Apple Week

We are trying a new feeding strategy with Mikan called Food Academics. We basically set up mini-lesson plans about a particular food over the course of a week. He will learn about the food related to our five senses, manipulate and play with it, create projects with it, read about it, and, hopefully, evenually kiss, lick, or even eat a little bit of it. This week was apple week. Although he never ate any apple, he enjoyed playing with it. I am going to take pictures of the different activities he completes and create mini-books about the week for him to look back at, hopefully generating more interest in interacting with that food in the future. Below are a few pictures from this week.






Another MAJOR milestone. Mikan is drinking from a different cup. As you can see by the last picture, it really isn't that different from his old cup, but this is still a HUGE improvement. In the past, he has refused anything that wasn't from his special cup. Yesterday morning we started with this refusal. I told him his other cup was broken. I wanted to see how long he would hold out, or if, in fact, he would starve himself and I would need to use the g-tube that evening. He began by throwing the cup across the kitchen, but he started eating more cereal. By the afternoon I was getting nervous because he still hadn't drank anything. I finally told him that if he wanted to watch Dora, he needed to take three sips from his cup. He finally caved and drank one sip, then told me he wanted to count in Spanish while he drank. We counted to "diez" and he finally realized that he was able to drink comfortably from it. We haven't had any problems since. I'm not sure this was the most therepuetically appropriate approach, but I am pleased with his low level of anxiety with this new introduction. My plan is to slowly introduce more cups and then return to working on different liquids.