OT Success!

Lincoln has been doing a hour a week of Occupational Therapy for about a year and a half now. He has made a lot of progress with everything, but his eating has blown me away this weekend.

Last night we had homemade pizza for dinner. We have homemade pizza once or twice a month as it is one of Savannah's favorites, and Lincoln has refused every time to go anywhere near it. So Savannah and I made enough pizza for just the two of us, and I asked Lincoln what he wanted for dinner. He said he wanted to make a pizza. It took some convincing to get him to actually touch the ingredients, but after I did the crust for him he spread the sauce with a spoon and put the cheese on. He choose pepperoni for a topping, but I had to put it on. When I offered it to him, he did his usual shaking, freak out thing that he does when he doesn't want to touch something that is wet, messy, oily, etc. The whole time he was making the pizza he kept saying that he was making it for Savannah. So when the pizza came out of the oven I suggested that he try it. More of the shaking and crying. So I took a deep breath and decided to try the things that they do at OT. I calmed him down, then asked him to look at the pizza. We talked about what colors were on the pizza, what shape it was, what shape the pepperoni was, etc. Then we smelled the pizza. Then I asked him to taste the pizza. Again with the shaking. So I used bribery. I told him that if he would have one bite of the pizza I would make him anything he wanted to eat. So he took one bite and started crying. So I sat the pizza on the counter and put him on the couch to watch TV. Trying new things is scary for him, and I realized that he had reached his limit. But a few minutes later his slowly crept toward the counter, picked up the pizza and ate the whole thing. I may or may not have shed a tear or two. You know there is something wrong with you when you cry because your kid willingly ate pizza.

So today we were having Subway for lunch. Lincoln doesn't eat sandwiches unless they are PB&J, and even then everything has to be perfect- right bread, right jam, just the right amount of peanut butter, you get the picture. In the past when we eat at Subway Lincoln gets a thing of apple slices and a bag of chips. But today was the day I decided that he was going to eat some sandwich. So I asked if he wanted ham or turkey, and he chose ham. I got him his sandwich and he immedietly started doing the cry and shake thing. So I opened it up, and we talked about everything on it, eventually removing all of the veggies from about half of it. Then we tasted the ham alone. Then we tasted the bread alone. Then I told him he had to try one bite of sandwich. Then he ate the entire thing, including the veggies we left on the second half!

I just might kiss his therapist on Wednesday!