Our "Picky Eater"

Within the past year we have started to notice that these are not the best words to describe Holden's eating habits.  It actually kind of annoys me when people refer to him this way and try to minimize what we have found out is an actual issue for him.  

We started feeding Holden baby food around 5 months.  He was extremely receptive and basically gobbled up what we fed him.  At around 6 months I introduced oatmeal.  We quickly learned that he was allergic after two extremely long bouts of nausea and one trip to the local urgent care.  

We started to notice that Holden was becoming more and more selective with his foods.  Once we tried to make the switch to table food it was apparent that a larger issue was in play.  Since about a year old he will basically only eat pureed peas, green beans, cheerios, and goldfish.  We have recently found that he will eat about one chicken nugget at a sitting, but it is an extremely long process of him putting it to his mouth, working it around with his fingers, and finally eating it.  It basically takes about thirty minutes.  

All of this has lead us to the conclusion that Holden has some issues with sensory processing, most notably, orally and food related.  Having friends who have experienced this, we wanted to make sure to intervene as soon as possible so that we could work on a solution.  This lead us to Food Therapy every Friday for an hour with a sweet therapist named Krista.  

She basically promotes playing with his food, (which completely aggravates Holden), and works on a very slow process of putting new foods to his mouth, kissing them, tasting them, etc...  The goal is to work up to actually digesting new foods on a regular basis.  It's a truly fascinating process, and I am impressed with the progress that he makes every day.  

Last week I took my little guy to a park before his appointment and had fun just letting him do his thing.  I am so proud of him, and who doesn't love that adorable grin?!?!

It's a long, slow, frustrating, and extremely MESSY process.  And I would be lying if I didn't say that we were worried, if just at a small level.  But what parent isn't worried about their kids???  I know that he is going to be fine, we are just helping him along in the process.