The Popsicle Center is a parent organized group that provides online support to families, children & professionals that provide tools & resources to children with eating difficulties.


http://www.popsiclecenter.org/index.asp

I never rejoined this group when they switched over to BIG TENT. Is it more active than it was in the past? I know how frustrating eating or not eating can be. No one truely understands till they have had a child just like yours.

For Nate it took an 11 day inpatient intensive feeding program to get him off a bottle (he would only use the 2 hole crisscut nipple Similiac disposable which we used till we no longer could use...we got years out of those disposble nipples!). We were also able to get him to accept and swallow puree foods. The second day of the program the team told me that I was so right that Nate was extremely diffiuclt to get him to eat. I think that "Fight or Flight" response is so so hard to overcome. Anxiety got in the way and still does at times but they have taught me how to overcome it. Feeding psychology helped me get over it and give me the skills and the SLP worked with the skill to reteach him to swallow.

He has been eating now for almost 9 months....only puree foods. He also takes milk with Carnation Instant Breakfast for calories and good nutrition. We are just now trying to teach him to chew to give him the skills and they hopefully bring in the psychology skills and get him chewing a cookie and other textrures. Nate has never had a cookie, cracker, bread, etc.... All his food is ground up in a Magic Bullet.

We used at first a syringe to get in liquids then a syringe with the flexiable tubing from the HoneyBear cup. It took time to get the swallowing and to be able to increase the volume of a swallow. It was baby steps! Then we put the flexiable tubing in the HoneyBear and we had total control of the HoneyBear squeezing fluid in his mouth. In time he learned to consecutively swallow with out taking out the tubing between swallows. Now he can drink out of any straw cup....but still preferes his milk out of the HoneyBear so we really need to ditch those and move on. Psychology is such a big part of it all!

We fed Nate we controlled how much he ate and when he ate. Yes, it did seam a little like force feeding but the consistency and the firmness when we didn't like his behavior was needed. We had to stay as neutral as possible. For Nate who is so social we used this to our advantage. If we didn't like his behavior we would tell him firmly and calmly..."I don't like this!" then turn our backs on him. We used counting and kept to our counts. 5 more bites meant 5 more bites! So I had to be careful not to set too unrealistic goals as a new food/flavor it may only be 3 more bites. We alternated between liquid and food.. We used praise but not going overboard. Nate to this day dislikes if I say "yum!" or "good bite". It is too funny! He obviously didn't like the process but he now is very animated and finally interested in food. He had no interest in the past. Now he talks about food and has food play when he is pretend playing.

_________________
Sherry
Evan 10, Olivia 9, and Nate 6*

Hosted on Fotki