In article , Robyn Kozierok wrote:
In article ,
Kevin Karplus wrote:


In article .com,
Johnniec wrote:
Now he has a fear of choking. He chooses his food based on whether he
thinks he could choke on it. He eats very slowly now. He has lost
weight. He was actually a bit overweight before, so he looks fit now. I
suspect that is why others haven't really noticed this problem he is
having.

Eating slowly is not a serious problem---it may even be healthier than
rapid eating, as one is more likely to stop when satiated. You may
have to schedule meal times to last longer, so that he has sufficient
time to eat an adequate amount.

This can be a problem for lunchtime in school though. Most schools
allow very little time for the kids too eat. I have a slow eater,
and there is a very real issue with letting him have enough time to
eat without sacrificing supervision somewhere.

I have a slow eater also---he brings a lunch from home and rarely eats
more than a third of it during school lunch time. It isn't so much
that there isn't enough lunch time as that there are much more
exciting things to do (like lunch time art or practicing with his
theater group, which is a bunch of third graders who get together to
practice dialogue from the Harry Potter books). Lunch time is the
main social and play time of the day at his school with only one short
midmorning recess (the theater group is mainly a recess-time activity,
but occasionally spills over into lunch time).

We make sure that he has an after-school snack, which often consists
of what he didn't eat at lunch plus a cup of chocolate milk.

School lunches around here are nutritionally poor---mostly fried foods
with a high calorie count. We let our son eat them once a week if he
wants, but he has not been requesting the school lunches much this year.
His favorite lunch foods (cold tofu with soy sauce, applesauce, plain
bread, kiwi fruit, ...) don't match the school lunches well.

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Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
(Senior member, IEEE) (Board of Directors, ISCB)
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Affiliations for identification only.