My Child Won't Eat

Imagine if your child thought normal food would kill them? Imagine if they had never eaten a hot meal in their life, or had chocolate for every meal, or would only drink bottles of milk?

My Child Won’t Eat follows the controversial work of leading child psychologist Dr Gillian Harris who believes that there’s a special category of extreme food refusers who aren’t just being fussy, but who have a food phobia which needs to be properly treated.

The film meets some of Dr Harris’ young patients who are terrified of putting food in their mouths, and follows their families’ emotional journeys as Dr Harris applies her pioneering techniques to help the children face up to the things they fear the most.

12-year-old Rachel from Bolton eats chocolate for every meal. Breakfast is 15 squares of cooking chocolate and 10 chocolate fingers. Lunch is similar, and her evening meal is a ‘hot’ meal of Rice Krispies mixed with melted cooking chocolate.

After years of struggle, Rachel’s parents have stopped offering her new food. Mum Gill recalls how Rachel didn’t grow out of her fussy toddler stage:

“I felt like a failure in the early stages because it didn’t matter what we tried. We tried all the strategies like making it into a funny face, a flower and a pattern. All the little things and really none of them worked.”

Rachel has started to feel self conscious about her eating habits and her restrictive diet is making it hard for her to lead a normal life.

“I don’t just choose to eat that kind of stuff,” says Rachel. “It’s not because I‘m being awkward. Whenever I try any food I always get scared.”

After searching for more than ten years for someone to help, Rachel and her parents begin work with Dr Harris from the Feeding Clinic at Birmingham’s Children’s Hospital to help overcome Rachel’s extreme food phobia.

Dr Harris believes it’s important people realise such children aren’t just fussy: “If I got a sheep’s eye and I put it in your sandwich and squidged it down nicely and said, ‘Eat this, this is a nice sandwich,’ you probably wouldn’t be able to put it in your mouth and this is what children have to what seems to other people to be quite normal foods.

“Parents are isolated. The normal rules of eating don’t apply. Whatever they try, whatever strategies other health professionals suggest, don’t work for these children.”

Dr Harris also believes that at least one child in every school has food phobia but they are falling through the net because they’re not correctly diagnosed.

The Feeding Clinic’s three golden rules for helping children overcome their restricted eating all fly in the face of what parents are told everywhere else about how to bring up their children healthily.

Firstly, according to the clinic, parents must not stress about their fussy child having a balanced diet. If a child only wants to eat junk food, let them eat it.

Secondly, don’t try to hide food, disguise it or play games with food as it’ll make the child with rigid eating patterns even less likely to eat it. “Once you’re into making carrots into funny shapes you’ve lost the plot,” maintains Dr Harris.

Thirdly, don’t force fussy children to try a new food: wait until they want to try it themselves. Prompt and encourage them to try, but never force them.

Such an approach is undoubtedly controversial. Other experts believe if parents keep offering a balanced diet and don’t let their children snack between meals, they’ll eventually become so hungry they will eat what they’re given. But Dr Harris sees the children, like Rachel, who no one else has been able to help.

She believes her way of letting the children eat what they want, keeping their weight stable and slowly introducing new foods is the most successful method of getting these children to start eating normally.

Dr Harris’ approach has undoubtedly changed the life of 13 year-old Kayleigh from Redditch. She was referred to the Feeding Clinic when she was eight, severely underweight and wearing aged 3-4-year-old clothing. She would only eat McDonald’s food because she thought anything else was poison. Thinking she needed a balanced diet, mum Fran had restricted her McDonalds intake and tried to get her daughter to eat home-cooked meals: only to be told by Dr Harris to let Kayleigh have the McDonalds she wanted. Now, following Dr Harris’ techniques, Kayleigh’s diet, growth and weight have dramatically improved.

In Doncaster, another child’s attitude to food is making his parents despair. Two and a half year-old Bobby has never eaten a hot meal in his life and his mother is terrified he’s going to end up in hospital.

Mum Sally had no problem moving Bobby from milk to purees, but problems started when she tried to introduce solid food. Everything with lumps in it was rejected.

Every mealtime she cooks for him, only to have the meal rejected: “If I don’t offer him a meal I’m never going to get anywhere and there’s never going to be an improvement so every day and every mealtime I continue to put a meal in front of him but I know even before I put it down he’s not going to eat it.”

Sally has tried all manner of strategies suggested by other health professionals to try to get Bobby to eat and break the deadlock, to no avail. She’s even tried starving him. Mealtimes are fraught and Sally’s terrified Bobby can’t survive on just the yoghurt he eats and that he will soon need medical intervention.

At the point of tears and desperation, Sally says: “All I can envisage is Bobby laid in a hospital bed with a drip in his arm because that’s the only place I can see it ending. I don’t believe anybody can come in and sort Bobby out and I’m just about ready to give up my fight.”

And in Birmingham we meet three and a half year-old Aron who doesn’t eat solid food and lives on the same diet as a newborn baby; he drinks milk. During weaning, solid food made him violently ill and tests revealed an allergy to dairy food. Aron still sticks to his special formula milk and mum Becky is scared other food will make him ill again.

But the liquid diet is taking its toll on family life: Aron is unable to be potty trained and he gets through 15 or so nappies a day. And while most children have dropped their night feeds by the time they’re one year of age, Aron, who sleeps at the foot of his parents’ bed, still wakes his dedicated mum up for two bottles and a nappy change each night.

Rachel, Bobby and Aron’s parents have all reached breaking point in trying to help their children eat a normal, varied diet. They’ve carried out all the different advice and techniques from other health professionals and advisors with little success: all now hope Dr Harris and her team hold the key to solving their child’s extreme food refusal and the future happiness of their families.

Last edited: Friday, 27 June 2008