Good start

I had to write an update after talking to John's therapist this morning. The first thing she said was that he likes things with a strong taste. I already knew that because he likes eating things that are a little spicy. Last week when working on chewing, she used something called a nook brush. She would put food on it and then let him bite on the brush so he can get the sensation of chewing while also tasting food. When I tried this at home, he did more grinding of his teeth than chewing up and down. This time she used a slim jim with food on the end for the same reason. Apparently he likes slim jims because he actually chewed up and down on it. This is a good start for him. She also said he is moving his tongue towards the food better. This is something everyone needs to be able to do. We all do it when eating but we just don't realize it.

The second thing they worked on was drinking from a cup. In the past we have concentrated on him drinking through a straw. But today she used something called a nosey cup. This is simply a small plastic cup with a notch cut out of the top rim where the nose would go. Again using something with a strong taste, cranberry juice, she was able to get him to drink 3 ounces out of that cup in a time span of about 5 minutes. I have never been able to get him to drink that much that quickly from anything but a bottle. This is something else for us to continue to work on. I actually have several of those cups at home that I had bought a long time ago when trying different things. In fact, over the years I have bought just about every kind of cup I could find trying to find something that he could use.

So needless to say, I have put slim jims and cranberry juice on my shopping list so we can continue to work on these things at home. Already he is showing more interest and more progress than he showed in the few years of doing OT in the past. I am very encouraged and excited about the progress John is showing. I can't wait to see what he does next week.