Leslie Jones from Birmingham may seem like the coolest mom in the world from the point of view of children whom parents are trying to accustom from childhood to proper and healthy food. That’s because her six-year-old daughter Jessica has been eating nothing but nuggets for the past few years. Every day, Leslie warms up several packs of semi-finished products for the baby.
But a woman who has two more children does this not because she is being led by a capricious daughter, but because little Jess simply cannot eat anything else. And if in childhood she could happily eat a plate of broccoli or have breakfast with oatmeal, then at some point, any food, except for nuggets, began to cause uncontrollable bouts of vomiting in her.
Trouble with Jessica began when she was a little over two years old. Leslie took her daughter to pediatricians several times, but each time she was brushed off. Allegedly, she makes a problem from scratch, and in general she herself is to blame for the fact that the child does not eat anything but a chicken snack.
Resigned to the fact that Jessica needed to continue to be fed nuggets, Leslie did not foresee what could happen on vacation, where the usual supermarket with the desired brand of convenience foods was not nearby. This is what happened when the family was vacationing in Turkey. Little Jessica simply had nothing to eat, and the girl was sick of all the food offered.
As soon as the Joneses returned to England, Leslie could not wait a minute and, with her daughter in her arms, rushed to the clinic. She went to a pediatric nutritionist who said the same thing she had heard over and over again.
Again, the doctor said that my daughter is just picky and will soon outgrow her addiction to nuggets. We passed the necessary tests, and he confirmed that she is completely healthy. He didn’t see any problems.
But Leslie was not going to give up and soon contacted a specialist in the field of cognitive behavioral therapy, David Kilmurry. The family had to travel 400 kilometers to get to see him.
The doctor took them in his clinic in Coventry and in just two hours did what the Joneses had not been able to do for four years. He immediately diagnosed the girl with a selective eating disorder.
The hypnotherapy session lasted two hours – he played and talked with her until he put her into a state of hypnosis. At the end of the session, we tried to offer her different fruits or something other than nuggets, but she refused. We did not lose hope, and during the journey home we realized why. We stopped at KFC and Jessica asked me to buy her a chicken fillet. It was a small victory for us.
Over the next few weeks, the astonished parents repeatedly heard from their daughter a request to cut her an apple, share popcorn, she even tasted grapes for the first time in her life. Jessica started eating biscuits for breakfast and watching what the kids in her prep group had for lunch to eat the same as they did.
