Therapy Update & Food Chaining

This morning, we had our first therapy session in about a month. We canceled several appointments because Tyler wasn't even eating accepted foods for while. I'm pretty sure it is related to teething. He is cutting his last four molars, and he's had a rough time eating.

Tyler was starving before we were called out of the waiting room, so Stephanie suggested I just go straight to a food he would eat so we could talk about his progress (or lack thereof). Here is the update:

Tyler has taken one bite of watermelon this month, but he was running around the yard with it on the fork, which doesn't seem safe to me, so we haven't tried this on a regular basis. He asked for some of his daddy's Cheetos at Subway a week or so ago. He liked the taste and texture but objected to the orange stuff on his fingers. He put crushed ice in his mouth once. (He liked it and ate several pieces that time but none since.) He tasted banana pudding at my grandparents' house. But he was watching "Clifford the Big Red Dog" and his daddy kept sneaking tastes onto his lips. When he got too big a taste, he gagged. (It was by no means a large or even medium-sized bite. Stephanie and I think the gagging is related to a learned aversion to bananas because he used to gag on the texture of bananas when I first started transitioning him to solids. I feel so guilty.) Last night, he touched a popsicle to his mouth a couple of times. We were playing with the popsicle in the bathtub. The water was orange when he got out so I rinsed him off again to make sure he wouldn't attract ants in the middle of the night!

After I ran through all of these items so she would see that we really are trying(!!), Stephanie asked me if I'd heard of "food chaining." I had not. She explained that these therapists have just published a book that shows how you can help a child go from a currently accepted food through a series of similar foods.

Here is an example of a food chain from the Food Chaining blog.

We did this with Tyler, going from potato chips to fries to sweet potato fries. And I introduced a certain kind of cracker so I could later introduce the same cracker with peanut butter because I knew the pre-made sandwich crackers are pretty dry and I thought Tyler would be more willing to accept that. But I've been so focused on getting him to eat totally different textures, like watermelon. I like the idea of seeing a larger spectrum of foods rather than trying to introduce a wide variety with no baby steps.

I also appreciate the focus that the blog seems to have on language. When Tyler learns the word for a food (he recognizes a word, not pronounces it), it seems to help him remember it the next time we offer it.

And I think Stephanie may have encouraged this in a way that didn't sink in until I read the "Food Chaining" blog.

Anyway, I'm off to buy the book as soon as naptime is over. I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, would you like to know what my 21-month-old son will eat?

• fresh fruits: Granny Smith apples
• dried fruits: blueberries, strawberries, cherries, pineapple, banana, mango, apple
• cooked veggies: fries (must be fried, not baked), Chick-fil-A waffle fries, sweet potato fries, chips, veggie chips. (Can these be counted as veggies or should they be sweets?!)
  
• dried veggies: corn, peas
• meats: bacon, pepperoni (if cooked until crunchy). he ate chicken nuggets until this latest bout of teething; hopefully he'll start eating them again soon.
• bread/cereals: muffins, Cheerios, cereal bars (Special K are his favorite), one brand of pre-made garlic bread, all kinds of crackers (the Kashi Mediterranean Bruschetta cracker are high in calories, so I'm excited he's started eating those!), and peanut butter crackers
  
• sweets: smarties, skittles, sometimes he will eat a taste of brownie, there are several cookies he's eaten at one time or another, but he gets them so rarely that he may refuse it the next time it is offered.
• drinks: all kinds of juices, milk, milkshakes, we add blueberry and strawberry yogurt squeezers to his milk, and he begs for a straw to share our sweet tea sometimes

Actually, now that I've typed the list out, I'm feeling pretty good about things.

And Tyler liked all kinds of baby foods, even the ones with spinach, so I'm hopeful that as we work on his sensory integration/texture issues, taste issues won't be a problem.