I would be very tempted to pit on noise canceling headphones or leave and just let them starve.
It can be really challenging sometimes, i can't lie. But i think it's something that i learned to put up with throughout my upbringing and just sort of expected (?) as an adult. idk. Regardless, i appreciate some of the tips and tricks i'm seeing on here!
Good on you and your girlfriend for finding some things that work in your situation and to her especially for getting out of her comfort zone. Well, also especially to you for being patient with her. How about just big props to BOTH of you? i know it's hard.
>i'm here hoping someone has an idea i haven't tried because i am SO burned out.
Just don't. Let him be hungry. If he pitches a fit he pitches a fit.
Let him eat baloney sandwich.
My cousin with ASD wouldn't eat for 8 days in the hospital because he was on a sodium restricted diet. All he wanted was chicken tenders and mashed potatoes with butter.
I told the staff he wouldn't eat any of the food. Day 8, they gave him a regular diet. He got his tenders and potatoes and finally ate. He was discharged on day 12.
So yeah, my cousin would just sit and look at the cupboard, hoping snack cakes would appear. XD
Have you tried cooking together so he can learn to prepare meals? Me and my hubby both cook together, I’ll assign him some dish and do another, or we will work on new ones together and one of us measures while the other reads the recipe. It works really well for us and he can prepare anything he needs from raw ingredients
Maybe it's time to revisit cooking together. i see a lot of people in the thread talking about it, but i like the way you suggest it. It's much more collaborative and fun sounding (for *both* of us) and might keep his engagement more. i appreciate you so much 💜
Forgive me, I'm speechless. I know this isn't a problem you didn't ask for. It's just crazy to me how common this is, and it blows my mind. If anything would happen to you, they have the survival skills of a toddler.
I wouldn't accept any of it. It doesn't have to be good food, but doing some groceries once in a while and being able to cook an egg, bake potatoes and some meat is the bare minimum. It doesn't have to be perfect, but they have to be able to feed themselves?!
There is no excuse for this kind of incompetence. There's literally billions of videos available, for free. There are 3 step recipes available.
If one cannot understand "slice the tomatoes", I don't understand how they get anywhere in life. How is your husband doing at his job? Because I find it hard to believe his skill level is high with such incompetence. If it turns out he's actually doing really well, he's fucking with you - forgive me but there's just no way someone is that intelligent at their job but as stupid as a toddler at home.
Again, I know you didn't ask for this and you're asking for help. But it's just blowing my mind.
It's not fair to only criticize though and I agree with someone else who suggested to cook together. Slicing ingredients is a good first start. At one point he might be comfortable enough for you to trade places at the stove. "Keep an eye on this meat while I go to the bathroom" to make them comfortable with the pan, you want them to graduate from slicing at some point. And do groceries together sometimes. I understand it's all exhausting but the way it's going for you now is unsustainable.
Genuinely I don't think anyone should stay in that kind of relationship. It's supposed to be 2 consenting adults but someone who can't feed themselves isn't exactly an adult
My husband goes for the easiest route: can do rice and boil an egg. Then complcains hes hungry again so he has a cup of coffee and bread with butter or jam ... and if that fails, orders take out.
They will "starve" otherwise. That's the interest.
It's in quotes because short term, they will be uncomfortable and may have grumbly tummies.
Long term, this is not sustainable. They will ride you until you are broken.
You mention that both are on the spectrum. They are riding you harder that any capitalist CEO would get away with.
You deserve better.
They can make PBJ, and they will have interest if they don’t have easy snacks around and are hungry. Eggs for breakfast- cereal is $$ and eaten so quickly if they are big eaters- and bananas! Autistic or not, your husband is an adult and needs to learn how to manage his expectations and behavior and take some role in managing the food/meal protocol.
Stop making it so easy for them, it needs to be more difficult than this for anything to change.
Yep. My son has autism, but we've never purchased snacks. From the age of 5, if he was hungry, he would microwave himself a quesadilla, a bowl of oatmeal, eat a banana, or make himself a peanut butter sandwich. There are plenty of easy foods that are both healthier and cheaper than snacks.
I have a very ND household and we stopped buying prepared snacks right around the time the kids could be trusted to safely use the microwave and toaster. Microwave quesadillas, peanut butter or tuna sandwiches, and popcorn are staples for lunch/ snacks.
Maybe it’s time for you to be unreasonable.
Buy and make food for only you and lock it up. Give them their portion of food money and wish them all the luck. They need a little fuck around and find out.
But I sense they know you won’t so they don’t feel the need to modify their behavior because what they’re doing works fantastic.
I did this for a month with mine. They got 100 to spend a week and it had to last the whole week. They failed, miserably.
But they DID learn to trade ala prison style, that was ...cool, I guess.
They still use it to this day. They were my nephews, I was their foster parent.
So food was always scarce, even with me. (Me making 16 an hour and covering all housing and food for 5 teenagers would not have been possible without the food bank) I understood why they gorged...because at home, if they didn't eat ALL the food at once, there would not be anything the next day :(
It's kinda sad when you look at it like that, but they are champs and each one is leaving foster care succeeding more than the one before.
Your husband is an adult in the home and your partner. Is he unable to step up and take over grocery shopping or cooking from you? Even just part time?
He’s here in the mornings, so does make breakfast and lunches, but he works afternoons until 8pm usually, so can’t make dinners. If he did the groceries it would cost us 3 times as much.
I wonder if they just don't know where to begin?
I find myself challenged with "what should I make for dinner?" I have ADD (with executive functioning problems) and struggle with planning what to make. I'm a good cook, just not able to plan ahead. If I know what I'm going to make and have all the ingredients, then it's no problem.
Another issue I struggle with is initiation. Just getting started feels SO hard. I'd rather wait til it's too late to make something, then eat crap cause I'm hungry. I don't want to be this way, it's just the way I am.
So, getting back to knowing how to begin. I agree with others to "hide" the snacks (trunk is a great idea!). Then, make a handful of index cards with pictures of the snacks that are available to them and how to prepare them (such as popcorn). That way, they don't have to think about the effort to make something. They need ideas to pick from.
I'm thinking ~6 index cards of a variety of snacks (s.a. yogurt, apples & peanut butter, chips & cheese, popcorn, etc). Put pictures of the item on the card with basic instructions and laminate them. Put them in a recipe box or hang them on the fridge with a magnetic chip clip. Take out the cards when you don't have it in the house. Make sure to switch it up for variety like you do for little kids and their toys.
Every time they complain, say, ''I don't want to hear you complain about this' and walk away. Just bc they complain, it doesn't mean you have to listen. She'd rather be hungry than make toast? Guess she not really that hungry then.
I'm an AuDHD mom of AuDHD kids, one of whom has ARFID, so you have my deep sympathy!
There are a lot of different kinds of disability and capability among autistic folks, but unless your husband is seriously disabled, autism is no excuse for making you do all the heavy lifting around food in the home. If it's important to him, he can figure out how to make snacks for himself. If he cares about you, he can figure out how to make your life a wee bit easier.
As a rule, we autistic people need things spelled out for us sometimes. Even when we care deeply about someone, we may not see that something we're doing is causing them distress. If you haven't talked with your husband about this, please do. Be really clear that you need his help in a very specific area and then let him figure out how he can provide it in a way that fits him.
As for your daughter, this is going to sound harsh, but you may have to start setting limits on her complaining. She is old enough to be learning self-regulation skills (if she has that capacity), so a rule along the lines of, "If you complain repeatedly, I will delay buying more snacks for one day. If you do it again tomorrow, I will add a day." And so on. Things will absolutely get worse for a while, but unless she's seriously disabled, she'll learn.
It's a really hard line to walk between acknowledging the difficulties faced by neurodivergent people and letting those difficulties become an excuse for bad behavior. What one person can do, another cannot. I don't know your family and can't judge what they are able to do. What I do know is that many men dump all the emotional labor on women and autistic men are not exempt from that kind of assholery. Your husband needs to step up in whatever way he can and stop making you bear the burden alone.
Amazon has these clear lockbox’s with a built in combo. I got one to use as iPad/switch jail but it would work great for some snacks. If you get a couple, and a couple snack bins. Put two portions out for them in little bins. Lock yours in lockbox. If they run out in one day too bad. Apples and toast with toppings. Freezer pancakes. Popcorn.
Lock the cupboards at night or while you're gone, but leave out a healthy amount of food where they won't starve, plus a little extra. Saw this recommended on another forum about a special needs kid eating nonstop at night, you just need to leave food out so when they're actually hungry they can eat
My son is PDA, too, and he was little he has always told people to get things for him. He's 13 now, and we don't do it for him anymore. Just the other day, he didn't like what l made for supper and ASKED us how to make eggs. His twin (neurotypical) taught him how. I think that was the first time at home that he showed Interest.
Funny story - he always has to look cool and be the best at everything, so at his friend's house, he told the mom he could make the Mac and cheese. He has never made Mac and cheese in his life! So, he proceeds to put water in the pan and poured all of the contents of the box into the water. I asked him how it turned out. He said, "It was watery and a little hard." LOL
My almost 14 yo son has auDHD and I'm pretty sure PDA, so I totally get where you're coming from. My kid's diet is terrible; he has a limited number of safe foods and seems to be reducing them so I'm considering whether it's ARFID.
Do you do low demand parenting? I have to homeschool my son and have been trying to stick to low demand so he's less likely to just say no to whatever I suggest. One of my goals with homeschooling is to work on cooking and baking with him, but I know he won't want to cook whatever I have planned. I've suggested that we have nights where we cook food from different countries and have asked him if he could give me a list of countries he thinks have good food. I haven't seen the list yet, but when I approach things this way, it seems to be more successful than just telling him to come help.
The one thing my son will make consistently for himself is Kraft mac and cheese in the microwave. I wrote the instructions on a post it that's on the cabinet above the microwave. I may cut other stuff from the food budget but we always have several boxes of mac and cheese for him because he's so restricted.
It might be helpful if you have a list of your daughter's safe foods so you can see what else she might learn to make for herself. I know trying to feed people on a budget is hard, but when you throw in ND, it's so much harder.
Children and spouses can be trained to stop snacking. The complaints will stop when they’ve tried it enough times and you don’t budge.
Option 1 : Buy snacks once a week, enough to reasonably last a week. If they run out because they can’t ration themselves, too bad, you’re not going to replenish the supply until the following week.
Option 2: Ration like option 1. BUT if there are left over snacks come shopping day, you will buy EXTRA snacks that week.
Option 3: The one I grew up with. Feed them so much rice and beans during meal time they don’t have room in the stomach for snacks. Kid comes home from school, after school meal. Dinner has extra helpings of rice, beans, or other cheap carb.
Option 4: Ration normally. But if they run out and complain to you and there will be no snacks then following week.
Feel free to combine the carrots and sticks.
After school, pre-dinner snack/meal has helped cut down snacking in my house. Sometimes, it's grilled cheese, or hot buttered rolls, or scrambled eggs.
My son has ADHD and is on the spectrum. I noticed that he always has to have something to mouth. So I buy snacks that last longer, like lollipops and hard candy. He also has become a whiz at popping his own popcorn (1/3 cup of kernels in a brown bag in the microwave foe 1.5-3 min), and that is his go-to snack.
I also keep a snack drawer which I fill sometimes daily sometimes weekly. The bigger containers go in a cabinet that the kids cannot access.
Thanks, but trust me, the complaints will not stop. My kid once got sent home from school because she annoyed her teacher so much during a sports day. When I say relentless, I mean like The Terminator level of relentless. She will ask for something literally hundreds of times, doesn’t matter how much you say no, once she’s fixated on something it doesn’t end.
She won’t eat something if she doesn’t like it.
They are good ideas, and probably would work for “neurotypical” people but it’s a different ball game for some kids/people.
Good point! Getting stim toys and chewy toys could possibly help with the brain boredom of not having a secondary background activity happening at the same time, so "hungry" gets defaulted to. Brains are also dumb, and send hungry signals when what it actually wants is thirsty. I'd ask how much water they drink.
Look, I get it. I really do, my child is neurodivergent and I can relate. But the answer here isn’t soemthing you can do or change, you’re already doing it all. Your husband and kid need the adjustment and it isn’t going to be pretty. I have a big family and run into many of the same problems. The way we do it, which sounds crazy to other people sometimes, is we hve two ‘kitchens’ We basically will do a big shopping trip but only ‘release’ what we can afford for the week. We might have two boxes of snack cakes, but only 7 packages go into the cabinet and the cabinet only opens on Sunday for restocks. I know your pain with your daughter, and your sanity is important, but it is on you to set the boundary and stick with it, or give in and reward and enforce her bad behavior, which will obv lead to her doing it more in the future. Like you said, nobody is learning anything they don’t want to, but I think you know your family needs some help with the fitness/activity department and it all starts in the kitchen.
My step daughter struggles with weight issues, and healthy snacking has been a big pain ( mostly for my wife who relates, I am chronically wiry and can’t put on weight to save my life) but it was all a matter of finding something she likes or at least doesn’t hate, and it being filling. She’s not super excited to make and eat ants on a log, but she knows at this point she isn’t going to get a bag of chips and if she wants to stop feeling hungry/awful the ants on a log will do that for her.
It’s tough and I feel for you. You’ve got to control the flow of food at the very least. Don’t tolerate being badgered until you cry and give in, that’s awful and ridiculous. There’s a line to walk as far as doing your part ti provide for your family and willingly helping them hurt themselves because it’s easier then the tough love necessary to make them realize their bad behavior. Letting go with love is a great concept, idk if it necessarily applies to you in this situation but maybe give jt a look and just apply it to you and your families current relationship with food and how it makes you feel .
Oh absolutely. The food issue is something I’ve been struggling with, with my daughter for a long time. I have Binge Eating Disorder myself which I track back to my childhood and a lovely combination of food insecurity (sometimes we had nothing but pancakes to eat for days), constant comments about my weight and eating habits, lack of any healthy foods at all and horrendous bullying by my family and at school. So I know how damaging it can be to restrict what she eats, but also just as damaging to let her eat what she wants, she’s also tall and solidly built and of course I NEVER EVER mention her size or weight but kids at school have said things, despite her not actually being overweight, just bloody tall. Then there’s the fact that she going through puberty so really is going to be more hungry than she was. And trying to balance that with the insane price of groceries here in Australia right now and being super busy working and studying. And well the whole situation has just become this big messy drama as you can tell from my incoherent rambling response here.
Do you have a way to remove yourself from the situation when the relentless begging begins? Can you say no once, and then go shut yourself in a room and put some headphones on? Or go outside for a walk for an hour? And just repeat that pattern? “I said no, if you ask again I’m going to leave for an hour.” And then do follow through, in response to either family member who won’t leave you alone. Your sanity is really important and you shouldn’t have to endure relentless hounding about a problem you didn’t cause and cannot fix.
