Lochlan ate strawberries!
So..... as many of you ASD parents know feeding is hardly enjoyable. The constant prompting, pleading, persuading, encouraging and praying is exhausting!!! Like many we have fought this battle since nearly the begining and with slow progress and frequent regression its easy to get discouraged. BUT... for those of you who are at your breaking point. HANG ON! Your hard work will pay off and when you have that success no matter how big or small somehow it will give you enough hope and power to carry on. One year ago, Sully was limited to (all casein-free) grilled cheese, chicken nuggets, fries, applesauce, juice and rice milk. Lochlan was primarily on baby food (number 2 only) with the occasional chicken nugget, potato chip or french fry.
Sully did feeding therapy for a while with a pediatric behavioral psychologist and an Occupational Therapist with very little progress. Cody and I spent hours with him at the table promising him a chip for every bite he would take just to keep a feeding tube out. This bite for bite technique worked but it was very labor intensive and time consuming. So we started promising him 2 chips for every 2 bites then 3 until he was eating the majority of his plate and then getting a handful of chips at the end. This took lots of time and we reserved chips only for mealtime and if he ate what was requested. This is crucial as if he had access to them any other time they wouldn't have been enough of a reinforcer for him to eat. Once he was eating decent we started putting one piece of non-perferred food on his plate ex. one green bean or one strawberry slice. It is important to first have success with bite for bite before you add any non-perferred foods (at least for us it was) as before he would shut down totally if anything nonperfered was on his plate. The requirement would be to first taste the nonperferred food before chips would be given. Once successfull with a taste then we would require him to bite, chew and swallow before the chips were given. Once he was successful with this technique we changed to 2 bites of non-perferred the next time and so on. (Only move to 2 bites of nonperferred when they are eating one bite independently before reinforcer.)
Hint: do only one-two non perferred foods per week and then switch. But keep re-introducing them until they will eat them independently.
This technique has given us huge success with both boys. Feeding is still an issue sometimes and our issues have changed too, but it is much better and we have much more variety. Now if I can actually get them to stop arguing at the dinner table!
