Occupational Therapy Journal

Josie has been going to an Occupational Therapist in Logan; Debbie (my genius sister Emilee told me to call her by her name instead of the Dr. so that Josie will think we are going to visit a friend and not associate it with going to the Dr). The point of this is that Debbie will help Josie deal with textured foods and open her mind to a wider variety of eating so she doesn't waste away and gets the required nutrients to be healthy. On our first visit she tested Josie's muscles and found that she doesn't have the muscle mass in her back and across her shoulders that she will need to handle an entire day of school. They said this is something that goes unnoticed a lot of times because playing at home doesn't require sitting in a desk all day like school does. When this goes unnoticed kids end up with behavior problems; they can't sit all day and they along with parents and teachers don't understand what is actually causing the behavior. She works with Josie on strengthening these muscles and gave us a lot of ideas on how to work on them at home. The second half of our visit Debbie and Josie play with food and textures.  Examples... paint with shaving cream -make worms out of string cheese -scrambled egg bumblebees with ketchup wings -mix yogurt & food coloring etc.
Debbie believes that getting Josie excited about eating and playing and touching what she is going to eat will slowly change Josie's mind from food being intimidating to being enjoyable. Again the idea here is that eventually she will be more open minded and eat and healthy variety of food. Also if I make her try a new food she automatically throws up- so this way we play with it, it becomes her idea, she tries it and the second time the food is served to her I can say you tired it before and didn't throw up so I want you to at least try it again. This way she doesn't throw up and sometimes she enjoys the food and eats it but sometimes she only eats and one required bite. We are making progress and I can tell that she is already improving. The biggest change I can see is if she sees other people (especially kids) eating something she used to automatically turn her nose up but now she is curious and asks about it. She thinks about who is eating it and how they are acting, sometimes she asks to try it sometimes she doesn't but at least she is thinking about it.  It's hard with three kids to sit down and play with food every meal, it takes a lot of time. And sometimes it's hard to explain when we play with food and when we don't especially to Trig. I may be helping Josie but I'm pretty sure I'm just teaching Trig bad habits.