What a Life!

Our sweet Ben has had eating “issues” ever since he started solids. It took forever before he would accept them (we finally had to force them on him), and then he has been very particular about texture ever since.

He didn’t meet the two year requirement of 50 words and 2-word sentences that speech therapists tout as an absolute minimum. We did have him evaluated by a family friend at one point, and she told us that he needed more than the school system would be able to offer via early intervention. In fact, she told us we needed to take him to a clinic that had speech, occupational and physical therapists in order to help him effectively.

Our family doctor, on the other hand, wasn’t worried about it. We tried the theory that perhaps his tonsils were causing the overactive gag reflex which seemed to be the issue with solids. He told us he would be happy to refer us if we wished, but he has thirteen children – yes, thirteen – and the one with the smallest tonsils had the strongest gag reflex so he didn’t think it was related. So we dropped that.

I’ve had people suggest he might have a form of autism that involves sensitivity to textures, especially since he also supposedly had a speech delay. I’ve read up some on autism. First of all, it used to be 1 in 10,000 children that were affected; now the most recent stat I saw was 1 in 166. At the same time, for every symptom of autism that they give, there is someone in my family or Steve’s who has that same odd behavior. Don’t get me wrong – I believe every case needs to be looked at individually, but my impression is that autism is way over-diagnosed. Just because you have a name for some odd behavior doesn’t mean that a child needs therapy. In a lot of ways, autism is normal behavior taken to the extreme. I don’t think Ben does any of those behaviors enough to justify such a diagnosis, and people whom I’ve discussed this with who know Ben personally agree.

But still, we couldn’t get Ben to eat anything that wasn’t the consistency of mashed potatoes or thereabouts. He feeds himself, and he never rejects a food based on taste. He eats all sorts of things that you hear stories all the time about kids refusing to touch. At the same time, he picks the pieces of fruit out of his yogurt and refuses to eat them. If he’s feeding himself, he sorts them out; if one inadvertantly gets in his mouth, he spits it out. You can mix things like cubed beets or peas or even green beans in mashed potatoes, and he’ll eat them just fine; give them to him straight (without the mashed potatoes), and he won’t have anything to do with them.

A week or so ago I was grating some parmesean cheese to serve with pasta. Ben came over to see what I was doing, and I snitched a little off the cutting board. Then I pushed a tiny piece over to him and told him to snitch it just like mommy. He took it off the cutting board – one strand of finely grated fresh parmesean – and put it in his mouth. Really.

I kept grating and snitching, and he kept taking more and more. First it was longer strands, then it was multiple strands. It was amazing! He’s come over before when I was cutting things up and offered some to him, but he’s always just put his fingers up to his mouth with the food in them and faked that he was eating it – he wouldn’t actually put anything in his mouth. This time, he was actually putting it in his mouth and eating it.

I offer you this picture (unedited, of course) as proof:

A couple days later we did the same thing with grated cheddar, grated on a regular grater (not the fine one). He got cheese all over the floor, but he managed to eat quite a bit of grated cheddar as well.

Then I decided to buy some bananas. I started by slicing the banana and cutting each slice into quarters and then snitching it from the cutting board and inviting him to do the same. I cut some more slices only in half…followed by intact slices of banana. He was eating them all just fine.

Then I got really brave – I took a half of banana, handed it to him completely intact (peeled, of course), and told him to stick it in his mouth just like he does with his toys. I showed him how to bite it off and told him to do the same.

He did it.

Seriously.

Here’s the picture to prove it (again, unedited, of course):

We went to the doctor last week for a follow-up on Ben’s ear infection. I told him how Ben was eating bananas and how they were now on his favorite list of foods that he specifically requested.

I told him it just went to prove that he was perfectly capable of eating solids, but just like toddlers who will eat a taco if it’s open but not if it was folded, it was just in his head.

The doctor looked at me and said, “It’s always just in their heads.”

And I know it’s not good to snitch while you’re cooking – it can lead to weight issues and all sorts of things. God knows I will be to blame if Ben needs a stomach reduction surgery someday! But for now, snitching is a good thing. Otherwise, we would still be worried about whether Ben would ever take food and put it in his mouth like every other child his age.

Incidentally, he talks just fine now too. You wouldn’t believe all the things he has to say. He “caught up” in terms of speech development, and we never took him to a speech therapist. Like I said, every child is different and every case needs to be evaluated individually, but just because there is a therapist who treats a certain “odd” behavior doesn’t mean a child needs to have therapy. I think it’s great that we have therapists who can treat children who have problems and would be treated badly on account of being different, but at the same time, I think we need to be careful in how we define “different.” Perhaps we as a society need therapy in order to learn to be more accepting of variations between individuals. Perhaps.