Maybe it would be beneficial to post this question on an autism related forum, see what others who have been through it before have done? I’ve learned this from having an adhd husband, NTs only have so much advice and it’s usually related to how we would think. I’ve learned the most from listening to others with adhd.
Your kid is like that because they know you eventually give in. You can't give in.
Neurodivergent kids need MORE routine, structure, and patience. Not less.
"My saying no is not an opportunity for you to change it to a yes. No means no."
Doesnt matter who the kid is, everyone needs to learn boundaries and there are consequences for crossing those boundaries. What are they going to do when they are an adult? She is already doing it at school because its a learned behavior.
She learned to ask a million times, because you give in. I know how hard it is. ITS SO FREAKING HARD. but eventually, you need to hold firm. Then they learn that asking wont get them what they want.
I know this is a rant/vent, but I work on multiple neurodivergent kids and adults all week.
A few are like what you describe.
I have earplugs that filter out a lot of sound to get through the day. But one kid will ask the same inane question the entire hour. I’m a massage therapist and I don’t give a crap about cartoon and game characters or horror movies. For him, wireless earbuds. Just low enough to hear if his tone goes into real question territory.
I think a lot of times people overexaggerate what it is like to have autism.
You don't know how much of her behavior is autism and how much of it is a normal tantrum from being coddled because she has autism. Unless she has a low functioning form of autism that is going to see her living with you forever, she can just deal with the consequences of her actions -- and seeing as she can feed herself snacks, I think she probably isn't that low functioning. As someone with both a personal and family history of neurodivergence, I promise your daughter will not melt or explode if you let her endure the consequences of her actions. You are enabling this behavior in her and your husband. Don't underestimate what she is capable of! So many people with childhood autism grow up defeated and remain so because of how little self-governance they have been allowed.
I appreciate that it can be a lot more difficult for you to enforce boundaries and rules with an autistic child, and doubly so if you have no spousal support, but you also have a duty to reinforce good and normal behaviors in whatever way is possible. Time for husband to get a grip and act like an adult, not a second child.
I did this with mom as a kid. Not with food. I still repeat but with medication I’m better. But yeah. She just kept saying no. I was annoying about it. But she just tuned me out eventually I guess.
This is a vent/rant post, so no advice can be given.
Edit: sub rules 🤷♀️. I know its dumb, but I was banned for 2 days for giving advice on a different post.
Yes thats all good, but the tag says vent/rant- no advice or criticism. Im just following the rules of this sub. Everyone should, no matter how stupid it is.
Hey OP, my partner and I are Autistic and he has impulse control issues. You need to be locking away portions of the snacks and only releasing enough for a day or two. When it's gone, it's gone. You cannot give them free reign over the large trove of snacks, they won't portion control. For my husband, we just won't buy certain things because he can't control himself. But I know that won't work for you.
You also need to get them into therapy. Your daughter can't just continue life like this by repeatedly annoying people and asking for things and being sent home from school. You are essentially enabling this behavior by letting her have whatever she wants for food.
The husband is also enabling this behavior because he also wants to indulge. Over time (if not already) they’ll both start to resent OP for trying to control their intake and it’ll be a ‘us’ vs ‘her’ dynamic in the house which will only make things worse.
Absolutely. With him also being on the spectrum, it's easy to fall into this because him and the daughter also have this in common as sort of a weird shared bonding experience. That's why I suggested therapy. He needs to work on being an adult and modeling appropriate behavior for his daughter.
Have you actually discussed this behavior with them?
Your husband also needs to do therapy as well. He is modeling this behavior for her. You two need to be a united front.
He works, afternoons, 1pm- 8pm usually. He doesn’t drive but anytime he goes to the supermarket he spends soo much money. He doesn’t seem to understand that money is a finite resource.
So you're carrying another child, who is sabotaging the family's food supply and hemorrhaging money while refusing to cook or plan or shop in a frugal way? Start with him as the source of the problem, not the kid. You can't function like this with an active, selfish saboteur as the other household adult.
I feel like you probably know this already, but all of this shouldn't fall on your shoulders alone, and your husband is being an incompetent and shitty partner by refusing to be a responsible adult with you.
Since she’s going through puberty and always hungry snacking a lot anyway (I remember it was painful hunger for me) I would stock up on protein heavy snacks. Salted flavored nuts, greek Yogurts, protein bars, cheese sticks, hummus and tzaziki dips with baby carrots, cucumber slices.Meat sticks, Salted Edemame, Stuff like that. They fill you up quickly and instead of being empty carbs it will help her with the nutrition she needs to grow. There’s only so much they can eat of the protein heavy snacks. Also you can premake chicken snack wraps/ chicken quesadillas stuff like that for them to find in the fridge
Especially if she’s tall. Don’t underestimate the body’s needs for nutrition for a growing child, especially one that is very tall. Most of the men in my family are over 6’3” and the women are around 5’8” or taller. Big people just eat more and need more nutrition, especially in their teenage prepubescent years. My mom was an anomaly in my house at 5’4” and was always criticizing me, or reprimanding me for eating because she didn’t understand it, and it has affected my relationship with food my whole life. I am realizing that I have an unhealthy mental relationship with it even though I don’t seem to have any eating disorders. I would call it disorganized eating.
Also look into insulin resistance - I had this my whole life and didn’t realize it until my 30s when I got on metformin… all of a sudden my cravings were controllable and I didn’t HAVE to eat SOMETHING sweet all the time the way I did growing up. My sweet tooth has practically disappeared. When someone has insulin resistance, their body does not process sugar correctly so they will want sugar all the time because their body doesn’t get enough in a weird backwards way. Worth looking into.
In our house we had a similar problem with the added issue of two kids who would be upset if one sibling got more than the other.
This is what I did: each household member got a bin with a lid with their name on it for snacks. One in the pantry. One in the fridge and one in the freezer.
When I got something that was viewed as extra - like fruit snacks, ice cream bars, little chip bags, little Debbie’s, etc. They would be distributed to the snack bins. Equally between the kids and then appropriately between husband and I.
What I figured out is that there was a lot of mindless snacking going on and wanting the high value snacks and not wanting to “miss out” on them. I kept stuff for snacking like popcorn and pretzels to go with cheese sticks around for regular snacking. Once your bin was empty that’s it. You can trade with someone or ask politely but you cannot take from someone’s bin.
Even when the kids were young this helped a LOT. One would eat everything fast and the other was slower. I was able to know that in 3 days I could go have one of something I bought. My husband wasn’t mindlessly finishing off something. We don’t need the bins anymore but it really helped everyone regulate and most importantly- stop complaining because they were in charge of their rate of consumption.
Edit to add: we are a house full of neurodivergent individuals and having clear rules that gave control to the individual was very helpful.
Thanks! I had tried the snack box in the past, but could be worth revisiting now that my kid is older and DOES understand the concept of “mine vs yours” even if she does ignore it most of the time.
It may not work for your needs, and that’s ok too! It worked for us because the biggest issue was between siblings. Every family has their own hurdles and I didn’t even know my kid was on the spectrum when I implemented it.
Now that they’re teenagers we get one special treat per shopping trip that they have complete control over, but their snack desires have diverged enough that they aren’t trying to fight over the same “high value” treats.
However, I also grew up as the youngest of 5 raised by a mom who was 1 of 6, and we both have no shame in hiding our own treats in the veggie drawer or with the dish towels.
Buy fruit. It's sweet and not as bad if they overeat it. Maybe teach your daughter to make cookies or granola bars. If she puts effort into the treat, she may want to ration it to enjoy it longer.
We’ve tried baking, she will literally eat the raw, plain flour and sugar and then run off while I do everything. But she’s doing cooking at school this year, so I’m hoping it might interest her when she’s doing it with her friends and not being forced to hang out with her mum.
People think they tell us not to eat raw batter and dough because of the eggs but it’s actually the flour. If you don’t heat the flour, it can make you very sick.
I hope you have some success with her cooking classes! With my teen daughter, once she discovered making her own brownies from scratch it was a game changer for her. I buy the cheap raw ingredients and if she wants chocolate brownies she can make them herself. She’s 14. I just never buy snack cakes or anything, so if she gets a craving she’ll have to make it. The $1 package of cookie powder was a huge asset too. She makes those for the family often as well.
So, look, this isn't about food. You have two people in your house who are actively kicking holes in the boat and then crying that their feet are wet. They've hounded you to the point of abuse.
If this was me, I'd break out the crock pot and cook vats of rice and beans and that's what for every meal. If they binge, well, that's a couple of dollars. Unfortunately, you married and raised people who feel like Twinkies should magically appear in limitless quantities while they sit and watch you get broken in the process of acquiring them.
The problem is that your husband can just lark off to the store and set piles of money on fire because he has no concept of money or budget or the household survival.
It's time for a come to Jesus meeting--first with him. Lay out a budget and some hard limits on his independent spending. You shouldn't have to be the food police, or spend emotional labor trying to keep the boat afloat while the other two sink it. If he doesn't have any idea or whines, you have an important data point about his selfishness and unwillingness to be an equal partner to you. Then you take those hard lines to the kid. She's going to be a shitty partner and roommate if she keep this behavior when she leaves your house.
You're clearly at the breaking point here, emotionally and financially. It's time for drastic action to save yourself.
glomming onto this comment to try to convince OP of just one thing: she deserves so, so, SO much better than this.
you need not accept this treatment for your entire life.
I don’t buy traditional snacks anymore either bc of the same issue. It’s literally disordered eating - they don’t realize they’re binge eating most of the time. Work on the cause of the problem if you can, or start buying string cheese and candied dried fruits and bulk granola and see how fast the issue resolves itself (that’s what I did).
I know you're not going to like this but the answer really is to stop buying snacks. Completely.
"There's not food" f off and microwave a potato.
They soon shut up.
I also have an autistic kid who will eat like this so these are just some things that work for me. I guess my first question is, is there enough food? You said your daughter is tall, what are her caloric needs? Its really easy as a parent to not take this into consideration. What do they eat for breakfast and lunch and who prepares it? Do they know what ingredients or foods you consider off limits? Do they know the limits? Do you meal plan?
You've probably already tried this, but if there's 8 ice creams in a box how many can everyone have each? In my house that's 2 each, you eat them that's it for the week.
I meal plan all meals including the ones I don't cook that way they all know what the ingredients are for.
I make snack foods and cereal have no rules except this is what you get for this time period there will be no more and you need to be thoughtful and fair to the other people in the house.
I really don't like making the breakfast and lunch plan because it's annoying to me, so I make them each tell me 2 lunches and 2 breakfasts (I have 3 kids).
There is 1 healthy snack per day on the menu and you get 1 share of that.
We have master snack menu, lunch and breakfast menus that they can reference when we make our weekly plan. I made these by grabbing ideas from pinterest and what we came up with together.
If tuna is on sale and I buy 6 cans expecting it to last 2 weeks, I communicate this to the kids. Then most likely I make tuna salad and again communicate "I am expecting this to cover 2 days of lunches for the 4 of us and here is what you can eat the tuna with: bread, cut red pepper only do no use the the green need them for Wednesday dinner, crackers." Then I will go in and mark the tuna into 8ths so they can see what the portion size is or make lunches in the lunch containers we have (I think they are easy lunch box brand or adjacent). Or I will tell them this is what the tuna salad will have in it, please make it and only eat x amount.
Everyone in an autistic household must be on the same page. And that means being so incredibly specific it makes my head spin.
Also sounds like you need to talk to your husband because he's an adult autistic or not. It sounds like he's a other kid. Why is a grown man complaining about there not being any food? And undermining you with the kid? It sounds like you are carrying the bulk of the emotional labor of the household and that's what's actually getting to you.
In this example where I would use 3 cans, onion, celery, mayo and sometimes carrot as well. Then I would just sort of score the top once it's in a container, that's all. Probably enough for 1 sandwich per person and Im eyeballing it based on how much I think I can fit without too much falling out while they eat. and then less then a sandwich for day two. Day two I would serve w/ crackers and other shit. Like sliced Colby jack or salami or hard boiled egg. I honestly try very hard to feed my kids adequate protein and fat. And then if they are still hungry we qualify for free lunch so they can get more food at school. The lunch containers I use have like an extra small, small and medium sections. The medium is a little bigger then a sandwich. So I would put sandwich and on top of that like with a piece of parchment or foil a sweet like cookies or a little Debbie type thing, then in the small I'd put a cut up apple and then pb or almond butter. This is way more then you asked sorry. The goal is everyone is nourished at least until they get home. And honestly they all usually make Ramen w/an egg or shredded chicken and whatever when they get home. But also don't forget they're eating lunch at like 10:45 in the morning sometimes. If people are very grouchy when they get home that means I'm not sending enough food usually and I do more. I'll lso serve it on a salad base sometimes but that's kind of low cal and takes a while to eat a salad, not super worth it for school days.
I used to manage a group home and I had to lock up and portion out snacks because both the staff and residents would eat through them in two days and there wouldn't be anything left for lunches the rest of the week. They also went through laundry soap like it was water so I had to lock that up too.
Do you have an air fryer? If not, you can often find them at thrift shops. You might consider bagging up serving size packages of nuggets and fries that your daughter can put in the air fryer and maybe you can get away with buy less junk snacks.
I grew up in a family that got taught 6 months worth of food in the pantry .... the rule for our pantry is ask me first unless you bought it yourself.
But DH family is like yours ... if it's nice it needs to be eaten like now. Something I have really not put together until your post is why MIL pantry is almost always empty but she hides all food items in thick plastic crates in another room locked up. She even dates the items when she puts it on the pantry shelf.
No advice for you. Just my sympathy.
My kids - they get money to buy their own snacks for the month. - once it's done its done.
We have similar issues here, with food just disappearing-- and they can complain but once it's gone, it's gone. My husband is the worst. He doesn't even realize he's eating it. Like weiners-- he'll keep going in the fridge and grabbing a couple then they're gone. He used to try blaming the kids until he realized it was him.
I respond one of 2 ways: I shrug it off and tell them "too bad, so sad, your fault" or I yell because something was needed for a meal. If it was a meal ingredient, then I make meals the perpetrators don't like, and remind them why we're not having what I had originally planned. It has sort of worked, to some extent.
I think you need to just flat out say "we can't afford this" and stop buying large quantities of snacks. They're mindlessly eating it because they aren't seeing the total climb at the grocery store.
Junk food that is sugary or salty only makes healthy food taste worse.
I would stop buying cereal, cookies, cakes and ice cream. Replace with fruits and vegetables.
Buy peanut butter and jelly and soft cheap white bread so they can make a couple of those whenever they think there is nothing to eat. Remind them every time they complain.
Prepare large meals that leave enough to reheat the next day for lunch or after school.
