There's a similar approach, but, before you start, you set a limit of how much weight you're willing to let the child lose, and you persist until the child starts eating more stuff, or until that weight is reached, then you back off and let the child re-gain with foods they find acceptable. This should, of course, be done with medical supervision.

I begin to think that that person has in fact never met an actual human child.

Indeed. I am not above scare tactics - I tell her what happens if people don't eat (the words hospital and needle appear frequently in my cautionary tale). Its not even particular foods she refuses, she just goes through phases where all food is the enemy. I can serve her a plate of her favorite things and she just picks at it. So frustrating.

Ahh, and the update on my mom: there is no update. Waiting waiting waiting. Grr. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

The best Thai place in town is carryout-only, and resembles a shack

As soon as I read this sentence I just KNEW that it was going to be Thai Express. I haven't eaten there since 1998 and I still remember the food.

Oh, my mother tried the "you're not leaving the table until you eat that." Well, it got to be bedtime, and I was still at the table. She tried serving me the same thing the next night. I was there till bedtime again. The food was starting to turn weird by the third day, and I sat and stared at it. This was during school, so I was getting lunch and breakfast, so missing dinner was no hardship.

I was her third child, so I think she had lost energy for the wars. My two sisters were active resistance, I went passive and would just stare at her as she pleaded and threatened. Poor woman.

Poor Noah we figure he just has to suck it up. But with Grace, her weight is checked and her ability to continue to grow is predicated on the calories she gets and given that she is most often mistaken for a 3 year old and her bone growth age says she is 4, we have to do our best to stuff her full of calories.

I keep a food diary for her so we know what she eats. Today she had full fat, cream top yogurt, small bowl of oatmeal, bowl of sweet potato pudding with vanilla protein powder, hot chocolate, milk, water, mashed cauliflower, fried cakes of mac and cheese, an apple slice and half an avocado. You'd think it's enough, but she has still lost a ton of weight.

Betsy, we just forced her to transition to almost all mouth food. She gets two meals via her g-tube during school days and one on weekends. Man it's a struggle. We have an endocrinologist appointment and I hope he will give her HGT hormone shots.

My mother was the youngest of five. Her father was a vicious teaser, and her sister was a drama queen who insisted on being the center of attention. With that dynamic going on, my mother was too shy to ask for the food she wanted. No one noticed she was just pushing food around on her plate until she was bedridden for a year, probably from a mild case of polio, and the doctor insisted that she be fed fattening food. As an adult, she was being X-rayed for something, and the doctor told her she must have had rickets as a child. So yes, actual children can almost starve themselves to death.

It turns out the mr. flea works with the woman who runs Thai Express' husband. When he found out, he was so jealous! (She is a lovely person in addition to being the world's best Thai cook. She remembered mr. flea when he went back there after we'd left the city for 11 years, and I was reading a newspaper article and she turned up in it helping a Thai woman who spoke limited English and whose husband had been murdered.)

As soon as I read this sentence I just KNEW that it was going to be Thai Express.

"Shack" is a dead giveaway, for sure. Now I kind of want to order dinner from there.

It turns out the mr. flea works with the woman who runs Thai Express' husband.

This really is the biggest small town ever.