I will tell you 2013 has brought us a Luke who loves to chat! I feel like I can understand about 85% of what he says, and he is really trying. Just last night he said, as clear as day, "Give me dat!" John and I laughed so hard that there was no way we could correct him for being slightly rude. That's the thing about a speech delayed kid. We get so excited he is actually talking about what he wants, that manners are going to have to come secondary. All night the four of us would look at each other and shout "Give me dat!" and just laugh and laugh.
Speaking of laugh...this keeps a smile on my face all day long.
Feeding therapy is also going amazingly well. Miss 'Becca' keeps calling Luke "The Poster Child for Feeding Therapy", which you know I just love. He does much much much better during our group session than he does at home with me. We are supposed to do a feeding therapy session at home once a day. When she told me that, I almost came unglued, and uncharacteristically, I showed it. I rememeber saying, "Once a day?? At home?? You know we only have about 2.5 hours at home together as a family?? And during those 2.5 hours I am unpacking and repacking lunches, preparing dinner AND making the boys dinner (because they don't eat what we eat...which is a whole other blog post) and then after all that trying to spend some quality time just being with them. Now I have to have an entire feeding therapy session?!?!" Miss Rebecca calmly let me finish and comforted me by saying she understood the demands of a working mom and for me to do what I can. Just those few words helped me relax and realize it is going to be okay if we miss a therapy here or there.
Dinner time is still stressful and he will eat many more things during therapy than he will for me. Some things I have learned that help with eating:
1. Do not give him more than one food at a time. When I put 6 things on his plate he becomes overwhelmed and will only eat his 'comfort food'. He is 95% more likely to eat something if it is the only thing on his plate. And even if he doesn't eat it, he'll still play with it, which is a good thing.
2. Playing with your food is a good thing. We put noodles on our head. We tap oranges to our nose. We give chicken nugget kisses. We drive wheels of cheese up our arms. It's all about getting comfortable with the food no matter how silly it seems.
3. Just when I think I have this little dude figured out, he surprises me. We have been working on ham for about 6 weeks. He went from shoving his plate across the table and screaming when it appeared, to making stacks of it and pushing it over with his tongue, to shoveling it in his mouth as fast as he could. Nothing changed and actually we had taken a break at home from the ham for 2 weeks.
Luke went to his first birthday party this weekend. He had been invited to another one but because of scheduling conflicts, this was the first one he got to attend. Luke is our little introvert, which I love about him. It takes me out of my comfort zone to understand how he reacts in large settings, but I am learning. I was so excited how well he did at the party. He got right in there and played with everyone and everything!
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