Teach them how to make oatmeal cookies using a simple recipe so they can make themselves a treat when they want. Popcorn is good here too. Don't buy any snack food that they don't have to put some effort into to eliminate eating as entertainment.
I'm not sure I would encourage them doing a lot of cooking because then you have to get them to clean up too.
Stock up on simple microwave foods like ramen, Mac n cheese, ravioli, chili, etc. Keep it simple so it's not so interesting they scarf it all at once.
Buy instant oatmeal in qty for breakfast and snacks. Try instant grits too.
Go for filling but repetitive foods. Treat the family to a pizza once a week and prepare lots of pasta, rice and potato heavy main meals so they can fill up at dinner and quit the constant snacking.
Whenever the day there is no food, always tell them to make a PB&J. You become a broken record so they lose interest in whining at you about it.
If you want to treat them, only buy enough ice cream, cookies, cake, etc to last one evening. Make sundaes once a week. Once it's gone it's gone.....don't go shopping for treats, don't have a stash somewhere that you can bring out....just direct them back to PB&J when the treat you provided is gone.
Tell your child to stop complaining or there will be consequences. If she knows that her tablet or whatever else she likes will be taken away, she will stop complaining. Autistic or not, she will need to function in this world. Sounds like everyone in your house is addicted to junk food. Stop buying it.
I’m on the spectrum, brought up at a time this wasn’t a thing, so I wasn’t raised with any consideration for it. So my upbringing was harsh compared to today, but they (we) can absolutely understand and change behavior given consequences. I’m struggling to understand why parents don’t prepare their kids by following through
I’m likely on the spectrum also on the high functioning side and have to coach myself to do things I don’t want to do daily. I’m a risk adverse person so thinking of the consequences keeps my decision making level.
I'm autistic too and my parents sucked. I had to teach myself how to function cause it was sink-or-float basically.
I feel for OP. My biomom is exactly like her daughter and my biodad enables her. I'm on the same level of functioning as my mom (level 1) but unlike her I have visceral reactions to being babied.
I can tell you why, though. People refuse to realize that kids inevitably grow up into adults. And those adults ultimately either sink until they learn to swim or find someone else to latch onto so they don't have to swim.
My parents tried so hard to do that to me. They wanted me to be a baby forever (which is absolutely cursed and abusive). But unlike my mom I grew up.
She's autistic. Eating raw flour, repeating the same thing 30 times a day and already having a diagnosis + multiple therapies while only just hitting puberty would suggest she's not on the mild side of the spectrum either.
You're literally saying "punish your special needs child if she complains", you realize that's disgusting right? Especially when it's related to asking for food? For some autistic people echolalia is one of their only forms of communication, knowing that they've already asked the question doesn't stop it and threatening to take away personal belongings if they don't stop acting autistic is abusive. You "suspecting you're also on the spectrum" is irrelevant.
The comment I responded to wasn't about handing the child's eating issues, it was about a way to force the kid to shut up about *wanting* food.
There are plenty of helpful comments on this thread, suggestions to work with an OT to help her learn how to "budget" her food throughout the week, her getting her own tin for snacks so she can see exactly how much she gets at the start of the week, suggestions for healthier snacks, even some suggestions on how to make it more accessible for her to prepare her own food.
Punishing your child when they do something that annoys you is not the only way to take an active role in raising them.
And you stated to not deny when food is asked for.
Just because someone has autism doesn't mean you give them anything and everything they want.
Not providing unlimited high calorie snack foods isn't a punishment.
Re-read my comment and tell me where I said never to deny food? The punishment I'm referring to is "tell her you'll take away her tablet if she doesn't stop complaining". That's about shutting the child up rather than doing anything to improve their diet.
My family does this with the 'easy' food as well. The way I have solved it is to label food with people's names if it is doable. Yes, it means that I get multiple containers of ice cream, but each person gets their own, and if you run out of yours you're done it doesn't matter whether or not someone else has a lot left. It changes the problem from portion control to taking someone else's things. I find that is easier to deal with than 'reasonable limits' on quantity. What I think is reasonable may be different from what they do, but we all sure as hell know what's yours and what's mine. If I find I don't eat the ice cream/whatever in what I consider to be a reasonable amount of time, I will throw it back into general circulation and let people know.
Yeah this is how I ended up hiding food in my dresser. For example the other day I bought a pack of cookies at Walmart thinking oh have a few cookies as a snack and it will last a couple of days at least. No it was gone 2 hours later. An entire pack of chocolate chip cookies from Walmart. Like that was our one fucking treat this month. I was so excited just to have food stamps to even get a snack.
So I grew up in poverty, and have found my way back after divorce. Food insecurity is the root of this binge eating problem for me. I knew we wouldn’t always have food so I had to eat as much as possible when it was there. Especially snacks because I have a lot of sensory needs & “real” food doesn’t always satisfy that.
I also am ND (adhd) and have 1 autistic son, & 1 who isn’t diagnosed yet but highly suspect probably also has some sort of neurodivergency.
Literally the only way I can make any snacks last is to hide them. If I don’t, they’re gone as soon as they hit the door. I even have to hide them from myself (not hard because adhd - “out of sight, out of mind”. If you’re the only one doing the shopping I suggest you get some totes or something and put them where they won’t be found. Put out a few at a time. Sure, they’ll still complain. My kids do too. And it is *relentless*, but even kids with autism have to be taught that you can’t have instant gratification.
Right now you’re dealing with natural consequences. Eat all the snacks? Ok you don’t have anymore. Sucks. But natural consequences don’t always work for ND folks.
Is your child getting special services from school? You can ask for a counselor/mentor to help you come up with a plan to teach your child how to make a “food budget” (not with money, just “budgeting”/rationing out snacks so that’s not all they’re wanting to eat.) You may want to ask your child’s pediatrician for help as well. A lot of times they have solutions we never thought of as parents. For example my son is like me and thrives on crunchy textures & loves to chew. His occupational therapist suggested keeping small packs of twizzlers or thick pretzel sticks where he can access them when he’s wanting something (& I can get them from Dollar Tree, they last a while)
As far as your partner, I’m not sure how to help. It’s something they have to work on themselves - you’re not their mom.
She does see a psychologist and an OT. We have talked about it in the past, but it can’t hurt to bring it up again. I’ve also spoken to my own ED therapist about it as well.
Good luck :) I definitely know the struggle and there have been days where I’ve been in tears over kids crying for snacks because they just don’t get it
I hope you find a solution that works for y’all
Thanks! Pretty much everything suggested here is stuff I’ve tried in the past, but my kid is older now, so some things could definitely be revisited and tried again.
I can’t even imagine how stressful it must be to be dealing with an ED caused from food scarcity and live with a pack of gluttons who would leave you to starve if they managed the food budget. I just want to offer sympathy and I hope you find some resolution asking the therapist for help.
OP I hear you.
My cousin lives with me, and he has level I autism.
White and carby or white and processed are his two major food groups. He's 60.
I hide my dear kid's snack foods, because he'll plow through a 40 count Timbit in one day. 8 snack size bag of chips in a sitting. 4 cans of soda. Chicken Nuggets? He'll eat a half a box for dinner and that's it.
He never cooks because his executive functioning skills are garbage, and food is fuel. That's is why he eats "ingredients". 3 cans of tuna are fuel because making anything with them is overwhelming. It's easier to do tuna and ketsup and call it a day. He'll eat a big 3 serving bowl of instant mashed potatoes with butter for dinner.
I have a chest freezer with a lock. I have a closet that is used for "storage." He never bothers with it, so I hide things in there.
He has no clue when he's hungry unless he's starving. So he doesn't eat at normal times. When his "stomach wakes up," he's famished. He'll plow into anything edible. Making a true meal will not happen. He's way too hungry for that.
It's a combo of food is fuel, eating takes away time from doing more interesting things, not noticing hunger, poor executive functioning skills, and that sweet carby high kick from more processed foods.
I buy bread, peanut butter and jam for sandwiches. Instant mashed potatoes and instant Ramen. My cousin is good now eating those before spreading canned frosting on saltines for dinner (sigh).
I learned I can not have high value food like cheese, cookies, or lunch meat just out. It will be gone in two days.
If they are just fueling up, buy the cheapest stuff you can find and let them have access to it. My cousin can down a half gallon of milk in a day.
This is more than just lazy and inconsiderate. Food issues and Autism is a known problem.
(Sorry I gave you suggestions, but most people don't understand your problem)
Let them eat microwave popcorn. Lots and lots of microwave popcorn. And PB&J sandwiches.
Stop buying snacks at all. None. If they start to whine, *walk away!* You are actually enabling their behavior by listening to their BS! Just look at them and say, "Eat popcorn," and walk away. Or eat some popcorn.
Make large batch crockpot meals. Chili. Lentil soup. Spaghetti sauce. And break them out into separate meals.
PS Your husband is weaponizing his autism. Tell him to cut it out. He's modeling shitty behavior for your kid.
I'd start buying only super healthy finger foods, like carrots and celery, etc. If they want to snack, they can snack on that. The super fatty, sugary, dopamine-rewarding snacks can GO.
Tell them you don’t want to hear how there is no food. They just have to deal with it without talking to you about it. Keep snacks in your trunk. Dole out daily if they haven’t complained. Have fruit and popcorn available. Also bread for toast.
Have you tried meal kits? Not every week cause woo the prices are insane but if you get free boxes for signing up you can get decent deals. I just got 5 meals for 4 people for $37. It has been great teaching my kids to cook because each meal has a card with it explaining each step. My MIL got it when I had free box codes and said her son loves it and he refused to cook until then.
Just make sure you skip the following week and the day the cheap box comes in you can cancel it or the day they ship it out.
There is a subreddit, mealkits I think? Which has codes for free boxes.
I've used Hello Fresh and EveryPlate (multiple emails get you multiple cheap boxes). I also did Blue Apron and Dinnerly. Those two are one time only unless you have different addresses.
"Both my husband and my kid are autistic and are big eaters " You have a very serous husband problem. He just doesn't care that there's no money for more food, and can pig out and then whine to you about it?
He needs to get it together and then discipline the kid, and both of them need to suck it up and cook from scratch, not just shovel your money down their greedy pieholes.
"you honestly have no idea how RELENTLESS they both are" That's abusive to you, and you need to take a hard line with both of them.
Aarrggh, my husband is a snack monster. A pack of cookies or box of lil Debbie type treats would last me a week or 2 only lasts him a couple days! But he buys his own, if I buy some I set aside half so I can eat them at my leisure.
Can you hide food in your house? I know that can be hard. That way 1) you can ration the snacks so many per day, and/or 2) hide stuff just for yourself. No sense in you doing without just because they ate everything!
Good luck, I used to wish we did not have to eat, especially after coming home from a 90 minute commute and walking in the door to husband and son saying "what's for dinner?" Grrrrrrr!!!
Let your husband buy those things then. I grocery shop for my household and I don’t buy snacks. If my husbands wants convenience foods he can get them. When they run out because he ate it all, he can get more on his own at the store. Not as easy with kids, but I’d say give that burden over to your husband. If there’s “no food” then it’s own fault and problem to remedy. He’ll probably learn to portion pretty fast when he’s the one who has put in the effort to get it
Lol. Sorry I know you are venting but it made me laugh because I can picture all the ravenous food grab so vividly.
Growing kids are hungry all the time. There isn’t really a way around it sorry. Maybe reserve some snacks for yourself and hide it. Also save most of the snacks for the kid. Your husband is ridiculous and needs to grow up. Autistic or not, he is a grown man and can learn some impulse control. He needs to save for his kid as well. Don’t let him push you around!
May I suggest making sandwiches and putting in fridge for when kid gets hungry? My grandma used to fry an egg and put that between 2 slices of bread for us. So good and filling!
I’ve got multiple kiddoes and yeah. They be hungry! And when you’re tight on $$$$, them eating a bunch gives you stress and anxiety (even though they are doing nothing wrong be eating!). It’s tough. If you want a random idea that could help, scroll to the end of this comment, otherwise ignore (it’s ok to just want to vent and rage sometimes at the things that drive us nuts!
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I have three open sterilite containers (the shoebox sized ones) each labeled ‘fruit’ ‘veg’ and ‘protein’, respectively. I cut apples and oranges and carrots and celery etc. and put them into the boxes in the fridge. The proteins are hard boiled eggs, gogurts, string cheese, sometimes baggies of ham or other lunch meat. When my kids are hungry, they can go to town on those. As many fruit/veg as they want and 1-2 protein a day. Any time they complain about hunger, I redirect them to the boxes. Otherwise, I say wait til dinner. Maybe that will help your situation. Maybe not. But don’t give up. This, too, shall pass.
Is there any way this could be happening out of boredom? I know entertainment can be hard to find cheaply. But maybe it’s something to think about. Maybe “chewelry” for your daughter if she always has to be munching something?
I have a really bad oral fixation when relaxing but (fortunately and unfortunately I guess) I vape and actually make my own liquid to vape so it’s extremely cheap.
I’m also a big gum chewer when I’m working.
Is there definitely enough to eat at mealtimes, even if its just bulk carbs and something with it? I was constantly moaning about there being no food but it was because we weren't given enough food at meal times. We were like a plague of locusts when food and snacks did come into the house as a result.
My suggestion is to back off a bit on snacks and replace it with more regular food as snacks. I did this when my kids were in high school and came home "starving". Rather than eat a bag of Doritos, I made snack food. Homemade beefaroni reheats well in the microwave, makes alot, and tastes good. 1lb ground beef cooked and crumbled, 2 boxes mac and cheese, and sauce. Or flour tortilla wraps that you can fill with tuna, taco meat, or chicken and veggies. Quick and filling.
I have similar issues with my 3 teens. Snacks in our household are things like apples, home popped popcorn, homemade smoothies, hard boiled eggs etc. Mostly though we keep to 3 hearty meals a day. Eg dinner always includes homemade vege soup, salad, dessert as well as the main course. I try to ensure they are always full/satisfied from a good meal vs snscking.
For yourself sonething like a slow cooker with soup, stew, chilli etc could be put in overnight for them to help themselves for breakfast and lunch?
Expensive processed stuff is handled as an occasional treat at our house, and i hide them in my closet and bring them out to the pantry as a fun ‘find’ for them every so often. Or I’ll bake a weekly cake or batch of muffins and when its gone, its gone, its just a little treat thing. They know not to expect these things to be there. Once a week is takeout night and we stick to better value takeout like pizza.
They are all older with part time jobs so they each have a shelf in the pantry that is just for their use - so the expensive protein powders, any speciifc faves that they individually purchase etc they will keep on their shelf and no one else is allowed to touch it.
Have you tried getting a big baggie for each day of the week of snacks per person? Visualizing it like that might help if they can’t keep track mentally.
Daughter’s bag for Monday, dad’s bag for Monday etc. Include them in the process. Don’t lock up the other bags but it will hold them accountable to realize if they eat too much Monday it will mean less on Tuesday or what have you.
