Crunch Crunch Crunch

AJ has been doing wonders in therapy lately...but we'll concentrate on speech/feeding therapy for this particular post. He had a GRRRRRRRRREAAAAAATTT session yesterday. Below are how the hour played out:

+ When we get into the room, he occassionally whines but calms when we put him on the yoga ball. This time, he walked over to the metal file cabinet (his latest obsession) and began banging on it. We didn't use the ball AT ALL. He calmed himself when getting frustrated, where a month ago he would have pitched a fit, closed his eyes, hyper-extended backward and shut us out.

+ After beating up the cabinet, he noticed the plastic bowl/package of fruit loops cereal on the toddler table and made a bee-line for that. We presented his sippy cup to him and he got himself from standing at the table to kneel on the floor. Since we have been offering him water throughout the day, he's been sitting on our living room floor and drinking his cup. I wanted to make sure his SLP saw his positioning and ok'ed it for us to continue. She was ecstatic about his positioning! He's got so much more trunk support and knows to tip his had back just a smidge to get more out of the cup. He's drinking just like we drink. I'm sorry, repeat that?!!!

+ While drinking, he occassionally checked on his package of fruit loops that he had brought down from the table with him. He handed the package to his SLP and she opened it. He took out a "purple" fruit loop, put it in his mouth and....CRUNCH. He fully bit down into the fruit loop!!! This is the first time he's really bit into anything for his SLP. He continued munching on the fruit loops and had at least 2 more bites during the session.

+ He kept going back to the fruit loops once he was in his high chair. He did become upset when his yogurt was all gone, but he calmed when his SLP gave him a chewy chocolate chip granola bar. She broke it into chunks and he went after it. He has NEVER entertained the idea of a granola bar before, EVER. They usually end up as dog treats on the floor when we attempt them at home :) As part of his lunch here at home today, he ate two granola bars!

+ He continues to use his pointer finger to push pieces of food to the sides of his mouth. This is both good and bad. It is great that he is putting food in the pockets of his mouth and manipulating it around, but as a result he is not using his tongue to do this, like you and I do. AJ takes the easy road. So, we need to continue lateral tongue movement therapy to help strengthen his tongue and cheek muscles.

+ His SLP held AJ while I got my coat on. When I held out my arms for him to come back to me, he glanced at me and turned his head away from me. Humph. I guess I know where I stand. This is actually a good thing. It shows that he knows who his SLP is and has a bond with her.

+ He's still got a bit of a sucking pattern even though we are using a sippy cup that has no "stopper". He has a great lip seal while he drinking, he has leakage when he stops and breaks that seal. We need to continue giving him jaw support while drinking (this is quite a challenge-in case you were wondering). He does have better control when we do his cheek stretches and lip muscle massage before drinking occurs. It seems to wake up his muscles.

All in all, it was a fantastic session! Yeah for progress!!!!