One of the major side effects of stimulant therapy is loss of appetite. As an almost 40-year-old, I wish my meds still took away my appetite the way they did when I was a kid. No such luck. But now I’m dealing with the same issue with my nine-year-old. Well, not the exact same issue. He actually eats a lot more than I did at his age. I had to supplement with old-school Ensure protein shakes. The graphic on the bottle makes it look fantastic. I can assure you that in the late eighties it was not. Super disgusting! My guy eats a good breakfast, claims to eat a decent lunch, and eats an enormous dinner. But he’s holding steady in the third percentile of height and weight. So it’s more of a concern with his overall growth. As background, both my wife, my brother-in-law, and myself all grew super late. In my case, I appear to have gotten the short genes in the family.
My point is that the pediatrician had us go see the nutritionist about my son’s eating. She was great and gave up lots of options based on our food values. In other words, as a former chef I know a lot about food and we are pretty serious about eating low sugar, healthy, non-processed diets. So the nutritionist gave us lots of options to give him high impact, high energy foods that are also healthy. We’ve added in a cup of 2% milk with dinner and are experimenting with different nut butters and dried fruits so he doesn’t get sick of PB and craisins (which are usually pretty high in refined sugar anyway.)
My biggest area of emphasis is his breakfast. He is very much all about white flour and sugar for breakfast. I can sneak in some sausage. But eggs are a challenge, and he won’t eat more healthy and interesting cereals. And breakfast is the meal that we need to make and eat quick. I’m not so happy with frozen waffles and syrup as a regular part of the rotation unless it is accompanied by a banana and sausage.
He’s only ever had scrambled eggs and often complains about them… even with ketchup when I give them to him, even though it’s only about once every three weeks. So, I wanted to expose him to other styles of eggs. Because eggs are a great breakfast that is actually really quick to make. So, I gave him an egg sampler today. If you’re not a former professional chef, you may not want to try this on a Tuesday. But we found out that he likes a fried egg/ over hard. And, we came to the conclusion that he thinks he could eat eggs once a week alternating scrambled and over hard. Victory!
Standard Disclaimer: In an effort to foil my own perfectionist tendencies, I do not edit my posts much… if at all. Please and typos, mistakes, grammatical errors, or awkward phrasing. I focus on getting my content down. An imperfect post completed is better than a perfect post that goes unposted.
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