[i_like_black]

Hi

I have an elder brother who is still very specific about what foods he will and will not eat. Part of it, for him, was how my father tried to force him to eat new foods as a young child, part of it is he's highly likely to be somewhere on the Autism Spectrum (think Asperger's end), and part of it is he just doesn't want to.

He suffers from IBS, so like your daughter, what he eats affects him. He also has a penchant for fried and grilled food. Although, we finally managed to get him to eat a cereal that isn't coco-pops for breakfast. I think at the moment he's eating cornflakes, although for a while he had Just Right or something with the raisins picked out. He had coco-pops for breakfast every morning for over ten years.
He usually has marmite sandwiches or something similar for lunch. The only vegetable he will eat is mashed potato. He does not eat fruit. His dinners consist of things like sausage rolls, chicken nuggets, and the pizza that you buy from the supermarket. He will also eat steak and/or sausages.

It took weeks of convincing to get him to have flavoured milk, and now he has a bit of a penchant for it.

With all that said, however, for the most part he's physically healthy. He's 6'2", is a healthy weight, his teenage acne has cleared up to merely rosacea, and thanks to aloe vera juice his IBS is mostly under control.

But like someone else said - you're the parent! When my brother was 13, he went hungry a lot of nights because he wouldn't eat what was served up, or would just have mashed potato. Mum (for a while) refused to cook two meals so he was left with the choice of eat it, or go hungry.

Another option is to get your daughter into the kitchen with you. If she becomes more familiar with the food you want her to try through preparing it and cooking it, she's more likely to eat it. She's also more likely to eat anything she's cooked herself because of the effort that went into the preparation.

And as for being 13 . . . when I was 13 I ate whatever the heck was put in front of me. I'm not generally a picky eater and I was quite active and had just finished growing - I grew fast - so I was hungry lots. 13 year olds don't differ much in what they want to eat however - it's generally high-fat, high-sugar junk. Most of them out grow it.

Good luck with your daughter