Food Therapy

Many of you know, some of you may not. Makena has a pretty significant speech delay. She is almost three years old and has about 30-40 words.  Most of those came only recently after many sessions of speech therapy.   We started speech therapy back in June of 2011 and did not make much progress until recently.  We still have a long way to go for her to catch up to her age level.

Cognitively, she understands everything.  She is smart very stubborn girl, who definitely gets it.   But talking for her is tough.   I'll talk more about her speech delay in the next post.  This post is about food.    One of the things we started a few months back was Food Therapy sessions.  

Makena is what I call an excessively picky kid.  This is not your normal kid pickiness.    When we started she had about 10 foods she would eat.   No meat, no rice, no beans, no cheese, no mixed foods, and on and on and on.  Wouldn't she just outgrow this? Can't we just make her eat? If a kid gets hungry enough, they'll eat.   I've heard all of these statements before and the answer is I cannot force her to eat. Makena will just not eat not matter how long the food is there, or how hungry she is.

There is more at play here than just being picky. And Food therapy is helping us to overcome that.

Dara, our occupational therapist has helped to to open doors for exploring new foods, making food fun, taking away the fear around it, and helping her speech.   Most of all, Makena loves it. She is excited to go each week and has a special connection with her therapist, Dara.   



When we started Makena wouldn't touch a many foods, and most definitely wouldn't have it on her plate.  The changes don't come overnight.  Its hard, slow work with basically playing with your food.  Taking away negative around it and showing her food is fun.  It goes against all basic table manners and is all about getting messy, playing, and having fun.    And after four months of sessions, its working.   We still have a long way to go, but its working.   I can see the change in her that she is now curious and interested about food.  It doesn't mean she'll reach over and just try something new.  But...she is curious, which is the first step.