Feeding therapy update

I realized it's been a while since I've written anything about my son's progress with feeding therapy. He's still doing weekly one-on-one sessions with a therapist at our home, and started his weekly feeding group at the clinic.

The therapist was super excited when she left out house 2 weeks ago because my son tried 3 new things - applesauce, chocolate frosting and peanut butter. At first he wasn't real excited about the applesauce, but then she tried putting some chocolate frosting on it too, and he loved it.

Later once we sat down at the table she also got him to try peanut butter. He licked it off crackers and although he gagged at one point because he got a big chunk, he tried more and liked it.

Last week was his first session for the feeding group. For this one the parents are not in the room. There are 5 kids (in this case all boys) and 3 therapists. Two of the boys came out crying after a while. One went back in, the other didn't. My little guy came out at the end with a big smile on his face :). The therapist said he did really well. That week they were just working on touching food, building up a tolerance to textures. They used veggie sticks, Pringles, animal crackers, Kix, Greek yogurt and ranch dip. They cracked the chips, used the veggie sticks to hit the Kix around on their plate, and dipped some of the stuff in the yogurt and dip.

That night for dinner he specifically asked for a napkin to wipe his mouth, cause that's what they do in his class.

On Thursday his therapist came back and said she had heard he did really well in the feeding group (best in the class actually). We went through pretty much the same warm up as last week, including the frosting and applesauce. When we went into the kitchen, we played more with peanut butter, smearing it on crackers and licking it off. Her final task for him was to smash a cracker and get some of the crumbs on his fingers and lick it off. He did gag at one point and cried about, but finally he did all five fingers. His homework is to work more on the crumbs and the peanut butter, which he hasn't been real willing to do the past couple of days.

One thing though that has changed is that he offers to set the table for dinner (I let him do the unbreakable stuff). He wants a knife and fork for himself and asks for a little bit of everything we are having. He has yet to taste anything but he does play with all of it, talks about it, which is huge. He used to scream and cry if I put the smallest crumb of food on his tray.

My goal is that he will be eating regular food by his birthday in May. I just registered him for camp for a few weeks this summer. They serve snacks so I want to make sure he's ready by then.