M&M's to Independence

Once upon a time, there was a boy who wouldn't ask nicely.  No matter what.  He would rather throw a 45-minute tantrum than say "please."

And he needed his mom and dad to help him with almost everything.  He could use the toilet by himself, but he wanted Mom or Dad to walk with him to the bathroom and wait.  When he was finished, he would grunt and pout, waiting for Mom and Dad to interpret that he must need help with his snap and zipper.  If he dropped his fork on the floor during dinner, he would cry and fuss until someone else picked it up for him, insisting that there was no way he could do it on his own.

This little boy was at a challenging stage of life.  He had some bigger battles going on at the time, so Mom and Dad decided that it was not yet time to fight the "please" battle.

But then, the time finally came.

The "M&M's to Independence" jar showed up in their house.  Every time this boy or his brother did something FOR HIMSELF that he normally would need help with, he got an M&M in his jar.  Every time he did something helpful or did a service without being asked, he got an M&M in his jar.  The M&M's would accumulate until the boys were ready to eat them - they could choose them for their after-dinner-treat.  Every time a boy couldn't do something for himself that he normally SHOULD be able to do, Mom or Dad would gladly help, at the cost of one M&M that they would get to eat immediately.  

Over the next few months, the boys developed good habits.  The little pirate learned to ask nicely almost 80% of the time!  He learned to go potty by himself.  His brother learned to put away his backpack, coat, and shoes without being reminded.  Mom and Dad didn't have to nag as much, and everyone was happier.  They are still working on their first "pounder" bag of M&M's!

First of all, I must thank my friend Laura for the "M&M's to Independence idea."  She invented it for her similarly dependent girls . . . and it has worked brilliantly for us!  The great thing is that if Ellis is in a really bad mood and just desperately NEEDS someone to pick up his fork for him, I don't have to have an internal battle about it.  I just say, "Sure" with a smile.  Then I make sure to grab an M&M from his jar and munch on it while I'm picking up his fork.  I try really hard not to warn him that I'll have to steal one of his M&M's, because that just causes a battle.  If he asks for something in a grumpy voice, I can just say, "Ooh, I'll ask nicely for you . . ." and before I can do it (and steal an M&M), Ellis has already started rephrasing his question.

These are some of the things the boys did to earn M&M's (they each had separate rules):

- Ask nicely the first time 

- Put shoes/coat/backpack away without reminders

- Help or do a service without being asked

- Go potty without help (E)

- Do a job nicely without complaining 

- Do morning chores without reminders (H)

Ellis' Food Journey: Rounding the Corner

I can't hardly believe I'm writing this, but we have made SO much progress since my last post about Ellis' food journey. When we visited Miss Kathy last week for feeding therapy, we told her that it would be our last visit.

We still have more progress to make with Ellis, but at this point, we are able to do a lot of our work at home. Somewhere along the way, after the grueling hours of sitting at the table watching, waiting, playing, prodding, pushing, begging Ellis to touch/squeeze/lick/bite a new food, he caught on. He got into a rhythm: Every day we sit at the table and play with a new food. Sometimes I taste the food. Often, I like it. He started getting to the point where we would sit down with the carefully chosen food of the day, and he would sometimes say, "Okay, I'm going to do all the 'eats,'" meaning taste, bite, chew, etc. It was like he knew he wanted to try new foods, but he couldn't make himself do it. And then he found this context where he could very carefully and safely try something, and it just worked for him.

I think we reached a real turning point with fruit. He started to realize that fruit has juice in it, and juice is yummy. One day Miss Kathy offered him some of the cantaloupe melon from her lunch. He tried it skeptically, then gobbled it up. After that, he tried a few more fruits and decided that he wanted to try all the fruits. When he started feeling like he had some control over the situation, he started to name foods he would like to try next time for "Steps." So we made this chart, and he got to choose the foods we worked on each day. When he decided, "Now I like bananas," we got to add it to the chart.

So he's definitely not eating everything, but we're at the point where I can even add a slightly new food at dinner (not "Steps"), and he will eat it (with some work/help/coaxing). Tonight we went out for dinner and he ate French fries for the first time. It was significant because he won't normally try something new in a less comfortable setting.

I seriously can hardly believe how far we have come in seven months (since this post when we were exclusively feeding Ellis baby food and muffins). We NEVER, EVER could have made this progress without Miss Kathy. She is very talented at what she does, and Ellis loves her! She has saved our lives and has helped us through a difficult but worthwhile journey. Ellis is so proud of himself and the foods he eats and likes.

