Chocolate Pudding Therapy

In our latest attempt to broaden the kiddo's culinary horizons beyond macaroni & cheese and spaghetti & meatballs, we decided to throw caution (and possibly our beige carpet) to the wind and try to teach him to eat with his hands. This has been a long fight due to his developmental delays and issues with feeding and acid reflux, but we got the go-ahead to start adding more age appropriate foods after his most recent OPMS swallow study.

One food suggestion given to his by the Occupational Therapist and Speech Therapist who observed him during the swallow study was to start giving him a puffed cereal snack so that he can learn how to chew crunchy foods and get more texture in his diet beyond chewy pasta. These were a HUGE hit with him! We started sprinkling some on the tray of his high chair so that he could grab them and feel them. His Cortical Visual Impairment also made it difficult to see the puffs, so his visual impairment teacher recommended that we mix them with the multicolored Goldfish. Big Success! He will scoop them up and hold them in his palm, but like all other foods, utensils, and baby bottles, he will not bring them to his mouth.

Finally in desperation I had the idea of letting him put his hands in something and then put his fingers in his mouth. After some discussion with his therapists we decided to go for it. As you can see, he was a very happy boy and even brought his fingers to his mouth a couple of times, most of it ending up on his face. This like everything else about our sweet boy will be a work in progress until he gets the concept. The look of pure joy on his face made the clean up worth all the mess.