Eating Update

It's been an interesting few months on the eating front, punctuated by some gains and other complications emerging.  We started back in January pushing Spencer much harder to eat more normal and closer to what the rest of us eat. We instituted a one-bite rule but then super emphasized that we wanted him to taste everything so he could experience new flavors, but then just eat until his stomach was satisfied. It sort of worked. He definitely ate more food, but there were a few complications that emerged as side effects.

First, Spencer has never been a speedy eater, but it got so he was sitting at the table for two or even three hours before he was willing to buckle down and eat. And when he did eat, he ate a single bite of everything and then left, saying he was full. We had to do an incredible amount of emotional management with him as well to keep him from dissolving into tears constantly. He was very stressed. He doesn't have any kind of eating success when he's stressed and crying. It's not a method that has ever worked for him. When his emotions ramp up, his ability to cope pretty much disappears and never comes back.

We also started some occupational therapy in the form of play therapy last month. His therapist is great. We only go once a week, so she's still kind of figuring him out. We'll see what comes of it. I have hopes for success there. He's doing a brushing routine where we brush his extremities and back every two hours, hopefully to minimize some of the stress in his world. We've been doing it for a few weeks. I'm not completely sure we're seeing results, but hey, I'm also not quitting it. I think it might be helping a bit.

This week I just got really tired of the sheer amount of time eating was taking in our world. One of my concerns is about how short lunchtime is at kindergarten and whether Spencer will be able to eat in that amount of time. Taking two and three hours to eat both lunch and dinner is completely counter productive to him learning this skill, so I decided to make some changes. I've read loads of books and things about eating and the approach I most agree with is by Ellen Satter. If you haven't heard of it, it's basically a division of power. The parents pick the food and the location of meals, the kid decides if and how much of the food they eat. There's certainly more to it than that, as she's written a couple books about it, but that's the barebones.

This is sort of what we were doing all this year, but I've been too scared to fully implement it, or go full Satter, as people in this little eating world call it. See, Spencer is really skinny. He's gained very little weight in the last 18 months. I'm concerned about his growth being stunted. But I think he may have actually lost weight in the last couple months, which concerns me. I'm trying not to fixate on this, but mostly I'm just concerned that he get enough to eat to grow. I think the food issues affect his moods, which are often pretty negative, so it's a multi-faceted problem. But it's become apparent that what we're doing isn't turning into long-term improvement, so yesterday I started the full Satter approach. It requires I be a lot more structured in our meals/snacks, which will be a good thing. It will also help my other kids, who are in the throes of toddler and preschool eating craziness as well. So I'm making whatever I'm going to make, and then talking constantly about how I make the food and they decided whether to eat or not. It's a process to get them to understand how things are going to work. I think it's going to take a few days of constant effort to get the routine down. But I'm hoping for good things.

In addition I've started setting a limit on mealtime length. I'm trying out half an hour for now. That might change. Spencer didn't finish his lunch in that time today and it's been like 30 minutes since lunch and he just asked me for a snack. I told him we'd have a snack in a couple hours and reminded him this is why we need to eat at lunch instead of looking out the window or otherwise doing anything but eating. So we shall see. This still feels like my kryptonite, but I'm not hopeless like I've been at other points.