I am so tired of making food for Noah and ONE thing being wrong with it...and he won't eat it!

Tonight he decided mac and cheese for his supper....it has to be ONLY KRAFT macaroni and cheese and it has to be fixed in just the way he likes it. NOT too much milk and not too dry. Extra cheese but not so much it makes it taste funny. NO SLITS in the pasta. I fixed it perfectly......it was ready......he then had to go to the bathroom!

This meant dumping the plateful of mac and cheese back into the pan to keep it warm...which meant by the time he finished in the bathroom and came out....the PERFECT quality to suit him had changed and was now just "not right"....to the point where when he tried to eat it....it gagged him. He managed to get about 5 bites if that in him...and then said to me "I am afraid to say it" and I asked him "WHAT?" (knowing what the answer was going to be and he then proceeded to tell me how it was too dry and not warm enough to where he could not just let it slide down his throat without swallowing it! I warmed some up further. He still would not eat it. I guess the sentence should read he COULD not eat it.

I am ticked. I feel pissed off and at the same time guilty for feeling pissed off because I know he has HUGE sensory issues and it is not his fault that things like this really bother him. He does much better at things now than ever before and will try things. I made him take a few more bites which only consisted of a NOODLE each time....and he gagged each time. Basically I wasted my time, the food, and his time, as he basically had his entire plate left.

SO....since he was already planning his snack for the night....I surprised him and told him THERE WOULD BE NO SNACK AND TO NOT EVEN ASK ME FOR ONE. NO COOKIES, NO CANDY, NO POPSICLES, NO NOTHING! He looked upset but said "okay" and walked back to his room and hopped back on his computer and is once again laughing like nothing happened! I told him maybe tomorrow he would be so hungry he would actually EAT A MEAL for once.....and eat well...and NOT something from a fast food restaurant which is about the only thing he will eat which is nothing but crap!

He has to learn that even if the QUALITY of his food is off a bit...that even that is OKAY! Something he has NOT YET LEARNED. That if something is a different brand and still tastes good it is okay to eat it! If you have ever seen the episode in Rain Man where Dustin Hoffman freaks out about the green jello......you will know what I mean. IT HAS TO BE SO SO and THAT WAY EACH AND EVERY TIME OR DISASTER IN MOST CASES!

I am so frustrated. You have no idea to the EXTENT one has to learn to prepare their child's food to suit their needs or else your child WILL NOT EAT! AND that is NO JOKE! AND lately about the time I get the hash browns out of the oven just right...the way he always liked them before......now suddenly they are too brown or not brown enough. Same for cookies. I bake them too long or not long enough. When we order a pizza he complains they put cheese on it and not enough sauce.

He to this day will still NOT EAT real vegetables or fruit. I can get him to eat Gerber Stage 3 bananas. THAT (other than fruit roll ups which is not really fruit) is about as close as he has ever gotten to real fruit. A taste of an apple to him is like offering him poison! Same for veggies. He will break down to the 1/16th of an inch the amount he is willing to TASTE a carrot for example. He will tell me "I will take 1/16th of an inch of a bite of that carrot!" and that is what he does. NO more......no less.....and then he gags.

I know it is a process....and he has come a long way. AND I know it will always change with him.....sometimes good and sometimes bad. BUT it is very frustrating.

There...I vented. Now I feel like a really bad mother.