Strategy

While Tyler was napping, I fixed four chicken nuggets.

He was in a great mood when he got up, and he was running around the living room having a grand time.

I nonchalantly walked into the kitchen and picked up one of the nuggets. I sat on the step between the kitchen and the living room and started eating it, without saying anything to him. He ran up to me and reached for it. I pushed him back a little and ate two bites. Only then did I offer him a little piece. He shoved it in his mouth, chewed for a second and demanded more! Together we ate two, and I'm sure he ate at least as much as I did!

This sounds easy, doesn't it? So what are these feeding problems I'm complaining about?

Keep in mind we've been playing with chicken nuggets for two weeks. Tyler has kissed them, and they've kissed him. He's never seemed to dislike the feel of them but he's never put even the smallest bit in his mouth.

But I have a new strategy:

1. When introducing a food for the first few times, Tyler will be in his highchair. (Otherwise, he just runs off.)
2. We will try to do a short "therapy" with a familiar food right after nap every day. In the past, I've always tried to plan therapy between meals. The timing is tough. If he's actually hungry (first thing in the morning), he just cries and gets frustrated. If it is too soon after he's eaten, then he just throws the therapy food because he isn't hungry. But if we do therapy at mealtime when he is reasonably hungry, then it reinforces the frustration and negative feelings he associates with feeding.
   
3. During this short therapy, I will sit in the floor to eat the food, and I will not push him to take it. (We seem to have more success when he believes it is his idea to eat a food. Just like a man.)

Seems simple, doesn't it? Wish me luck!

By the way, Tyler ate half a piece of garlic toast last night! (Again, he crawled up in my lap and reached for it. He thinks it was all his idea.)

Wordless Wednesday

Pretty Purple

I just found Tyler standing on the white carpet in my front living room (really his playroom), holding his Harvest Surprise grape-vegetable juice upside down and waving it around. He was watching the juice drip out of the straw and admiring the pretty purple pattern he was creating.

Let's Celebrate!

The floor strategy appears to be working. Tyler just ate two blueberries. Fresh, not dried.

Taking Therapy to a New Level

This last week, I've noticed that Tyler will eat his foods better when he's not strapped in his high chair. For example, he wouldn't eat apple for a while after I tried giving him a pear, but I got in the floor with him one day while I was eating apple, and he started eating it again with very little coaxing. Now he comes running if I ask him if he wants some apple. And he'll eat a piece and come back for more when it is gone.

Same thing with the little beans inside green beans. (He still won't eat the hull part.) Last Tuesday, he ate finally ate them late in the evening and then nothing for several days. Sunday night, after thinking about the apple thing, I got in the floor with him and he ate the first one immediately and asked for more. He ate about 12 before he got bored with it and ran off. (Which is, of course, the problem with not having him strapped into a high chair.) Yesterday I put him in the high chair, and he squished the green beans, kissed them and threw them in the floor. But he wouldn't eat them.

And he begged for a Junior Mint yesterday afternoon when I was sitting on the sofa eating them. (Of course, he wouldn't take one I'd bitten in half because he didn't like the mint inside touching his hands, but he ate a whole one without thinking twice about it.)

He's also started eating rice and french fries when he was either crawling around in the floor while Brian and I ate or crawling up in our laps.

So I voiced my concern that Tyler has negative associations for the highchair to Stephanie, Tyler's therapist. This morning, she took us to a playroom rather than a kitchen so Tyler she could see how Tyler plays with food when he isn't strapped into a high chair.

At first, he was too interested in the toys to pay attention to the food, so we had to put them up. We did get him to eat a couple of pieces of apple and three of the little green bean "seeds" (but not the hull). He played with the chicken nuggets but wouldn't eat them, and he didn't even touch the corn (which he ate last week).

Stephanie indicated that we should continue to have structured meal times so Tyler doesn't learn to graze all day, but she said we can start doing his therapy in more of a play atmosphere — in the floor rather than having to strap him into a chair. So I'm hoping that this is less stressful for both of us and more productive, too. But cleanup just got harder!!

Asleep yet?

It was just me and Tyler in the car on the way home tonight. And it was after dark. Once he got quiet, I kept trying to peer in the rearview mirror to see if he'd fallen asleep. I knew he was still wide awake when a fire engine passed us going in the opposite direction and then from my backseat I heard a ghostly little siren imitation!

Adventures in Reading

Tyler is slowly learning to communicate, and it is so much fun to get glimpses of how he sees the world and to giggle at his "mastery" of the English language!

One day Tyler pointed at a crescent moon in his story book and said "nana!" (as in "banana").

Another day, I pointed at a picture of a child in Tyler's book and said, "See that little girl?" He promptly said "squirrel"!