Wouldn’t work on like eggs or ice creams but it’s where I would start.
I usually snack shop once a week. I have to tell my kids (8 and 6) "this is it for the week. Once it's gone, it's gone." They still go through a box of juice packs or 20 snack bags of chips in 3 days, but they don't complain about a lack of snacks anymore because the expectation was laid out for them up front.
The number of comments that say “You have to” or “You need to” is so depressing. I understand everyone trying to be helpful but the poor woman is already exhausted and stressed out. I see you doing your best mama, you don’t have to be remotely perfect and you can vent all you want!
I agree with this. I am a parent to a teen with autism. The food arguments become exhausting. I can't imagine having a husband with autism on top of it. I am trying to slowly cut back on processed foods with my teen instead of just cold turkey and telling him this is the way it is. We do have some agreements and compromises in place also such as one bag a week of his favorite chips and allowing him to spend his own money on the food he wants but once it runs out needing to wait until he has more.
First, stop buying unhealthy snack foods. Chips and ice cream are not good all the time.
Load up on fruits and veg. Bowl full of apples and oranges. Keep a tray of raw veg and ranch dressing or hummus in the fridge. Harder to gorge on potatoes than potato chips.
If that doesn't work, you may have to set up a meal plan. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. Lock up the over stock.
Good luck.
They're likely not going to stop unless you guys have some good productive conversations, or maybe therapy for hubby n kid to learn impulse control? IDK, I'm sorry.
But I have terrible food insecurities because of similar things from my brother....
I got REALLY good at hiding food. Hed eat all of his, then eat mine Everytime. So I'd take my share out first.
Chocolate in the freezer bag of peas for example. Canned goods can stay in the car trunk. Gummies would melt, but the bag will fit into the saltine cracker box no one uses in the pantry. Chips are noisy, these stay in the desk at work if possible. Don't store plastic bottled liquids in your car and cans might explode, if you have a garage stash them in a decorations box, if you have only cabinet space wash out an old detergent box and put it back under the sink for incognito storage. No one goes through the bottom of a linen closet unless they're deep cleaning, if you're the cleaner it's all yours behind that stack of towels. Guys don't touch pad/tampon boxes, like ever, no one will question there being two boxes under the sink or in your room, one as a stash!
My family had the same/similar issue when my brother and I were growing up. We would eat everything in sight that was not an ingredient. We were competitive with food, because we knew one of us had to eat it or the other one would get to it first. Lots of issues contributed to this:
1a. Both my mom and stepdad were not good at cooking. My mom could whip something up, but rarely ever did. She blamed it on being too busy, but the problem is that she was always doing errands/projects for groups/people outside our family. She didn't focus on her own family first. Bad time management.
1b. My stepdad was just a terrible cook. His meals consisted of pasta, those frozen meatless patties, and lots of pasta sauce. Bland and gross.
2. Abuse and favoritism going on in the house. So my brother and I learned to emotionally eat and compete for food.
3. The snacks were all junk food. Junk food is processed with fat, sugar, and salt. It's designed to cause cravings.
4. No regular family meals. No meal prep. My brother and I had to fend for ourselves. Eating frozen junk always left me wanting more.
I hope you see where this is going.
Edit: removed advice per the flair
My mom used to portion them out with our names on however many of each snack each family member got. She binned them all together in one “snack bin” per person. It was nice, because the kids traded a bunch of stuff between one another. And if they binged and ran out, that was on them.
I had seven kids and tried several ways, and the bin method is the way that worked for us. I grocery shopped once a week. Each kid got a bin with a week of snacks and a box of cold cereal. If they ate it in a day, fine. I had snacks that could be earned through extra chores, but they were in my car, and they didn't get them till I checked the chore after work.
One kid had a thriving business where he saved his snacks and all his regular chores got done by the kids who ran out early.
I had a list of unlimited snacks on the fridge, like carrots, apples, peanut butter and celery, sunflower seeds, etc.
I think the kids didn't complain about it because they thought it was a fair system. When they got older, they got a portion of the grocery money to buy their own snacks and cereal each week. That was interesting. A small black market of soda pop, chips and candy popped up.
Higher protein, low sugar snacks will last longer. I'm not trying to be that person, or even say there needs to be a "diet".... Cheese, nuts, hard-boiled eggs, peanut butter in celery snacks, are not usually what is binged on. Up the low sugar beverage consumption as well.
Even though it’s tedious, try making a simple fruit salad or cut up fruit. Place in a clear container in fridge so they can see it. You could also make tuna salad or egg salad and buy crackers or suggest daughter to scoop onto bread into a sandwich. Another idea: get some quart sized ziplock bags and fill with pretzels, popcorn, m&ms, raisins and dried fruit. That way they will at least get some nutrients out of their snacking!
I take a couple psyllium husk capsules before each meal, and it expands helping me need/want to eat less. I started these to help lose weight, but I’ve noticed just shopping for myself that I’m saving about 15-20 bucks a week because of it. I also try to stay well hydrated, but we all know that “trick” lol. I hope something helps ya find some peace, I know the struggle is real!
Things got *very* hard for me a few years ago when I got custoday of my nephews as their first foster parent. Since I was family, I did not qualify for food stamps because I amde a whole 16 an hour
So adding with my two, I had five teenagers. Plus two school agers every other weekend. They were ravaging the house. Nothing lasted more than a few hours and they were stealing from each other and sneaking and hoarding food. They could demolish 5 bags of chips in an hour, and we ALWAYS ended up hungry days before payday ( My spouse was disabled and stayed at home with the kids while I worked, he did not get SSI for another year)
Fuck, they DRANK THE FLAVORED COFFEE CREAMER. AGAIN.
We got a locked trunk and kept it in our bedroom. And a mini fridge. We kept ALL the cookies, chips, sodas, juices, everything in our bedroom. The kids had to come and ASK for them
Yeah it sounds awful, but it really showed us, and them, just how often they are reaching for chips pout of boredom, not hunger.
You have to keep your snacks under lock and take some out bit by bit. I know a lot of families who are definitely not struggling financially and who still do it like this. The person with the most self control in the family (usually mum) has the key to the cupboard and takes some out for consumption day by day.
My kids were like this too, specifically one more than the other, i got so sick of running out of snacks immediately and the constant "mo0om can i have something to eat?". I created the "snack basket" which is one basket in the pantry they can snack from anytime, i keep it filled with granola bars, and other healthy small snacks that i buy on sale. Some weeks its not as full as other weeks. Our other easy snacks are yogurts and fruits in the fridge. If they want anything more substantial they can make a sandwich or tortillas or something.
Recently they were complaining about the lack of cereal choices, so i was feeling nice and got some cooler cereals this past week. Milk was in short supply at the store and we all drink lactose free so $4 for a half gallon. I also bought extra bread and said take it easy on the milk, make sandwiches. Two nights ago i wanted a bowl of the apple jacks, my favorite. Nope. No milk. All gone. Now they have all these fun cereals and no milk. Hahah, ya played yaself.
HIDE THE SNACKS. Portion them out yourself. Buy a big package of single serve chips? They each get one a day. In addition to this, provide healthy easy snacks, so that they can't say there's "no food". Baby carrots, fruit cups, apples, granola or nutrigrain bars, etc.
Yeah, I think I’m going to have to hide the extras. But people are all assuming I’m not buying and providing healthy foods. Í absolutely am, they just won’t eat anything they don’t like. My daughter especially will just go hungry but also complain there’s no food, when the fridge is stuffed full of fruit, veg, etc. I think that’s the most maddening part, I know there’s plenty of food, it’s almost like gaslighting (I’m obviously exaggerating, I know it’s not really anything like gaslighting, just frustrated!)
My nephew is autistic. My sister keeps all snacks in her office and brings home a few everyday. If she keeps them at home he will eat them all. It has been happening since he was little.
I have five kids,and made all the meals for my family for years. I was loosing my damn mind. One day I decided everyone else ( over age 10) needed to make dinner once a week. It can be boxed Mac and cheese and hotdogs, I don’t care, but you have to plan it (protein, carb and fruit/veg at minimum) cook it, put it on the table so it’s ready to eat. My husband and my older three kids all cook once a week and they complain sooooo much less it’s wonderful. Whatever you do I wish you luck
If they're on the spectrum - you unfortunately have to contend with their routines and preferences, if not - as you can see, it can result in some...moodiness. Obviously it can be anything ranging from difficult to end of the world upsetting to have those routines changed.
If they're preventing you from eating well/causing a strain on the budget that needs to be reversed - you need another fridge/freezer that can be LOCKED. When they ask, explain why but focus on it's because \*you're\* tired of not eating well ('I went to the doctor and got on a specific diet'), not that you're trying to change them. Make sure it's a lock that can't be hit with bolt cutters.
Because the alternative ain't much nicer - it does not sound like you have the energy to change and manage their behaviors on top of your own with the binge eating disorder. You do have the energy to remove yourself entirely from the situation, even if it's temporarily (a long vacation) to get your bearings and let them survive without the convenience of your efforts. Good luck.
time for the snacks to go away...don't bring them home from the store...only buy ingredients that make an edible meal.
our family has the same problem...if we go grocery shopping on Sunday, all the pre-prepared foods are gone by Monday night...pudding cups, chips, micro-waved meals, yogurts, fruit cups, ice cream and fudge bars, etc.
After reading the first two paragraphs I was left wondering if you had an autistic child. Then I read the third and got confirmation that both your husband and kid are autistic.
People with autism have sensory issues and seem will only want to eat processed foods (This might be a generalization), and the sensory issues makes them not like real food. My little sister is autistic and at one point my mom had to put a lock on the refrigerator to control what she ate.
I don't have a solution for you, but eating all the processed foods and complaining about no food being in the house (Meaning no food they want to eat) is from their autism. I am sorry you have to deal with it.
It doesn’t sound like it’s the texture issue or refusal to eat real food. They eat what the mom/wife cooks. They just won’t make anything themselves and just eat all the convenience foods up and complain there’s no food.
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I keep the good, non-perishable stuff in my trunk.
Yep! We keep Gatorade around for if we are sick. That shit is in my closet until someone is sick! Things also got a lot easier when my older son wanted to get a job at 15. He now buys all his snacks and eats dinner at work a lot. He works at Chuck E Cheese, and he LOVES IT. He is high functioning autistic and he is always given the parties with special needs kids. He is so good he gets ripped 100s regularly. When he gets a whole bill as a tip, he offers to buy pizza or fast food for all of us. It will get better, OP. I'm so sorry to hear the mental load of poverty is mostly being put on you. That is a really, really heavy load I also carried being a single mom for 13 years. I'm finally remarried. You're gonna make it 🙌🏻❤️
Your son sounds very thoughtful and kind. You did a good job raising him :)
I’m a 40-something woman, but I’m very jealous of your son’s job LOL. I always wanted to work at CEC. I had my bday parties there into my 20s, and still drag my (now adult) daughter to go play the games. I had no idea the party people got tipped.
This is the way. My 15m will snack and snack and snack. Now there's fruit, cut up veg and cereal bars for snack. The good stuff stays in my car and doled out 1 per evening as dessert
That's what I do. Plus autistic doesn't mean no self control can ever be learned
I’ve literally started doing this so I can control how many unnecessary snacks I eat
This is what my mom did when we all turned into teenagers. Then I would just eat a huge bowl of rice. I was a growing gurl!
I literally don’t buy snacks. Snacks are not a necessity. If they cannot control themselves, then just stop buying them. Especially since they’re complaining about “no food”.
There's always popcorn kernels. OPs family can use the stove or the microwave to make popcorn, and the additional time and prep it takes to make it could cut down on mindless eating.
Actually yes.That’s a great idea. We have one of those glass popcorn makers that goes in the microwave.
Also, you can pop popcorn in an unwaxed brown paper bag in the microwave. You just fold the bag shut.
I never knew that! Ty :)
You can also microwave it in a big bowl with a plate overtop as a lid!
You can also just use a pot it takes like 5 minutes
That’s what I do, and it’s the tastiest way! Sooo crunchy :D (to make it extra crunchy just lift the lid a millimeter a few times to vent out the steam while it’s popping).
I have a collapsible silicone one that doesnt require any oil, but you can use it if you want. I love it, its easy. For my 18 year old great-nephew that lives here, its too much trouble. So, like OP, I get the, *no food in the house,* thing all the time. Since everything is something you have to make.
I would only buy the popcorn. I personally wouldn't want to be limited to one snack, but eating all the snacks in a few days is ridiculous.
Thats the nice thing about the popcorn kernels, you get to customize and create flavors yourself. If snacking has become a subconscious hobby, having to create your own snack will take up a good chunk of time that might have otherwise been spent scrolling and eating. It's also probably going to be more fun.
Especially with them being autistic sometimes just the act of eating a lot of something crunchy is a stim and popcorn is perfect for that.
Or rice cakes and jam.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/is-hot-food-more-filling-than-cold-food This one may be paywalled: https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article/47/4/523/5815985
Pretzels a great cheap option as well.
I recommend popcorn kernels (and not prepopped popcorn or microwave bags) because they're a more involved way to make popcorn and they'll be warm. Hot food is often perceived as more filling and the act of making food will break up the ~~monotype~~ monotony of eating and scrolling or eating and watching tv. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7744612/
Good point. I have a silicone microwave popping container and we break it out every Sunday night.
I got one of the silicone popping bowls and we use it probably 3-4 times a week. I use all kinds of stuff to dress it up... ranch powder, cheese powder, garlic salt, parmesan, nutritional yeast, ramen seasoning packets, cinnamon sugar... you can do so much with popcorn!
This. My current favorite snack. Big pot with avocado oil and season it with sea salt and ghee. Once in a bowl I eat it with a hot sauce like Valentina. Leftover popcorn goes to a gallon Ziploc for me to enjoy the next day. A lot cheaper than the microwavable too.
I was raised in a house where there were a few snacks every shopping trip - maybe a bag of chips and a container of ice cream. Mom shopped every two weeks. There were two kids and two adults. The rule was that anyone could snack on what they wanted, but when it was gone, it was gone. Complain all you wanted, but it was everyone's fault if you ran out of snacks. Not mom's fault. She didn't eat 2/3 of the chips an hour after she got home from the store. You and dad did that. It's your fault. You get no more snacks. OR you use your allowance to buy your own snacks.
Yep! My home was the same way. The only difference was that my mom always kept juice, soda, and chocolate milk on hand and I don’t even do that. It’s either milk or water, but when the milk is gone, it’s gone.
This is what I'm having to do now because I have a 6 yo that likes to wake up in the wee hours of the morning and eat all the snacks he can. It's kind of working now that neither he nor his brother haven't had any snacks for the last week and a half. When he whines, I can only tell him, "I'm sorry buddy, but that's what happens when you eat half a box of crackers to yourself when everyone else is sleeping."
