To date, we've had some eating issues with Nicolas. If the pieces are too big, he'll choose not to eat. He's choked (as in stopped breathing...i had to do the heimlich on him!) on a clementine. He refuses to eat certain foods. In short, eating has been an issue. We try not to make a big deal of how much or how little Nicolas eats, but that's harder than it may seem. Daddy is very patient and helps Nicolas to eat every meal. We're trying to find a balance between helping/encouraging enough and too much. The advice we've gotten from two different social workers and from some parenting books all seems to point to not putting too much pressure or paying too much attention to the little munchkin...but we're still left wondering how much pressure/attention is too much?
To add to the eating difficulties...we noticed that Nicolas has trouble chewing. He tends to mash his food between his tongue and his palate. We've consulted with a nutritionist, a social worker and we've done some online research and we've started to work with Nicolas to practise chewing, biting and swallowing. There's a lot of open mouth chewing going on at our house these days!
Anyway, tonight we decided that since it was looking like it was going to be a difficult dinner that we would just let Nicolas eat what he wanted and not put any pressure. He decided not to eat much. (I think he'll be having a big breakfast tomorrow morning!) It's so hard to know that they didn't eat much and that they're probably hungry.
After supper I was cooking soup and Gram-Gram was helping to put some veggies away and Nicolas decided that he wanted to try to eat broccoli (raw). Broccoli (cooked) is one of his very favourite veggies...he tasted the raw broccoli, but he didn't like the texture. Then he wanted to try a carrot. I should explain we've been trying to get Nicolas to eat carrots since we got home from the Philippines...we've read that it could take up to 20 presentations of a food before a little one will accept it readily. I'm sure with carrots...it's more than double that...however this week, he started eating cooked carrots! So when he wanted to try to eat the raw carrot, I thought sure...you're going to eat a raw carrot...well he did! He bit the carrot and then he happily crunched away! Then he said "yum! Delicious!" (Daddy taught him that one!) I almost started to cry...my son eating a carrot!
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| Nicolas' first raw carrot |
2 comments:
Oh, the clementine incident must have been SO scary. Good luck with the food issues, but if the carrot story is any indicator, it sounds like Nicholas is going to be making choices about food all in his good time :)
I've probably told you this before but food was a big issue with Nathaniel...we gave into feeding him babyfood for a little while otherwise he wouldn't eat anything. even now he's not a great eater and still has lots of difficulty eating meat (at 5 yrs old). Just so you know you're not alone.
Glad Nicholas is ok after the clementine incident.
Jess :-))))
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