Experience with feeding therapy

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Flavor doesn’t seem to be the issue. He isn’t bothered by strong or spicy flavors. Its mainly the texture.
 
But it seems to help when things are super sweet? No? Bananas have an odd texture and unripened ones are not very sweet.
 
This one was pretty yellow. The texture doesn’t seem to me to be too different from the tapioca chunks, but I guess it is different to my son. I don’t know if this is good news, but we successfully got him to try a few bites of a snow cone at the carnival tonight. I thought about trying cotton candy just to see what he’d do, but $$$$$$.
The idea behind the food chaining is to start with a food he is comfortable with, and gradually change it until it’s a new food you want him to eat. I bought the tapioca because it’s really close in texture to yogurt and I thought I could add several different things to it to give him a variety of textures.
 
Allegra, I was like your son when I was a toddler.

I would only drink milk and sheep sweetbread. (yuk I know). I failed to gain weight and height, was considered failure to thrive. I would gag and/or vomit on any newly introduced foods. The medical team thought my mother was the cause of me not eating and thriving due to her increased anxiety with me not eating. My mother agreed for me at about 13 months of age to be hospitalized to see if they could get me to eat. They couldn’t and after three days returned me back to my parents. I remember very clearly at 18 months being given a chocolate biscuit by a neighbor and gaging on that too. At 3 and 4 years of age, I attended regular speech and language therapy as I was not speaking much.

Today, I am healthy and eat a variety of foods. I feel most of my issues was a rather sensitive gag reflex and as a result, I learned to not eat certain types of textures and became habit forming behaviour. As for speech, I was and still am a quiet person and prefer to observe my surroundings than talk about them.

My son was a good eater, but when I first introduced banana’s after breastfeeding first, he promptly projectile vomited everything up. (Kind of reminded me of the scene from the exorcist!) He never liked bananas right through childhood, though he did try them periodically.

I feel Allegra you are doing all the right things for your son. I commend you on all that you have done so far.
 
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It may, but that’s besides the point. I can’t afford to take dock days and I can’t do my job if I have to miss a morning or afternoon every single week. I’m a teacher and I’d be missing the same class every week. That isn’t fair to those students. Not everyone has the kind of job where they are an interchangable cog that could easily be replaced by any other worker with the same training. Jobs that focus on the human element require consistency. If every time you went to the doctor’s office you got a different person who assured you that your own doctor left notes on what they were supposed to do and promised that they would tell your doctor what went on during the appointment, you’d soon be getting a new doctor. We’re simply going to have to find another option for therapy. I’m hoping that we can organize a therapist to come to our house around lunchtime. First of all, that would be an ideal time for feeding therapy. Secondly, my husband might be able to come home for an hour on his lunch break. He only works ten minutes away from our house. He could even video tape the sessions so I can watch.
 
It may not seem so to you, but a banana is very different than pudding. For one, especially unripe it’s incredibly fibrous. Do you have a list that you can perhaps work off of?
 
My apologies as I made an assumption about the reason that you cannot take time off from your job. I hope you are able to find a solution that works out well for your situation.

Peace,
 
It’s cool. That would work for lots of people. Just not in the kind of jobs my husband and I have.
 
Do you have any close friends you trust? Perhaps they could bring your child to the therapy.
 
All the people I know who don’t work for a living also don’t have reliable transportation and/or are on drugs.
 
Besides, I think they really want one or both of us to be there so we can learn the procedures for introducing new foods.
 
You get the summer off, right (or more off)?

If it really doesn’t work for you right now, just plan to do an intensive effort over the summer.

I’ve been reading a blogger with a teen or late tween daughter with an eating disorder, and I think her daughter started very much like your son. (Her daughter has finally done an in-patient treatment program and it’s been a huge ordeal getting insurance to pay for it.) It took a long time to realize how serious her issues were because of other issues in the family, but once they did realize what the problem was, it was clear that the problems had existed since infancy.

I suggest having a look at some of her posts on dealing with eating disorders:

http://iprefercaptain.com/category/eating-disorders/

I wouldn’t freak out now, but definitely keep an eye on this.
 
I do get time off during the summer, and if it comes to that, we can wait until then. But I’m hoping to get at least something going before then. I definatly don’t want him to get as bad as the kid in that blog! He’d not anywhere close to that at this point, thankfully.
 
I have a lot of experience with this- my son is three, and has been in feeding therapy for almost two years. He has many food aversions, texture and other sensory issues, and also was choking on pieces of food. At first, he received therapy for free through a state program, but they did not have the resources to come as often as he needed (they only came 3-4 times a year) and his progress stalled. So now we have to pay for weekly therapy at $100/session- the insurance will not cover it because he is growing well despite his issues.

While no one can seem to figure out why this is happening, he does have several food allergies that his therapist thinks may have affected his experience early on and made him afraid to try new foods. It doesn’t sound like this is an issue for you, but might be worth looking into if it continues.

You son sounds way ahead of where mine was at his age. One book that I find useful is Helping Your Child With Extreme Picky Eating by Katja Rowell. You might want to read that and see if you can get any ideas before deciding whether to go further with the therapy or not. (She does cover things like texture issues.) I work part time from home and care for my son full time, so it is not usually a problem for me to take him to therapy. There is one therapist in our state who will travel to your home, but she is more expensive so we do not do that.

I think, were I in your shoes, I would read the Picky Eating book, see if there is anything useful you might be able to implement yourself, and then if that isn’t working at least get an evaluation through your state to see if he would qualify for home-based feeding therapy. It may be that your son would only need someone to come out every now and then to help with strategies. Some things that have been suggested to us are:

-Making sure feet at planted on something while eating- like the floor, bar on bottom of high chair, etc. Apparently, this helps to “center” their senses.
  • Use a vibrating toothbrush (This was a big fail for us- he was terrified.)
  • Alternate textures during meals. For example, a bite of yogurt and then some goldfish, then some more yogurt, etc.
    -We also do some food-chaining stuff, so I think you might continue to see some success there.
    -No pressure. My son can sense my anxiety and tension over this, and I had to really work hard to learn to relax about it. If he does not want to eat something, he does not have to. He might be required to do something with it (touch it, play with it somehow) but he is not required to eat it. He has eaten a few new things on his own this way, just by having played with it for awhile first and knowing I will not make him try it.
    -Try to offer a new food in a different location. So, if you usually eat at the table, have a picnic on the living room floor. Doing this helps them to relax and can sometimes make them more willing to try new things if they are not in the “usual” location.
I hope you can figure out a solution, or maybe he won’t even need much help. Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions. Good luck!
 
Thanks for this reply. I will definitely get that book. The food chaining book wasn’t too much help, but I have been trying the concept a little on my own with some success. I’m going to try to get him to eat rice cauliflower tonight by adding it to the Spanish rice he loves. We also got the textured tooth rub thingy and he really likes pretending to brush his teeth with that. I’m not sure how that helps, but they told me to do it. I guess they’ll explain why we should do it at the next session?
 
With us, they explained that the vibrating toothbrush and and other “oral development tools” they recommend is because our son has oral defensiveness, and is hyper-sensitive to anything involving the mouth. (He never used a pacifier or mouthed objects the way other babies do, and didn’t like teethers.) So these products are supposed to be part of a “sensory integration” process where he learns to tolerate different sensations within his mouth, become “de-sensitized”, and hopefully eventually try different textures of food as well. We haven’t had much luck with these things, mostly because our son just does not like things in or near his mouth, but it’s a good sign that yours likes the textured tooth rub!
 
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