Awww that sounds totally fair, but if I were a kid, I would have been so sad. As a kid, I wasn't one to snack so much (thank god). So a pint of ice cream could sit in the fridge for a month or 2. Now as an adult it's another thing entirely.
It taught me to budget my snacking, that's for sure! It also taught me to save some for myself. I would take a bowl of chips, for instance, and save them for later, so that if my brother hogged all the chips, I'd still have some the next day for when \*I\* wanted chips.
Send them both to extra curricular cooking classes. Put an emphasis on them being self sufficient in preparing their own meals. It makes no difference how old they are. If they are old enough to use a knife, they are old enough to cook.
I could try, but without an interest, neither one of them would do it. I’ve been trying to teach my kid how to cook since she was a toddler. Unless someone’s interested in something, you can’t teach them. And it’s harder because she has autism, adhd, executive functioning disorder and pathological demand avoidance. She will be doing cooking in school this year so I’m hoping she might become interested then. She can cook chicken nuggets and chips (the international food of the autistic kid), make toast and make pancakes with a lot of supervision but Will honestly go hungry and complain rather than make herself something to eat.
And your husband is just "guess I'll just die" in all of this? If you are sick for a whole week, ya'll just starve to death? He just stares at the pantry and hopes food appears out of thin air?
Not OP but in a really similar situation and...my husband does exactly that. With random bouts of anger at the "no food" mixed in. i'm here hoping someone has an idea i *haven't* tried because i am SO burned out.
Wow... ok so I thought my GF was pretty bad because she 1. Doesn't know how to cook much 2. Refuses to use the gas stove because it scares her However, she will make simple things and is starting to learn using her electric griddle, the oven, and or the microwave (she can make a great breakfast actually). She is amazing at eating left overs. So very little goes to waste as she will gladly finish off the last of that thing I made the day before as a snack. She is also ok to just make herself a cold cut sandwich or toast if all else fails. So she doesn't whine at me when I don't cook (although much prefers when I do). I am not sure I would feed someone that just whined there was no food. I would be very tempted to pit on noise canceling headphones or leave and just let them starve.
It can be really challenging sometimes, i can't lie. But i think it's something that i learned to put up with throughout my upbringing and just sort of expected (?) as an adult. idk. Regardless, i appreciate some of the tips and tricks i'm seeing on here! Good on you and your girlfriend for finding some things that work in your situation and to her especially for getting out of her comfort zone. Well, also especially to you for being patient with her. How about just big props to BOTH of you? i know it's hard.
>i'm here hoping someone has an idea i haven't tried because i am SO burned out. Just don't. Let him be hungry. If he pitches a fit he pitches a fit. Let him eat baloney sandwich.
Agreed. He’s a grown ass adult. He’s not going to let himself die. Neither is the 15yo for that matter.
I would also add that as a father, he has a certain amount of responsibility to feed his child. If she can’t cook, he should!
My cousin with ASD wouldn't eat for 8 days in the hospital because he was on a sodium restricted diet. All he wanted was chicken tenders and mashed potatoes with butter. I told the staff he wouldn't eat any of the food. Day 8, they gave him a regular diet. He got his tenders and potatoes and finally ate. He was discharged on day 12. So yeah, my cousin would just sit and look at the cupboard, hoping snack cakes would appear. XD
Have you tried cooking together so he can learn to prepare meals? Me and my hubby both cook together, I’ll assign him some dish and do another, or we will work on new ones together and one of us measures while the other reads the recipe. It works really well for us and he can prepare anything he needs from raw ingredients
Maybe it's time to revisit cooking together. i see a lot of people in the thread talking about it, but i like the way you suggest it. It's much more collaborative and fun sounding (for *both* of us) and might keep his engagement more. i appreciate you so much 💜
Sounds like a him problem. Set some boundaries, friend.
Forgive me, I'm speechless. I know this isn't a problem you didn't ask for. It's just crazy to me how common this is, and it blows my mind. If anything would happen to you, they have the survival skills of a toddler. I wouldn't accept any of it. It doesn't have to be good food, but doing some groceries once in a while and being able to cook an egg, bake potatoes and some meat is the bare minimum. It doesn't have to be perfect, but they have to be able to feed themselves?! There is no excuse for this kind of incompetence. There's literally billions of videos available, for free. There are 3 step recipes available. If one cannot understand "slice the tomatoes", I don't understand how they get anywhere in life. How is your husband doing at his job? Because I find it hard to believe his skill level is high with such incompetence. If it turns out he's actually doing really well, he's fucking with you - forgive me but there's just no way someone is that intelligent at their job but as stupid as a toddler at home. Again, I know you didn't ask for this and you're asking for help. But it's just blowing my mind. It's not fair to only criticize though and I agree with someone else who suggested to cook together. Slicing ingredients is a good first start. At one point he might be comfortable enough for you to trade places at the stove. "Keep an eye on this meat while I go to the bathroom" to make them comfortable with the pan, you want them to graduate from slicing at some point. And do groceries together sometimes. I understand it's all exhausting but the way it's going for you now is unsustainable.
i just can’t imagine being able to maintain any attraction (or goodwill…in any sense) to a so-called adult that behaves like this. HOW??
[удалено]
Best of luck. I - sincerely - hope eventually you'll be able to find a solution that works for you both and you can rest a little. You deserve it.
Genuinely I don't think anyone should stay in that kind of relationship. It's supposed to be 2 consenting adults but someone who can't feed themselves isn't exactly an adult
My husband goes for the easiest route: can do rice and boil an egg. Then complcains hes hungry again so he has a cup of coffee and bread with butter or jam ... and if that fails, orders take out.
They will "starve" otherwise. That's the interest. It's in quotes because short term, they will be uncomfortable and may have grumbly tummies. Long term, this is not sustainable. They will ride you until you are broken. You mention that both are on the spectrum. They are riding you harder that any capitalist CEO would get away with. You deserve better.
“they will ride you until you are broken” THANK YOU. exactly!!!
They can make PBJ, and they will have interest if they don’t have easy snacks around and are hungry. Eggs for breakfast- cereal is $$ and eaten so quickly if they are big eaters- and bananas! Autistic or not, your husband is an adult and needs to learn how to manage his expectations and behavior and take some role in managing the food/meal protocol. Stop making it so easy for them, it needs to be more difficult than this for anything to change.
Yep. My son has autism, but we've never purchased snacks. From the age of 5, if he was hungry, he would microwave himself a quesadilla, a bowl of oatmeal, eat a banana, or make himself a peanut butter sandwich. There are plenty of easy foods that are both healthier and cheaper than snacks.
I have a very ND household and we stopped buying prepared snacks right around the time the kids could be trusted to safely use the microwave and toaster. Microwave quesadillas, peanut butter or tuna sandwiches, and popcorn are staples for lunch/ snacks.
Maybe it’s time for you to be unreasonable. Buy and make food for only you and lock it up. Give them their portion of food money and wish them all the luck. They need a little fuck around and find out. But I sense they know you won’t so they don’t feel the need to modify their behavior because what they’re doing works fantastic.
I did this for a month with mine. They got 100 to spend a week and it had to last the whole week. They failed, miserably. But they DID learn to trade ala prison style, that was ...cool, I guess.
Woohoo barter system!
They still use it to this day. They were my nephews, I was their foster parent. So food was always scarce, even with me. (Me making 16 an hour and covering all housing and food for 5 teenagers would not have been possible without the food bank) I understood why they gorged...because at home, if they didn't eat ALL the food at once, there would not be anything the next day :( It's kinda sad when you look at it like that, but they are champs and each one is leaving foster care succeeding more than the one before.
As long as they don’t also learn like, shank-making it’s a net win I think!;)
Your husband is an adult in the home and your partner. Is he unable to step up and take over grocery shopping or cooking from you? Even just part time?
He’s here in the mornings, so does make breakfast and lunches, but he works afternoons until 8pm usually, so can’t make dinners. If he did the groceries it would cost us 3 times as much.
I wonder if they just don't know where to begin? I find myself challenged with "what should I make for dinner?" I have ADD (with executive functioning problems) and struggle with planning what to make. I'm a good cook, just not able to plan ahead. If I know what I'm going to make and have all the ingredients, then it's no problem. Another issue I struggle with is initiation. Just getting started feels SO hard. I'd rather wait til it's too late to make something, then eat crap cause I'm hungry. I don't want to be this way, it's just the way I am. So, getting back to knowing how to begin. I agree with others to "hide" the snacks (trunk is a great idea!). Then, make a handful of index cards with pictures of the snacks that are available to them and how to prepare them (such as popcorn). That way, they don't have to think about the effort to make something. They need ideas to pick from. I'm thinking ~6 index cards of a variety of snacks (s.a. yogurt, apples & peanut butter, chips & cheese, popcorn, etc). Put pictures of the item on the card with basic instructions and laminate them. Put them in a recipe box or hang them on the fridge with a magnetic chip clip. Take out the cards when you don't have it in the house. Make sure to switch it up for variety like you do for little kids and their toys.
That’s brilliant
Every time they complain, say, ''I don't want to hear you complain about this' and walk away. Just bc they complain, it doesn't mean you have to listen. She'd rather be hungry than make toast? Guess she not really that hungry then.
Let. Your. Child. Have. Consequences. For. Their. Own. Stupid. Decisions. Please! It’s so important!
this includes the larger, adult child 🥴
I'm an AuDHD mom of AuDHD kids, one of whom has ARFID, so you have my deep sympathy! There are a lot of different kinds of disability and capability among autistic folks, but unless your husband is seriously disabled, autism is no excuse for making you do all the heavy lifting around food in the home. If it's important to him, he can figure out how to make snacks for himself. If he cares about you, he can figure out how to make your life a wee bit easier. As a rule, we autistic people need things spelled out for us sometimes. Even when we care deeply about someone, we may not see that something we're doing is causing them distress. If you haven't talked with your husband about this, please do. Be really clear that you need his help in a very specific area and then let him figure out how he can provide it in a way that fits him. As for your daughter, this is going to sound harsh, but you may have to start setting limits on her complaining. She is old enough to be learning self-regulation skills (if she has that capacity), so a rule along the lines of, "If you complain repeatedly, I will delay buying more snacks for one day. If you do it again tomorrow, I will add a day." And so on. Things will absolutely get worse for a while, but unless she's seriously disabled, she'll learn. It's a really hard line to walk between acknowledging the difficulties faced by neurodivergent people and letting those difficulties become an excuse for bad behavior. What one person can do, another cannot. I don't know your family and can't judge what they are able to do. What I do know is that many men dump all the emotional labor on women and autistic men are not exempt from that kind of assholery. Your husband needs to step up in whatever way he can and stop making you bear the burden alone.
They will get interested real quick when you only cook for yourself and they can either learn to cook or go hungry.
Could you put food in a crock pot - like precooked chili? They can eat that for lunch.
I'm wondering if learning to make air fryer "meals" would help? You can make a lot of things in air fryers.
Amazon has these clear lockbox’s with a built in combo. I got one to use as iPad/switch jail but it would work great for some snacks. If you get a couple, and a couple snack bins. Put two portions out for them in little bins. Lock yours in lockbox. If they run out in one day too bad. Apples and toast with toppings. Freezer pancakes. Popcorn.
You give up and give in too easily. If they get hungry enough, they'll make something. Buy a pair of earplugs (seriously).
Lock the cupboards at night or while you're gone, but leave out a healthy amount of food where they won't starve, plus a little extra. Saw this recommended on another forum about a special needs kid eating nonstop at night, you just need to leave food out so when they're actually hungry they can eat
My son is PDA, too, and he was little he has always told people to get things for him. He's 13 now, and we don't do it for him anymore. Just the other day, he didn't like what l made for supper and ASKED us how to make eggs. His twin (neurotypical) taught him how. I think that was the first time at home that he showed Interest. Funny story - he always has to look cool and be the best at everything, so at his friend's house, he told the mom he could make the Mac and cheese. He has never made Mac and cheese in his life! So, he proceeds to put water in the pan and poured all of the contents of the box into the water. I asked him how it turned out. He said, "It was watery and a little hard." LOL
My almost 14 yo son has auDHD and I'm pretty sure PDA, so I totally get where you're coming from. My kid's diet is terrible; he has a limited number of safe foods and seems to be reducing them so I'm considering whether it's ARFID. Do you do low demand parenting? I have to homeschool my son and have been trying to stick to low demand so he's less likely to just say no to whatever I suggest. One of my goals with homeschooling is to work on cooking and baking with him, but I know he won't want to cook whatever I have planned. I've suggested that we have nights where we cook food from different countries and have asked him if he could give me a list of countries he thinks have good food. I haven't seen the list yet, but when I approach things this way, it seems to be more successful than just telling him to come help. The one thing my son will make consistently for himself is Kraft mac and cheese in the microwave. I wrote the instructions on a post it that's on the cabinet above the microwave. I may cut other stuff from the food budget but we always have several boxes of mac and cheese for him because he's so restricted. It might be helpful if you have a list of your daughter's safe foods so you can see what else she might learn to make for herself. I know trying to feed people on a budget is hard, but when you throw in ND, it's so much harder.
Children and spouses can be trained to stop snacking. The complaints will stop when they’ve tried it enough times and you don’t budge. Option 1 : Buy snacks once a week, enough to reasonably last a week. If they run out because they can’t ration themselves, too bad, you’re not going to replenish the supply until the following week. Option 2: Ration like option 1. BUT if there are left over snacks come shopping day, you will buy EXTRA snacks that week. Option 3: The one I grew up with. Feed them so much rice and beans during meal time they don’t have room in the stomach for snacks. Kid comes home from school, after school meal. Dinner has extra helpings of rice, beans, or other cheap carb. Option 4: Ration normally. But if they run out and complain to you and there will be no snacks then following week. Feel free to combine the carrots and sticks.
After school, pre-dinner snack/meal has helped cut down snacking in my house. Sometimes, it's grilled cheese, or hot buttered rolls, or scrambled eggs. My son has ADHD and is on the spectrum. I noticed that he always has to have something to mouth. So I buy snacks that last longer, like lollipops and hard candy. He also has become a whiz at popping his own popcorn (1/3 cup of kernels in a brown bag in the microwave foe 1.5-3 min), and that is his go-to snack. I also keep a snack drawer which I fill sometimes daily sometimes weekly. The bigger containers go in a cabinet that the kids cannot access.
Thanks, but trust me, the complaints will not stop. My kid once got sent home from school because she annoyed her teacher so much during a sports day. When I say relentless, I mean like The Terminator level of relentless. She will ask for something literally hundreds of times, doesn’t matter how much you say no, once she’s fixated on something it doesn’t end. She won’t eat something if she doesn’t like it. They are good ideas, and probably would work for “neurotypical” people but it’s a different ball game for some kids/people.
