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Children on a very restricted diet, such as wheat, milk and egg free, need special care and understanding because being different does not make a child feel good. A sense of belonging to a group can be helped by sharing food with friends. For example, give your child a bag of home-made savoury snack nibbles to share; these are more than a match for commercial versions. Meals must be attractive, nutritious and tasty. Sharing family meals some days is good for the young special dieter and something of a relief for the cook.

For children to grow and develop properly, they need to eat regularly, and older children may need more food than adults. Food is very important to a child. As adults, we can lose sight of this as we are more geared to watching our waistlines.

The temptation to consume inappropriate food is a constant problem. Relatives and friends who don’t understand the special diet are apt to offer the wrong food as a ‘kindness’. Mostly this will be in the form of snack foods, drinks and confectionery. The child should be taught how to handle the situation and to know which foods are acceptable and which are not. That way the child gains control of the situation and not the misinformed relatives or friends.

Encourage children to eat fresh fruit such as apples and bananas. Plain toasted nuts are another good snack. Toast your own plain nuts at home and keep them in a jar.

Parents of school children on a strict diet should make sure the head teacher knows about the situation. A special packed lunch is safer and less of a worry than expecting the school meals service to cope. Encourage children to be responsible for themselves. Any friend’s mum who panics about coping with a special diet will be delighted when the special food turns up with the guest.

Always insist to the child that they are ‘special’ and that is why they need to be on a special diet. This is much more positive than taking the attitude that the child is a nuisance due to the difficulties of the diet.

Cravings for the very foods which have to be avoided are often the cause of the diet being broken. The answer to this is to provide good substitutes. The recipes in this book have been designed with this in mind.