Feeding Clinic

Today Eric, his lead therapist, the psychologist in charge of his care at the CHW feeding clinic, and I had a meeting. We are working out plans to tackle Eric's oral adversions and his rigid feeding behaviors. We are going to start with getting him drinking from a sippy cup, an open cup or a water bottle (B, the senior therapist's idea). We are also going to try to get him to hold a spoon. This don't sound like much, but for Eric it's a lot. With the therapists and I working intensively on this every day I think these are realistic goals. I have a bottle of water and a spoon out on the dining room table now, and they are also in front of him at every meal. When he got home from school he kept handing both items back to me. I would give them right back to me. Once we can get them in his hand, we will then try to guide to his mouth. We will all meet again in a month. At that appointment we will do a feeding right there, and bring videos of sessions done at home. With that we will brainstorm ideas and make plans from there. Hopefully this all works. Dr. F brought up the possibility of another inpatient stay, but does not think 2 weeks is going to be enough time. They would have to force the issues and it would not be pretty. It is best not to put anyone through that tourture. The other option would be to bring him to the Kennedy Kreiger Institute in Baltamore. They have the best known inpatient feeding program. The problem with that is that it is 2 months long. I have no idea what I would do with my other 2 kids during that time. Even 2 weeks at CHW would be really hard right now. We really want to do this outpatient if possible. I think it is realistic if it is kept up on. Although I have the spoon and the water bottle out, explained to the line therapist what this was for and what to do with it. She coninues to have him do rote imitation of words. It is 1 hour into the session and he has already lost interest. Sigh...I did my rant about this in my last post so I will spare it here. Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled with the progress he is making verbally. These other issues have to be resolved for him to continue to make progress all around. I will be so glad when this up and down stuff settles down. This is going to be a long hour and a half.