How much of this is hunger eating and how much of it is adhd/boredom/compulsive eating?
Good point! Getting stim toys and chewy toys could possibly help with the brain boredom of not having a secondary background activity happening at the same time, so "hungry" gets defaulted to. Brains are also dumb, and send hungry signals when what it actually wants is thirsty. I'd ask how much water they drink.
Look, I get it. I really do, my child is neurodivergent and I can relate. But the answer here isn’t soemthing you can do or change, you’re already doing it all. Your husband and kid need the adjustment and it isn’t going to be pretty. I have a big family and run into many of the same problems. The way we do it, which sounds crazy to other people sometimes, is we hve two ‘kitchens’ We basically will do a big shopping trip but only ‘release’ what we can afford for the week. We might have two boxes of snack cakes, but only 7 packages go into the cabinet and the cabinet only opens on Sunday for restocks. I know your pain with your daughter, and your sanity is important, but it is on you to set the boundary and stick with it, or give in and reward and enforce her bad behavior, which will obv lead to her doing it more in the future. Like you said, nobody is learning anything they don’t want to, but I think you know your family needs some help with the fitness/activity department and it all starts in the kitchen. My step daughter struggles with weight issues, and healthy snacking has been a big pain ( mostly for my wife who relates, I am chronically wiry and can’t put on weight to save my life) but it was all a matter of finding something she likes or at least doesn’t hate, and it being filling. She’s not super excited to make and eat ants on a log, but she knows at this point she isn’t going to get a bag of chips and if she wants to stop feeling hungry/awful the ants on a log will do that for her. It’s tough and I feel for you. You’ve got to control the flow of food at the very least. Don’t tolerate being badgered until you cry and give in, that’s awful and ridiculous. There’s a line to walk as far as doing your part ti provide for your family and willingly helping them hurt themselves because it’s easier then the tough love necessary to make them realize their bad behavior. Letting go with love is a great concept, idk if it necessarily applies to you in this situation but maybe give jt a look and just apply it to you and your families current relationship with food and how it makes you feel .
Oh absolutely. The food issue is something I’ve been struggling with, with my daughter for a long time. I have Binge Eating Disorder myself which I track back to my childhood and a lovely combination of food insecurity (sometimes we had nothing but pancakes to eat for days), constant comments about my weight and eating habits, lack of any healthy foods at all and horrendous bullying by my family and at school. So I know how damaging it can be to restrict what she eats, but also just as damaging to let her eat what she wants, she’s also tall and solidly built and of course I NEVER EVER mention her size or weight but kids at school have said things, despite her not actually being overweight, just bloody tall. Then there’s the fact that she going through puberty so really is going to be more hungry than she was. And trying to balance that with the insane price of groceries here in Australia right now and being super busy working and studying. And well the whole situation has just become this big messy drama as you can tell from my incoherent rambling response here.
Do you have a way to remove yourself from the situation when the relentless begging begins? Can you say no once, and then go shut yourself in a room and put some headphones on? Or go outside for a walk for an hour? And just repeat that pattern? “I said no, if you ask again I’m going to leave for an hour.” And then do follow through, in response to either family member who won’t leave you alone. Your sanity is really important and you shouldn’t have to endure relentless hounding about a problem you didn’t cause and cannot fix.
>Or go outside for a walk for an hour I was about to say "just leave". I don't understand why this is a hard concept in this case.
Maybe it would be beneficial to post this question on an autism related forum, see what others who have been through it before have done? I’ve learned this from having an adhd husband, NTs only have so much advice and it’s usually related to how we would think. I’ve learned the most from listening to others with adhd.
So put ear plugs in, or go out. You absolutely cannot cave to nagging or you are just training them to nag.
Your kid is like that because they know you eventually give in. You can't give in. Neurodivergent kids need MORE routine, structure, and patience. Not less.
"My saying no is not an opportunity for you to change it to a yes. No means no." Doesnt matter who the kid is, everyone needs to learn boundaries and there are consequences for crossing those boundaries. What are they going to do when they are an adult? She is already doing it at school because its a learned behavior. She learned to ask a million times, because you give in. I know how hard it is. ITS SO FREAKING HARD. but eventually, you need to hold firm. Then they learn that asking wont get them what they want.
I know this is a rant/vent, but I work on multiple neurodivergent kids and adults all week. A few are like what you describe. I have earplugs that filter out a lot of sound to get through the day. But one kid will ask the same inane question the entire hour. I’m a massage therapist and I don’t give a crap about cartoon and game characters or horror movies. For him, wireless earbuds. Just low enough to hear if his tone goes into real question territory.
I think a lot of times people overexaggerate what it is like to have autism. You don't know how much of her behavior is autism and how much of it is a normal tantrum from being coddled because she has autism. Unless she has a low functioning form of autism that is going to see her living with you forever, she can just deal with the consequences of her actions -- and seeing as she can feed herself snacks, I think she probably isn't that low functioning. As someone with both a personal and family history of neurodivergence, I promise your daughter will not melt or explode if you let her endure the consequences of her actions. You are enabling this behavior in her and your husband. Don't underestimate what she is capable of! So many people with childhood autism grow up defeated and remain so because of how little self-governance they have been allowed. I appreciate that it can be a lot more difficult for you to enforce boundaries and rules with an autistic child, and doubly so if you have no spousal support, but you also have a duty to reinforce good and normal behaviors in whatever way is possible. Time for husband to get a grip and act like an adult, not a second child.
I did this with mom as a kid. Not with food. I still repeat but with medication I’m better. But yeah. She just kept saying no. I was annoying about it. But she just tuned me out eventually I guess.
Please tell me you lost your shit on the school for that. They are enabling this behavior.
This is a vent/rant post, so no advice can be given. Edit: sub rules 🤷♀️. I know its dumb, but I was banned for 2 days for giving advice on a different post.
You probably gave advice where it's not wanted and got reported by the poster... OP here seems receptive on the other hand.
Yes thats all good, but the tag says vent/rant- no advice or criticism. Im just following the rules of this sub. Everyone should, no matter how stupid it is.
Hey OP, my partner and I are Autistic and he has impulse control issues. You need to be locking away portions of the snacks and only releasing enough for a day or two. When it's gone, it's gone. You cannot give them free reign over the large trove of snacks, they won't portion control. For my husband, we just won't buy certain things because he can't control himself. But I know that won't work for you. You also need to get them into therapy. Your daughter can't just continue life like this by repeatedly annoying people and asking for things and being sent home from school. You are essentially enabling this behavior by letting her have whatever she wants for food.
The husband is also enabling this behavior because he also wants to indulge. Over time (if not already) they’ll both start to resent OP for trying to control their intake and it’ll be a ‘us’ vs ‘her’ dynamic in the house which will only make things worse.
Absolutely. With him also being on the spectrum, it's easy to fall into this because him and the daughter also have this in common as sort of a weird shared bonding experience. That's why I suggested therapy. He needs to work on being an adult and modeling appropriate behavior for his daughter.
She’s already seeing an OT and a psychologist and has since she was 4.
Have you actually discussed this behavior with them? Your husband also needs to do therapy as well. He is modeling this behavior for her. You two need to be a united front.
Is your husband working? Why isn’t he buying extra food? How old is your kid?
He works, afternoons, 1pm- 8pm usually. He doesn’t drive but anytime he goes to the supermarket he spends soo much money. He doesn’t seem to understand that money is a finite resource.
So you're carrying another child, who is sabotaging the family's food supply and hemorrhaging money while refusing to cook or plan or shop in a frugal way? Start with him as the source of the problem, not the kid. You can't function like this with an active, selfish saboteur as the other household adult.
I feel like you probably know this already, but all of this shouldn't fall on your shoulders alone, and your husband is being an incompetent and shitty partner by refusing to be a responsible adult with you.
Tell your kid that dad has the snack money.
That’s the problem, she said when he buys he spends way too much.
Then he gets to work a second job to make up the shortfall, because he's an adult .
Since she’s going through puberty and always hungry snacking a lot anyway (I remember it was painful hunger for me) I would stock up on protein heavy snacks. Salted flavored nuts, greek Yogurts, protein bars, cheese sticks, hummus and tzaziki dips with baby carrots, cucumber slices.Meat sticks, Salted Edemame, Stuff like that. They fill you up quickly and instead of being empty carbs it will help her with the nutrition she needs to grow. There’s only so much they can eat of the protein heavy snacks. Also you can premake chicken snack wraps/ chicken quesadillas stuff like that for them to find in the fridge
Especially if she’s tall. Don’t underestimate the body’s needs for nutrition for a growing child, especially one that is very tall. Most of the men in my family are over 6’3” and the women are around 5’8” or taller. Big people just eat more and need more nutrition, especially in their teenage prepubescent years. My mom was an anomaly in my house at 5’4” and was always criticizing me, or reprimanding me for eating because she didn’t understand it, and it has affected my relationship with food my whole life. I am realizing that I have an unhealthy mental relationship with it even though I don’t seem to have any eating disorders. I would call it disorganized eating. Also look into insulin resistance - I had this my whole life and didn’t realize it until my 30s when I got on metformin… all of a sudden my cravings were controllable and I didn’t HAVE to eat SOMETHING sweet all the time the way I did growing up. My sweet tooth has practically disappeared. When someone has insulin resistance, their body does not process sugar correctly so they will want sugar all the time because their body doesn’t get enough in a weird backwards way. Worth looking into.
In our house we had a similar problem with the added issue of two kids who would be upset if one sibling got more than the other. This is what I did: each household member got a bin with a lid with their name on it for snacks. One in the pantry. One in the fridge and one in the freezer. When I got something that was viewed as extra - like fruit snacks, ice cream bars, little chip bags, little Debbie’s, etc. They would be distributed to the snack bins. Equally between the kids and then appropriately between husband and I. What I figured out is that there was a lot of mindless snacking going on and wanting the high value snacks and not wanting to “miss out” on them. I kept stuff for snacking like popcorn and pretzels to go with cheese sticks around for regular snacking. Once your bin was empty that’s it. You can trade with someone or ask politely but you cannot take from someone’s bin. Even when the kids were young this helped a LOT. One would eat everything fast and the other was slower. I was able to know that in 3 days I could go have one of something I bought. My husband wasn’t mindlessly finishing off something. We don’t need the bins anymore but it really helped everyone regulate and most importantly- stop complaining because they were in charge of their rate of consumption. Edit to add: we are a house full of neurodivergent individuals and having clear rules that gave control to the individual was very helpful.
Thanks! I had tried the snack box in the past, but could be worth revisiting now that my kid is older and DOES understand the concept of “mine vs yours” even if she does ignore it most of the time.
It may not work for your needs, and that’s ok too! It worked for us because the biggest issue was between siblings. Every family has their own hurdles and I didn’t even know my kid was on the spectrum when I implemented it. Now that they’re teenagers we get one special treat per shopping trip that they have complete control over, but their snack desires have diverged enough that they aren’t trying to fight over the same “high value” treats. However, I also grew up as the youngest of 5 raised by a mom who was 1 of 6, and we both have no shame in hiding our own treats in the veggie drawer or with the dish towels.
Buy fruit. It's sweet and not as bad if they overeat it. Maybe teach your daughter to make cookies or granola bars. If she puts effort into the treat, she may want to ration it to enjoy it longer.
We’ve tried baking, she will literally eat the raw, plain flour and sugar and then run off while I do everything. But she’s doing cooking at school this year, so I’m hoping it might interest her when she’s doing it with her friends and not being forced to hang out with her mum.
that sounds like a different kind of food disorder if shes willing to eat raw flour, id definitely bring it up again
Raw flour can contain salmonella OP, please be careful.
Which is why I don’t bake with her anymore. After having to physically restrain her from eating it.
People think they tell us not to eat raw batter and dough because of the eggs but it’s actually the flour. If you don’t heat the flour, it can make you very sick.
I hope you have some success with her cooking classes! With my teen daughter, once she discovered making her own brownies from scratch it was a game changer for her. I buy the cheap raw ingredients and if she wants chocolate brownies she can make them herself. She’s 14. I just never buy snack cakes or anything, so if she gets a craving she’ll have to make it. The $1 package of cookie powder was a huge asset too. She makes those for the family often as well.
Raw flour can make you sick
So, look, this isn't about food. You have two people in your house who are actively kicking holes in the boat and then crying that their feet are wet. They've hounded you to the point of abuse. If this was me, I'd break out the crock pot and cook vats of rice and beans and that's what for every meal. If they binge, well, that's a couple of dollars. Unfortunately, you married and raised people who feel like Twinkies should magically appear in limitless quantities while they sit and watch you get broken in the process of acquiring them. The problem is that your husband can just lark off to the store and set piles of money on fire because he has no concept of money or budget or the household survival. It's time for a come to Jesus meeting--first with him. Lay out a budget and some hard limits on his independent spending. You shouldn't have to be the food police, or spend emotional labor trying to keep the boat afloat while the other two sink it. If he doesn't have any idea or whines, you have an important data point about his selfishness and unwillingness to be an equal partner to you. Then you take those hard lines to the kid. She's going to be a shitty partner and roommate if she keep this behavior when she leaves your house. You're clearly at the breaking point here, emotionally and financially. It's time for drastic action to save yourself.
glomming onto this comment to try to convince OP of just one thing: she deserves so, so, SO much better than this. you need not accept this treatment for your entire life.
I don’t buy traditional snacks anymore either bc of the same issue. It’s literally disordered eating - they don’t realize they’re binge eating most of the time. Work on the cause of the problem if you can, or start buying string cheese and candied dried fruits and bulk granola and see how fast the issue resolves itself (that’s what I did).
I know you're not going to like this but the answer really is to stop buying snacks. Completely. "There's not food" f off and microwave a potato. They soon shut up.
I also have an autistic kid who will eat like this so these are just some things that work for me. I guess my first question is, is there enough food? You said your daughter is tall, what are her caloric needs? Its really easy as a parent to not take this into consideration. What do they eat for breakfast and lunch and who prepares it? Do they know what ingredients or foods you consider off limits? Do they know the limits? Do you meal plan? You've probably already tried this, but if there's 8 ice creams in a box how many can everyone have each? In my house that's 2 each, you eat them that's it for the week. I meal plan all meals including the ones I don't cook that way they all know what the ingredients are for. I make snack foods and cereal have no rules except this is what you get for this time period there will be no more and you need to be thoughtful and fair to the other people in the house. I really don't like making the breakfast and lunch plan because it's annoying to me, so I make them each tell me 2 lunches and 2 breakfasts (I have 3 kids). There is 1 healthy snack per day on the menu and you get 1 share of that. We have master snack menu, lunch and breakfast menus that they can reference when we make our weekly plan. I made these by grabbing ideas from pinterest and what we came up with together. If tuna is on sale and I buy 6 cans expecting it to last 2 weeks, I communicate this to the kids. Then most likely I make tuna salad and again communicate "I am expecting this to cover 2 days of lunches for the 4 of us and here is what you can eat the tuna with: bread, cut red pepper only do no use the the green need them for Wednesday dinner, crackers." Then I will go in and mark the tuna into 8ths so they can see what the portion size is or make lunches in the lunch containers we have (I think they are easy lunch box brand or adjacent). Or I will tell them this is what the tuna salad will have in it, please make it and only eat x amount. Everyone in an autistic household must be on the same page. And that means being so incredibly specific it makes my head spin. Also sounds like you need to talk to your husband because he's an adult autistic or not. It sounds like he's a other kid. Why is a grown man complaining about there not being any food? And undermining you with the kid? It sounds like you are carrying the bulk of the emotional labor of the household and that's what's actually getting to you.
