When we first arrived in Scotland my son was five years and seven months old. His diet at that time of his life was very limited. It was embarrassing to me to reveal to anyone what he ate. He ate well up until about aged 18 months then he started to get very fussy. His mother, after trying with the healthy stuff, would end up just feeding what she knew he would eat: wholewheat toast with peanut butter or chocolate spread; cheesy puffs; cheesy oatcakes; dry cereal (chocolate flavor); kit kat; chocolate digestive biscuits; and yogurt. The yogurt being his least favourite and the most difficult to encourage him to eat. I read about a clinic in Austria that had a method of starving non or poor eating children until they were so hungry they would eat what was put in front of them. Worth a try I thought. After 26 hours I could deny him no more. I gave in and he tucked into several pieces of  toast and peanut butter. Such is the resolve of my autistic boy.

Of course many parents I spoke to had a story about how their child lived off chocolate biscuits or cheesy puffs for the first 12 or so years of their lives. But hearing this did little to comfort me. At least my son liked milk; he drunk a lot of that. Luckily he could not bear the taste of sugary sweets or drinks. Ice cream has not passed his lips. In his eleven years on the planet he has never come to me and said, "Dad I am hungry." My brother's daughter complains of being hungry at least three times a day, more if dinner is late.

In an effort to get at least one healthy meal into him a day, or should I say five days a week, I sent him to school with, yogurt, cheesy puffs, and chocolate oat biscuits. The latter I had manged to get him to like after a bit of trial and error (I chose the dark chocolate variety because I had heard it was healthier). Then it was down to his learning assistant to sit with him through lunch until he ate everything. For this I am truly grateful:  for her dedication and because of her obvious interest in my son's well being. He quickly learnt to trust her. On the basis of this trust he would try new foods with her (not with me, with her). I would send him to school with chopped fruit or carrots. Imagine my delight and surprise when he returned home one day and all his carrots had been eaten. Carrots became a part of his daily lunch immediately after that day.

I discovered a shopping mall near where we lived that had a famous burger outlet combined with a soft play area. I would buy him milk and he would entertain himself while I read the paper and sipped on coffee. One day he noticed some other children getting the kids meal which included a toy. "Kids meal, Kids meal," he said the next time we arrived. So I got one with milk; he got the toy, I got the burger and fries. After about the third or fourth time he sauntered over from the soft play area and gingerly tried one of the fries, without any encouragement from me. Very quickly he devoured the lot. A new food to add to his diet. No-one was cheering but they should have been. Inside I was doing somersaults. From that it was but a skip to get him to eat fish fingers ...