The author's son.

Around 18 months old, I first noticed my son eating less and less of what I put in front of him. I could tell you on one hand how many foods he ate, and as the weeks passed, the list kept shrinking.

The usual parenting strategies – making food fun, encouraging bites, and offering choices – only led to more frustration.

Then one evening, we had breakfast for dinner. When my three-year-old son refused a cinnamon roll, I lost it. I sent him to his room, convinced he was just being stubborn. He never came back. That’s when it hit me: what if he wasn’t refusing food – what if he couldn’t eat it?

Over the next year, I often asked myself, “What am I doing wrong?” Breakfast, lunch and dinner as a family became a production. Me, making something special for my middle child while my other two kiddos looked on, questioning why they didn’t get to eat a fruit pouch and crackers too. Still, we persisted even as the sight and smell of certain foods prompted my son’s gag reflex.

Meanwhile, the world around us was less patient. “I make my kids eat what I serve,” other parents would say with casual confidence, as though I simply lacked backbone. I smiled through those moments, even when they stung.

Eventually, I asked his paediatrician for help and was referred to feeding therapy. I had no idea speech therapists often double as feeding specialists. Ours handed me a “Steps to Eating” chart, containing a list of 32 incremental actions that started with tolerating the sight of food on a plate and ended, someday, with swallowing it.

My eyes scanned the list in the hospital lobby as we waited in the Starbucks line for a much-needed cup of coffee and two pastries — treats for siblings forced to tag along to weekly appointments that seemed to be going nowhere. It was then I understood: there would be no quick fix.

Week after week, we sat in sterile hospital rooms as the kind therapist coaxed him to smell a cracker or squish a piece of kiwi between his fingers. I looked on and silently tabulated the rising cost of our weekly food play. When our........

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