The tuna example you gave sounds like very little per person. How do you portion your foods?
In this example where I would use 3 cans, onion, celery, mayo and sometimes carrot as well. Then I would just sort of score the top once it's in a container, that's all. Probably enough for 1 sandwich per person and Im eyeballing it based on how much I think I can fit without too much falling out while they eat. and then less then a sandwich for day two. Day two I would serve w/ crackers and other shit. Like sliced Colby jack or salami or hard boiled egg. I honestly try very hard to feed my kids adequate protein and fat. And then if they are still hungry we qualify for free lunch so they can get more food at school. The lunch containers I use have like an extra small, small and medium sections. The medium is a little bigger then a sandwich. So I would put sandwich and on top of that like with a piece of parchment or foil a sweet like cookies or a little Debbie type thing, then in the small I'd put a cut up apple and then pb or almond butter. This is way more then you asked sorry. The goal is everyone is nourished at least until they get home. And honestly they all usually make Ramen w/an egg or shredded chicken and whatever when they get home. But also don't forget they're eating lunch at like 10:45 in the morning sometimes. If people are very grouchy when they get home that means I'm not sending enough food usually and I do more. I'll lso serve it on a salad base sometimes but that's kind of low cal and takes a while to eat a salad, not super worth it for school days.
I used to manage a group home and I had to lock up and portion out snacks because both the staff and residents would eat through them in two days and there wouldn't be anything left for lunches the rest of the week. They also went through laundry soap like it was water so I had to lock that up too. Do you have an air fryer? If not, you can often find them at thrift shops. You might consider bagging up serving size packages of nuggets and fries that your daughter can put in the air fryer and maybe you can get away with buy less junk snacks.
It sounds like you know the answer but don’t want to do it because they have manipulated you into fearing their melt downs.
Pretty much spot on. I just can’t deal with anymore crap these days. I’m stretched beyond breaking point in all directions.
I’m so sorry. You are dealing with people who have no idea how to handle not getting their way. You have been broken by them. I wish you the best
I grew up in a family that got taught 6 months worth of food in the pantry .... the rule for our pantry is ask me first unless you bought it yourself. But DH family is like yours ... if it's nice it needs to be eaten like now. Something I have really not put together until your post is why MIL pantry is almost always empty but she hides all food items in thick plastic crates in another room locked up. She even dates the items when she puts it on the pantry shelf. No advice for you. Just my sympathy. My kids - they get money to buy their own snacks for the month. - once it's done its done.
We have similar issues here, with food just disappearing-- and they can complain but once it's gone, it's gone. My husband is the worst. He doesn't even realize he's eating it. Like weiners-- he'll keep going in the fridge and grabbing a couple then they're gone. He used to try blaming the kids until he realized it was him. I respond one of 2 ways: I shrug it off and tell them "too bad, so sad, your fault" or I yell because something was needed for a meal. If it was a meal ingredient, then I make meals the perpetrators don't like, and remind them why we're not having what I had originally planned. It has sort of worked, to some extent.
I think you need to just flat out say "we can't afford this" and stop buying large quantities of snacks. They're mindlessly eating it because they aren't seeing the total climb at the grocery store.
Junk food that is sugary or salty only makes healthy food taste worse. I would stop buying cereal, cookies, cakes and ice cream. Replace with fruits and vegetables. Buy peanut butter and jelly and soft cheap white bread so they can make a couple of those whenever they think there is nothing to eat. Remind them every time they complain. Prepare large meals that leave enough to reheat the next day for lunch or after school. Teach them how to make oatmeal cookies using a simple recipe so they can make themselves a treat when they want. Popcorn is good here too. Don't buy any snack food that they don't have to put some effort into to eliminate eating as entertainment. I'm not sure I would encourage them doing a lot of cooking because then you have to get them to clean up too. Stock up on simple microwave foods like ramen, Mac n cheese, ravioli, chili, etc. Keep it simple so it's not so interesting they scarf it all at once. Buy instant oatmeal in qty for breakfast and snacks. Try instant grits too. Go for filling but repetitive foods. Treat the family to a pizza once a week and prepare lots of pasta, rice and potato heavy main meals so they can fill up at dinner and quit the constant snacking. Whenever the day there is no food, always tell them to make a PB&J. You become a broken record so they lose interest in whining at you about it. If you want to treat them, only buy enough ice cream, cookies, cake, etc to last one evening. Make sundaes once a week. Once it's gone it's gone.....don't go shopping for treats, don't have a stash somewhere that you can bring out....just direct them back to PB&J when the treat you provided is gone.
Tell your child to stop complaining or there will be consequences. If she knows that her tablet or whatever else she likes will be taken away, she will stop complaining. Autistic or not, she will need to function in this world. Sounds like everyone in your house is addicted to junk food. Stop buying it.
I’m on the spectrum, brought up at a time this wasn’t a thing, so I wasn’t raised with any consideration for it. So my upbringing was harsh compared to today, but they (we) can absolutely understand and change behavior given consequences. I’m struggling to understand why parents don’t prepare their kids by following through
I’m likely on the spectrum also on the high functioning side and have to coach myself to do things I don’t want to do daily. I’m a risk adverse person so thinking of the consequences keeps my decision making level.
I'm autistic too and my parents sucked. I had to teach myself how to function cause it was sink-or-float basically. I feel for OP. My biomom is exactly like her daughter and my biodad enables her. I'm on the same level of functioning as my mom (level 1) but unlike her I have visceral reactions to being babied. I can tell you why, though. People refuse to realize that kids inevitably grow up into adults. And those adults ultimately either sink until they learn to swim or find someone else to latch onto so they don't have to swim. My parents tried so hard to do that to me. They wanted me to be a baby forever (which is absolutely cursed and abusive). But unlike my mom I grew up.
She's autistic. Eating raw flour, repeating the same thing 30 times a day and already having a diagnosis + multiple therapies while only just hitting puberty would suggest she's not on the mild side of the spectrum either. You're literally saying "punish your special needs child if she complains", you realize that's disgusting right? Especially when it's related to asking for food? For some autistic people echolalia is one of their only forms of communication, knowing that they've already asked the question doesn't stop it and threatening to take away personal belongings if they don't stop acting autistic is abusive. You "suspecting you're also on the spectrum" is irrelevant.
So just let the child binge on anything and everything all hours of the day?
The comment I responded to wasn't about handing the child's eating issues, it was about a way to force the kid to shut up about *wanting* food. There are plenty of helpful comments on this thread, suggestions to work with an OT to help her learn how to "budget" her food throughout the week, her getting her own tin for snacks so she can see exactly how much she gets at the start of the week, suggestions for healthier snacks, even some suggestions on how to make it more accessible for her to prepare her own food. Punishing your child when they do something that annoys you is not the only way to take an active role in raising them.
And you stated to not deny when food is asked for. Just because someone has autism doesn't mean you give them anything and everything they want. Not providing unlimited high calorie snack foods isn't a punishment.
Re-read my comment and tell me where I said never to deny food? The punishment I'm referring to is "tell her you'll take away her tablet if she doesn't stop complaining". That's about shutting the child up rather than doing anything to improve their diet.
My family does this with the 'easy' food as well. The way I have solved it is to label food with people's names if it is doable. Yes, it means that I get multiple containers of ice cream, but each person gets their own, and if you run out of yours you're done it doesn't matter whether or not someone else has a lot left. It changes the problem from portion control to taking someone else's things. I find that is easier to deal with than 'reasonable limits' on quantity. What I think is reasonable may be different from what they do, but we all sure as hell know what's yours and what's mine. If I find I don't eat the ice cream/whatever in what I consider to be a reasonable amount of time, I will throw it back into general circulation and let people know.
Yeah this is how I ended up hiding food in my dresser. For example the other day I bought a pack of cookies at Walmart thinking oh have a few cookies as a snack and it will last a couple of days at least. No it was gone 2 hours later. An entire pack of chocolate chip cookies from Walmart. Like that was our one fucking treat this month. I was so excited just to have food stamps to even get a snack.
I'd start responding every time with, "So what will you do about that?"
So I grew up in poverty, and have found my way back after divorce. Food insecurity is the root of this binge eating problem for me. I knew we wouldn’t always have food so I had to eat as much as possible when it was there. Especially snacks because I have a lot of sensory needs & “real” food doesn’t always satisfy that. I also am ND (adhd) and have 1 autistic son, & 1 who isn’t diagnosed yet but highly suspect probably also has some sort of neurodivergency. Literally the only way I can make any snacks last is to hide them. If I don’t, they’re gone as soon as they hit the door. I even have to hide them from myself (not hard because adhd - “out of sight, out of mind”. If you’re the only one doing the shopping I suggest you get some totes or something and put them where they won’t be found. Put out a few at a time. Sure, they’ll still complain. My kids do too. And it is *relentless*, but even kids with autism have to be taught that you can’t have instant gratification. Right now you’re dealing with natural consequences. Eat all the snacks? Ok you don’t have anymore. Sucks. But natural consequences don’t always work for ND folks. Is your child getting special services from school? You can ask for a counselor/mentor to help you come up with a plan to teach your child how to make a “food budget” (not with money, just “budgeting”/rationing out snacks so that’s not all they’re wanting to eat.) You may want to ask your child’s pediatrician for help as well. A lot of times they have solutions we never thought of as parents. For example my son is like me and thrives on crunchy textures & loves to chew. His occupational therapist suggested keeping small packs of twizzlers or thick pretzel sticks where he can access them when he’s wanting something (& I can get them from Dollar Tree, they last a while) As far as your partner, I’m not sure how to help. It’s something they have to work on themselves - you’re not their mom.
She does see a psychologist and an OT. We have talked about it in the past, but it can’t hurt to bring it up again. I’ve also spoken to my own ED therapist about it as well.
Good luck :) I definitely know the struggle and there have been days where I’ve been in tears over kids crying for snacks because they just don’t get it I hope you find a solution that works for y’all
Thanks! Pretty much everything suggested here is stuff I’ve tried in the past, but my kid is older now, so some things could definitely be revisited and tried again.
I can’t even imagine how stressful it must be to be dealing with an ED caused from food scarcity and live with a pack of gluttons who would leave you to starve if they managed the food budget. I just want to offer sympathy and I hope you find some resolution asking the therapist for help.
OP I hear you. My cousin lives with me, and he has level I autism. White and carby or white and processed are his two major food groups. He's 60. I hide my dear kid's snack foods, because he'll plow through a 40 count Timbit in one day. 8 snack size bag of chips in a sitting. 4 cans of soda. Chicken Nuggets? He'll eat a half a box for dinner and that's it. He never cooks because his executive functioning skills are garbage, and food is fuel. That's is why he eats "ingredients". 3 cans of tuna are fuel because making anything with them is overwhelming. It's easier to do tuna and ketsup and call it a day. He'll eat a big 3 serving bowl of instant mashed potatoes with butter for dinner. I have a chest freezer with a lock. I have a closet that is used for "storage." He never bothers with it, so I hide things in there. He has no clue when he's hungry unless he's starving. So he doesn't eat at normal times. When his "stomach wakes up," he's famished. He'll plow into anything edible. Making a true meal will not happen. He's way too hungry for that. It's a combo of food is fuel, eating takes away time from doing more interesting things, not noticing hunger, poor executive functioning skills, and that sweet carby high kick from more processed foods. I buy bread, peanut butter and jam for sandwiches. Instant mashed potatoes and instant Ramen. My cousin is good now eating those before spreading canned frosting on saltines for dinner (sigh). I learned I can not have high value food like cheese, cookies, or lunch meat just out. It will be gone in two days. If they are just fueling up, buy the cheapest stuff you can find and let them have access to it. My cousin can down a half gallon of milk in a day. This is more than just lazy and inconsiderate. Food issues and Autism is a known problem. (Sorry I gave you suggestions, but most people don't understand your problem)
Let them eat microwave popcorn. Lots and lots of microwave popcorn. And PB&J sandwiches. Stop buying snacks at all. None. If they start to whine, *walk away!* You are actually enabling their behavior by listening to their BS! Just look at them and say, "Eat popcorn," and walk away. Or eat some popcorn. Make large batch crockpot meals. Chili. Lentil soup. Spaghetti sauce. And break them out into separate meals. PS Your husband is weaponizing his autism. Tell him to cut it out. He's modeling shitty behavior for your kid.
I'd start buying only super healthy finger foods, like carrots and celery, etc. If they want to snack, they can snack on that. The super fatty, sugary, dopamine-rewarding snacks can GO.
Tell them you don’t want to hear how there is no food. They just have to deal with it without talking to you about it. Keep snacks in your trunk. Dole out daily if they haven’t complained. Have fruit and popcorn available. Also bread for toast.
Have you tried meal kits? Not every week cause woo the prices are insane but if you get free boxes for signing up you can get decent deals. I just got 5 meals for 4 people for $37. It has been great teaching my kids to cook because each meal has a card with it explaining each step. My MIL got it when I had free box codes and said her son loves it and he refused to cook until then. Just make sure you skip the following week and the day the cheap box comes in you can cancel it or the day they ship it out. There is a subreddit, mealkits I think? Which has codes for free boxes. I've used Hello Fresh and EveryPlate (multiple emails get you multiple cheap boxes). I also did Blue Apron and Dinnerly. Those two are one time only unless you have different addresses.
Have a meal kit right now, because it was 50% off. Will try to get my kid involved in tonight’s dinner.
"Both my husband and my kid are autistic and are big eaters " You have a very serous husband problem. He just doesn't care that there's no money for more food, and can pig out and then whine to you about it? He needs to get it together and then discipline the kid, and both of them need to suck it up and cook from scratch, not just shovel your money down their greedy pieholes. "you honestly have no idea how RELENTLESS they both are" That's abusive to you, and you need to take a hard line with both of them.
teach them to cook?
