By
Will on June 2nd, 2010 | Category:
ParentingThis week, I had it planned. I was going to insist Liam feed himself.
He has the idea that it’s inappropriate and evil for us to expect him to touch his food. That’s our job!
People kept telling us, “Just put food in front of him in his tray. When he’s hungry he’ll eat it.” That baby would have starved to death before he did that. It would have been like telling him, “You can have your food when you solve these differential equations. I can wait.”
And now I know what the barrier was. When it was clear he was going to have to pick up that spoon, he would try to take it, bang the food out by accident, say “Neh neh neh!” (means something like “NOOOOOOOOOOO!”) and push the spoon away. That is, he was frustrated and angry. He did the same thing when he dropped food as it was going into his mouth. Liam, the Perfectionist Baby. “If I can’t do it right,” he said, “then I won’t do it at all!”
I guide it to his mouth and don’t let him drop it. He hasn’t got it yet that you have to hold the spoon even when it’s touching your mouth. If I didn’t help, he’d drop it, or leave it sticking out of his mouth like a lollipop stick.
For finger food, I pick it up and wait for him to take it, and make sure he doesn’t drop it before it’s in.
He tried dodges. Trying to get his mouth close enough to the tray that he could take it out of my hand. He’d grab my or Marisa’s hand with the finger-food and pull it and leave us the responsibility
By
Will on January 31st, 2010 | Category:
ParentingI’m not. At least, I started out compliant and credulous and utterly malleable, and developed stubborness (as much as I could manage) in an environment of abuse.
Marisa never learned to be stubborn, and may God grant she never has to.
Liam more than makes up for it. We want him to learn to feed himself. (He’s got a deadline of March, or whenever #2 gets here. I do not want to be dealing with a newborn and having to put each bite into Liam’s mouth.) But his response has been, when we put a spoon in his hand, to push his arm out wide, lock his elbow, turn his face the other way, and scream!
For finger food, he has the same reaction. Pull the hand back, reject the food, object to the whole process.
So Saturday, we took a tip from Miss Donna (the helper who at one meal wouldn’t put his cup into his mouth till he touched it — and now he always reaches for it), and decided to make him eat some of his meal with both finger food in his fingers, and him holding his spoon. I prepared for a weekend battle.
I got one.
…except that(on the spoon issue) it only lasted one day. Now, you put that spoon in his hand and he pulls it into his mouth, and says, do it faster! faster! faster! As you might expect, it’s a horrific mess: rice all over the table and floor at lunch; plate thrown on the floor at dinner… well, the speech therapist said he needs to learn to play with his food! We knew it was coming.
But what I wasn’t prepared for was it working so quickly! Now we have to get him to use the spoon to pick up the food. He doesn’t
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