This week I got together three bags of baby food to give away to friends with little ones. It has been perfect, because Sam has progressed with feeding at just about the same rate as Ellis! They both finished with baby food at pretty much the same time. On that note, I will mention that I don't think it's a coincidence that Sam is our best eater of the three (at least for now -- we'll see if he changes, but for this age, he's definitely eating much better than the other two did). There are definitely some feeding things that we are doing better the third time around. We made a lot of mistakes with the first two, which I believe have contributed to Henry's picky eating and exacerbated Ellis' sensitivities. And so, I will end this post with:

WHAT I WISH SOMEONE HAD TOLD ME ABOUT FEEDING BABIES/KIDS:

1. IT'S OKAY IF THEY DON'T GET ALL OF THEIR FOOD GROUPS EVERY SINGLE DAY, especially as they are transitioning in foods. When Henry started taking cow's milk in a cup, he hated it. I panicked because I knew he needed to drink milk (since he was no longer nursing), so after trying for a couple of days, I decided to sweeten the milk with Nesquick. Guess what? To this day Henry only drinks milk if it is chocolate. Surprise, surprise. Ellis, on the other hand, didn't take milk at first, and my doctor said it didn't matter. Just keep trying. So we didn't sweeten it, and he kept trying one sip a day (and throwing the cup on the floor) for a long time, and then eventually he drank it, and now he loves milk.

Similarly, when Ellis started to reject his baby food vegetables, I panicked. It would be fine if he was eating regular vegetables, but he wasn't. I was so worried that he wasn't getting ANY veggies, so I found a way to force him to eat the baby food veggies (it started with a song and a dance and morphed into letting him watch videos on the computer while we fed him). I can hardly believe how long we did this for . . . all because I was afraid something terrible would happen if he didn't eat any vegetables.

2. BABY FOOD SHOULD BE A TRANSITION FOOD to help babies get used to solids -- not the main source of nutrition. My pediatrician told me that I should be sure to transition Sam OFF of pureed baby food by one year. I wish someone had told me that with the other two! I felt like I needed to rely solely on pureed baby food to get my babies their daily amount of fruits and veggies. That Gerber packaging ("five a day") is quite deceiving.  Hmmm . . . I wonder why.

3. BABIES CAN EAT MORE THAN JUST THE "EASY" FOODS. With Henry and Ellis, I was very afraid of them choking on foods, and I was hesitant to give them foods that would be hard to chew. I definitely don't think you should give babies any food that they could choke on, but Ellis has helped me to expand my horizons with Sam. With Ellis as a baby, I gave him a lot of foods that were easy to grab and easy for him to eat. He had a lot of crackers and soft breads or muffins, which ended up being the only foods he accepted later on. But he wasn't exposed to as big of a variety as Sam has been. I pretty much always give Sam a taste of whatever I am eating for lunch or dinner (enchiladas, rice, beans, chicken, pasta, etc). I just find a way to cut it and put it on his plate. I have also been giving him a lot of canned fruits (peaches, pears, pineapple, mandarin oranges) because they are easy to grab, and they're really soft and don't have peels). I like this food chart or other similar food charts, because they remind me what babies can handle at each age. It's good to remember that they could be trying more than I would think to give them. I also have been trying to avoid too many sweet or salty foods, because I have read that babies can get a taste for them and then shun everything else. Sam has been really restricted with the yummy stuff (jury is still out on whether or not this will be helpful).

4. IF THEY SPIT IT OUT, KEEP TRYING. One of the most helpful things I learned with Ellis' feeding therapy is that looking/touching/licking/chewing is all part of the learning process for new foods. For many of the foods we tried with Ellis, we would have him chew it up ten times and then spit it out on his plate. It didn't matter if he didn't actually eat the food; touching, licking, and chewing it was getting him closer to actually eating it! It was helping him to feel comfortable with the food and how it felt in his mouth. Some of those sensations are so new and unfamiliar that they can throw kids off. Once they are used to how something feels on their tongue or in between their teeth, they will be a lot less anxious about actually eating it next time. So Sam makes a HUGE mess with his food right now. Sometimes he doesn't eat a single bite of the food I put on his tray. He plays with it, mashes it in his hands, and frequently chews it up and spits it back out. Often he'll chew up a grape, spit it out, and then ask for another one! With my other two boys, I think I would have seen them refusing a food or spitting it out and thought that they just didn't like the food. I would have been hesitant to give them the food again, because I didn't think they would eat it, and because I wouldn't want to clean up a big mess again. I believe that the messes Sam makes now are definitely worth it, because often after mashing or spitting out a food a bunch of times, he will eventually eat some. It's almost like we skipped this training with Ellis when he was a baby. We didn't desensitize him to enough foods, and so we had to do it when he was three. It was much harder at three, when he was much more set in his ways and determined to rule the roost.

I'll admit that we make lots of mistakes, and maybe we are the last ones who should be giving advice on feeding children! Perhaps I'll come back on here in a year and admit that Sam isn't such a good eater after all. But for now, he's really eating a TON of foods, and he's doing much better than the other two did at this age. I do feel confident that we did a few things wrong that we don't want to repeat. I actually think this blog has a really great outlook on feeding kids and raising healthy eaters. It suggests a lot of things that I wish I had tried earlier. Oh, live and learn! Perhaps if we have 20 kids we will figure out how to do it all!