Aarrggh, my husband is a snack monster. A pack of cookies or box of lil Debbie type treats would last me a week or 2 only lasts him a couple days! But he buys his own, if I buy some I set aside half so I can eat them at my leisure. Can you hide food in your house? I know that can be hard. That way 1) you can ration the snacks so many per day, and/or 2) hide stuff just for yourself. No sense in you doing without just because they ate everything! Good luck, I used to wish we did not have to eat, especially after coming home from a 90 minute commute and walking in the door to husband and son saying "what's for dinner?" Grrrrrrr!!!
Let your husband buy those things then. I grocery shop for my household and I don’t buy snacks. If my husbands wants convenience foods he can get them. When they run out because he ate it all, he can get more on his own at the store. Not as easy with kids, but I’d say give that burden over to your husband. If there’s “no food” then it’s own fault and problem to remedy. He’ll probably learn to portion pretty fast when he’s the one who has put in the effort to get it
Lol. Sorry I know you are venting but it made me laugh because I can picture all the ravenous food grab so vividly. Growing kids are hungry all the time. There isn’t really a way around it sorry. Maybe reserve some snacks for yourself and hide it. Also save most of the snacks for the kid. Your husband is ridiculous and needs to grow up. Autistic or not, he is a grown man and can learn some impulse control. He needs to save for his kid as well. Don’t let him push you around! May I suggest making sandwiches and putting in fridge for when kid gets hungry? My grandma used to fry an egg and put that between 2 slices of bread for us. So good and filling!
I’ve got multiple kiddoes and yeah. They be hungry! And when you’re tight on $$$$, them eating a bunch gives you stress and anxiety (even though they are doing nothing wrong be eating!). It’s tough. If you want a random idea that could help, scroll to the end of this comment, otherwise ignore (it’s ok to just want to vent and rage sometimes at the things that drive us nuts! . . . . . . . I have three open sterilite containers (the shoebox sized ones) each labeled ‘fruit’ ‘veg’ and ‘protein’, respectively. I cut apples and oranges and carrots and celery etc. and put them into the boxes in the fridge. The proteins are hard boiled eggs, gogurts, string cheese, sometimes baggies of ham or other lunch meat. When my kids are hungry, they can go to town on those. As many fruit/veg as they want and 1-2 protein a day. Any time they complain about hunger, I redirect them to the boxes. Otherwise, I say wait til dinner. Maybe that will help your situation. Maybe not. But don’t give up. This, too, shall pass.
Is there any way this could be happening out of boredom? I know entertainment can be hard to find cheaply. But maybe it’s something to think about. Maybe “chewelry” for your daughter if she always has to be munching something? I have a really bad oral fixation when relaxing but (fortunately and unfortunately I guess) I vape and actually make my own liquid to vape so it’s extremely cheap. I’m also a big gum chewer when I’m working.
Is there definitely enough to eat at mealtimes, even if its just bulk carbs and something with it? I was constantly moaning about there being no food but it was because we weren't given enough food at meal times. We were like a plague of locusts when food and snacks did come into the house as a result.
My suggestion is to back off a bit on snacks and replace it with more regular food as snacks. I did this when my kids were in high school and came home "starving". Rather than eat a bag of Doritos, I made snack food. Homemade beefaroni reheats well in the microwave, makes alot, and tastes good. 1lb ground beef cooked and crumbled, 2 boxes mac and cheese, and sauce. Or flour tortilla wraps that you can fill with tuna, taco meat, or chicken and veggies. Quick and filling.
I have similar issues with my 3 teens. Snacks in our household are things like apples, home popped popcorn, homemade smoothies, hard boiled eggs etc. Mostly though we keep to 3 hearty meals a day. Eg dinner always includes homemade vege soup, salad, dessert as well as the main course. I try to ensure they are always full/satisfied from a good meal vs snscking. For yourself sonething like a slow cooker with soup, stew, chilli etc could be put in overnight for them to help themselves for breakfast and lunch? Expensive processed stuff is handled as an occasional treat at our house, and i hide them in my closet and bring them out to the pantry as a fun ‘find’ for them every so often. Or I’ll bake a weekly cake or batch of muffins and when its gone, its gone, its just a little treat thing. They know not to expect these things to be there. Once a week is takeout night and we stick to better value takeout like pizza. They are all older with part time jobs so they each have a shelf in the pantry that is just for their use - so the expensive protein powders, any speciifc faves that they individually purchase etc they will keep on their shelf and no one else is allowed to touch it.
Have you tried getting a big baggie for each day of the week of snacks per person? Visualizing it like that might help if they can’t keep track mentally. Daughter’s bag for Monday, dad’s bag for Monday etc. Include them in the process. Don’t lock up the other bags but it will hold them accountable to realize if they eat too much Monday it will mean less on Tuesday or what have you. Wouldn’t work on like eggs or ice creams but it’s where I would start.
I usually snack shop once a week. I have to tell my kids (8 and 6) "this is it for the week. Once it's gone, it's gone." They still go through a box of juice packs or 20 snack bags of chips in 3 days, but they don't complain about a lack of snacks anymore because the expectation was laid out for them up front.
The number of comments that say “You have to” or “You need to” is so depressing. I understand everyone trying to be helpful but the poor woman is already exhausted and stressed out. I see you doing your best mama, you don’t have to be remotely perfect and you can vent all you want!
I agree with this. I am a parent to a teen with autism. The food arguments become exhausting. I can't imagine having a husband with autism on top of it. I am trying to slowly cut back on processed foods with my teen instead of just cold turkey and telling him this is the way it is. We do have some agreements and compromises in place also such as one bag a week of his favorite chips and allowing him to spend his own money on the food he wants but once it runs out needing to wait until he has more.
First, stop buying unhealthy snack foods. Chips and ice cream are not good all the time. Load up on fruits and veg. Bowl full of apples and oranges. Keep a tray of raw veg and ranch dressing or hummus in the fridge. Harder to gorge on potatoes than potato chips. If that doesn't work, you may have to set up a meal plan. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. Lock up the over stock. Good luck.
They're likely not going to stop unless you guys have some good productive conversations, or maybe therapy for hubby n kid to learn impulse control? IDK, I'm sorry. But I have terrible food insecurities because of similar things from my brother.... I got REALLY good at hiding food. Hed eat all of his, then eat mine Everytime. So I'd take my share out first. Chocolate in the freezer bag of peas for example. Canned goods can stay in the car trunk. Gummies would melt, but the bag will fit into the saltine cracker box no one uses in the pantry. Chips are noisy, these stay in the desk at work if possible. Don't store plastic bottled liquids in your car and cans might explode, if you have a garage stash them in a decorations box, if you have only cabinet space wash out an old detergent box and put it back under the sink for incognito storage. No one goes through the bottom of a linen closet unless they're deep cleaning, if you're the cleaner it's all yours behind that stack of towels. Guys don't touch pad/tampon boxes, like ever, no one will question there being two boxes under the sink or in your room, one as a stash!
My family had the same/similar issue when my brother and I were growing up. We would eat everything in sight that was not an ingredient. We were competitive with food, because we knew one of us had to eat it or the other one would get to it first. Lots of issues contributed to this: 1a. Both my mom and stepdad were not good at cooking. My mom could whip something up, but rarely ever did. She blamed it on being too busy, but the problem is that she was always doing errands/projects for groups/people outside our family. She didn't focus on her own family first. Bad time management. 1b. My stepdad was just a terrible cook. His meals consisted of pasta, those frozen meatless patties, and lots of pasta sauce. Bland and gross. 2. Abuse and favoritism going on in the house. So my brother and I learned to emotionally eat and compete for food. 3. The snacks were all junk food. Junk food is processed with fat, sugar, and salt. It's designed to cause cravings. 4. No regular family meals. No meal prep. My brother and I had to fend for ourselves. Eating frozen junk always left me wanting more. I hope you see where this is going. Edit: removed advice per the flair
My mom used to portion them out with our names on however many of each snack each family member got. She binned them all together in one “snack bin” per person. It was nice, because the kids traded a bunch of stuff between one another. And if they binged and ran out, that was on them.
I had seven kids and tried several ways, and the bin method is the way that worked for us. I grocery shopped once a week. Each kid got a bin with a week of snacks and a box of cold cereal. If they ate it in a day, fine. I had snacks that could be earned through extra chores, but they were in my car, and they didn't get them till I checked the chore after work. One kid had a thriving business where he saved his snacks and all his regular chores got done by the kids who ran out early. I had a list of unlimited snacks on the fridge, like carrots, apples, peanut butter and celery, sunflower seeds, etc. I think the kids didn't complain about it because they thought it was a fair system. When they got older, they got a portion of the grocery money to buy their own snacks and cereal each week. That was interesting. A small black market of soda pop, chips and candy popped up.
Higher protein, low sugar snacks will last longer. I'm not trying to be that person, or even say there needs to be a "diet".... Cheese, nuts, hard-boiled eggs, peanut butter in celery snacks, are not usually what is binged on. Up the low sugar beverage consumption as well.
Make your husband do the shopping when he whines. It is t like he’s a child, even if he’s pretending pretty hard to be one here.
Just leave that shit in the car and bust out one at a time.
Even though it’s tedious, try making a simple fruit salad or cut up fruit. Place in a clear container in fridge so they can see it. You could also make tuna salad or egg salad and buy crackers or suggest daughter to scoop onto bread into a sandwich. Another idea: get some quart sized ziplock bags and fill with pretzels, popcorn, m&ms, raisins and dried fruit. That way they will at least get some nutrients out of their snacking!
I take a couple psyllium husk capsules before each meal, and it expands helping me need/want to eat less. I started these to help lose weight, but I’ve noticed just shopping for myself that I’m saving about 15-20 bucks a week because of it. I also try to stay well hydrated, but we all know that “trick” lol. I hope something helps ya find some peace, I know the struggle is real!
Things got *very* hard for me a few years ago when I got custoday of my nephews as their first foster parent. Since I was family, I did not qualify for food stamps because I amde a whole 16 an hour So adding with my two, I had five teenagers. Plus two school agers every other weekend. They were ravaging the house. Nothing lasted more than a few hours and they were stealing from each other and sneaking and hoarding food. They could demolish 5 bags of chips in an hour, and we ALWAYS ended up hungry days before payday ( My spouse was disabled and stayed at home with the kids while I worked, he did not get SSI for another year) Fuck, they DRANK THE FLAVORED COFFEE CREAMER. AGAIN. We got a locked trunk and kept it in our bedroom. And a mini fridge. We kept ALL the cookies, chips, sodas, juices, everything in our bedroom. The kids had to come and ASK for them Yeah it sounds awful, but it really showed us, and them, just how often they are reaching for chips pout of boredom, not hunger.
You have to keep your snacks under lock and take some out bit by bit. I know a lot of families who are definitely not struggling financially and who still do it like this. The person with the most self control in the family (usually mum) has the key to the cupboard and takes some out for consumption day by day.
My kids were like this too, specifically one more than the other, i got so sick of running out of snacks immediately and the constant "mo0om can i have something to eat?". I created the "snack basket" which is one basket in the pantry they can snack from anytime, i keep it filled with granola bars, and other healthy small snacks that i buy on sale. Some weeks its not as full as other weeks. Our other easy snacks are yogurts and fruits in the fridge. If they want anything more substantial they can make a sandwich or tortillas or something. Recently they were complaining about the lack of cereal choices, so i was feeling nice and got some cooler cereals this past week. Milk was in short supply at the store and we all drink lactose free so $4 for a half gallon. I also bought extra bread and said take it easy on the milk, make sandwiches. Two nights ago i wanted a bowl of the apple jacks, my favorite. Nope. No milk. All gone. Now they have all these fun cereals and no milk. Hahah, ya played yaself.
My mom used to hide the good cookies from my dad in her trunk.
I do keep my protein bars in the car lol.
HIDE THE SNACKS. Portion them out yourself. Buy a big package of single serve chips? They each get one a day. In addition to this, provide healthy easy snacks, so that they can't say there's "no food". Baby carrots, fruit cups, apples, granola or nutrigrain bars, etc.
Yeah, I think I’m going to have to hide the extras. But people are all assuming I’m not buying and providing healthy foods. Í absolutely am, they just won’t eat anything they don’t like. My daughter especially will just go hungry but also complain there’s no food, when the fridge is stuffed full of fruit, veg, etc. I think that’s the most maddening part, I know there’s plenty of food, it’s almost like gaslighting (I’m obviously exaggerating, I know it’s not really anything like gaslighting, just frustrated!)
Stop buying snacks, teach them how to cook.
My nephew is autistic. My sister keeps all snacks in her office and brings home a few everyday. If she keeps them at home he will eat them all. It has been happening since he was little.
I have five kids,and made all the meals for my family for years. I was loosing my damn mind. One day I decided everyone else ( over age 10) needed to make dinner once a week. It can be boxed Mac and cheese and hotdogs, I don’t care, but you have to plan it (protein, carb and fruit/veg at minimum) cook it, put it on the table so it’s ready to eat. My husband and my older three kids all cook once a week and they complain sooooo much less it’s wonderful. Whatever you do I wish you luck
If they're on the spectrum - you unfortunately have to contend with their routines and preferences, if not - as you can see, it can result in some...moodiness. Obviously it can be anything ranging from difficult to end of the world upsetting to have those routines changed. If they're preventing you from eating well/causing a strain on the budget that needs to be reversed - you need another fridge/freezer that can be LOCKED. When they ask, explain why but focus on it's because \*you're\* tired of not eating well ('I went to the doctor and got on a specific diet'), not that you're trying to change them. Make sure it's a lock that can't be hit with bolt cutters. Because the alternative ain't much nicer - it does not sound like you have the energy to change and manage their behaviors on top of your own with the binge eating disorder. You do have the energy to remove yourself entirely from the situation, even if it's temporarily (a long vacation) to get your bearings and let them survive without the convenience of your efforts. Good luck.
Good luck. Theres a guy in the family like this.
time for the snacks to go away...don't bring them home from the store...only buy ingredients that make an edible meal. our family has the same problem...if we go grocery shopping on Sunday, all the pre-prepared foods are gone by Monday night...pudding cups, chips, micro-waved meals, yogurts, fruit cups, ice cream and fudge bars, etc.
After reading the first two paragraphs I was left wondering if you had an autistic child. Then I read the third and got confirmation that both your husband and kid are autistic. People with autism have sensory issues and seem will only want to eat processed foods (This might be a generalization), and the sensory issues makes them not like real food. My little sister is autistic and at one point my mom had to put a lock on the refrigerator to control what she ate. I don't have a solution for you, but eating all the processed foods and complaining about no food being in the house (Meaning no food they want to eat) is from their autism. I am sorry you have to deal with it.
It doesn’t sound like it’s the texture issue or refusal to eat real food. They eat what the mom/wife cooks. They just won’t make anything themselves and just eat all the convenience foods up and complain there’s no food.