One for One, Surprise Eggs, Mater, and No More Tonsils

Karma is a bleep. Most anyone who knows me knows that I am a picky eater to say the least. It is not that I want to be a picky eater, its more there just don't appear to be all that many foods that I like. I wish I was an epicurean. I wish I liked salad. But, I don't. I've never been able to narrow it down why I don't like many foods. With some things it is taste. With other things, such as beans, its definitely texture. In that regard, I have memories over the years of what it felt like to have the rubbery feel against my teeth when I tried raw octopus in Venice. I also have memories of sitting outside in the rain being told to finish my dinner when my parents had enough of my not eating and chucking the food off the porch.  Truth be told, I was a handful for my parents when it came to eating.

That brings me back to karma. Charlie has definitely inherited my picky eating style. Picky eating is not uncommon with autistic children so I guess we shouldn't be surprised given Charlie apparently has a double whammy between my genes and autism.

Charlie started out really well with eating.  He would pretty much eat anything we put in front of him until he was about 16 months old. We have pictures of Charlie covered in Spaghetti and memories of Charlie eating Caroline's country style steak.

At about 16 months all of that stopped and he refused to eat much of anything. As he entered this phase, Charlie took to putting foods up to the spot between his mouth and nose to decide whether or not he would eat them. It sort of looked like he was smelling the foods to determine if he would eat them or not.  But, it wasn't that. He was doing something else and we still haven't been able to get him to tell us what he was doing. 

For the past 2 or 3 years, Charlie has had a lot of meals that have included his staples of Potato Chips, Popcorn, Ritz crackers, Goldfish, Cheese Quesadilla's and Tortilla Chips (his favorite being "Pepe's Chips" from Rio Grande, Grilled Cheese, "Muffins in a Bag," Waffles, Pancakes, French Fries, and Cupcakes. We have done our best to intersperse these items among meals as best we could to make meals varied. In that light, we referred to round hash browns as "Round French Fries" and square hash browns as "Big Square French Fries" to broaden Charlie's choices a little more.  Unfortunately, that was all that was working for us.

Fortunately, over the last six months or so we have seen progress in Charlie's eating habits. Some of that can be attributed to Charlie getting his tonsils taken out in November. Luckily for us, Charlie's speech therapist noticed this Fall that Charlie had huge tonsils. We had never really just looked in his mouth, but after being told about them, it was undeniable that he had abnormally large tonsils. In fact, his tonsils were so large there was little room between them for the food to go down. We now think that those tonsils certainly had something to do with Charlie's pickiness and we have seen an expansion in what he will eat since then. One thing that is for certain is that the removal of Charlie's tonsils put a complete end to what was a rather large drooling problem.

But, the tonsils certainly were not the only other issue when it came to his eating.  Taste and texture certainly also came into play.  We have seen that a lot of the initial growth in Charlie's eating habits really started with school. Charlie started eating a lot more at school for his teachers than we could get him to eat at home. Charlie would eat green beans, strawberries, carrots, and grapes at school and not come anywhere close to touching them for us at home. 

Finally, over the last two months something has clicked and we are having success with these items, and others, at home. We attribute a lot of that growth and success through the use of rewards paired with eating so I thought I would share them as the point of the blog. The most successful tactic seems to be the "one for one" strategy where Charlie gets 1 bite of popcorn or some other preferred food whenever he will eat one bite of some food he'd rather not eat. The other tactics we have had a lot of success with include letting Charlie watch his IPAD while he eats and having an overall reward if he makes a happy plate. There is a video on Netflix of Mater from Cars that Charlie must have watched 50 or so times, but sure enough he eats when he watches that. If its not Mater, then Charlie likes watching the Surprise Egg videos on Youtube for some reason. The only thing these videos include is a person opening an easter egg to see what is inside, but it for some reason really excites Charlie and his sister. In fact, we have taken advantage of that fact and now allow for a "Surprise Egg" as a reward when Charlie makes a happy plate (meaning he eats everything on his plate). Just this morning the first thing Charlie said to me when he woke up was "I got a Surprise Egg for eating all of my dinner" [which included ham, green beans and grapes].

These tactics have been a breath of fresh air for us. Indeed, just last month Caroline, Charlie, Keller, and I all sat down and had a dinner where the four of us ate the exact same things (pork chops, corn, and something else I forget) for the first time. It was amazing and was the most exciting and relaxing dinner we have had as a family. So Charlie may still be picky, but it appears he's on his way to eating more than I do and that is something good!