Raising Herself

One of our long-term goals for Lily is to get her to the point where she's feeding herself. Complicating this issue is how little she is.  She's very underweight, and so one of the biggest hurdles Lily's self-feeding has to overcome is us and our unwillingness to push her toward self reliance.  Every calorie counts, and we've always felt that we couldn't afford to let her frustrations at mealtimes  sabotage her getting fed.  So how can Lily ever learn to feed herself, if we're constantly feeding her?  We know it's an issue, it just takes a back seat to what we consider a larger issue, which is getting her fed.  We'll get there.

This is all preamble to my morning with her yesterday.  I was feeding her cereal, Lucky Charms to be exact, and although Lily finds them to be just as magically delicious as the next kid, I think she gets tired of the same taste over and over again, and shuts down after a dozen or so bites.  Lily shutting down the next bite essentially amounts to 1)  ducking her head, 2)  closing her mouth, and 3)  a rattlesnake-quick karate chop of the spoon as it scribes its determined arc toward her mouth, which in turn pisses me off because I get milk and marshmallows all over myself and the floor and the stress level starts to ratchet up as I deflect/distract/redirect in an effort to that all-important calorie-count up to something I think is "reasonable" for a growing girl her size.

We've been a little bit spoiled lately, because Lily's eating has been really good.  She's sat nicely and accepted our efforts to feed her with utensils or by hand, and has strung together several months of relatively low stress mealtimes (with some exceptions, of course).

It's funny how many of the successful bargaining/redirecting strategies we forget when we have a long string of victories/successes, because no matter what I tried, Lily was not having that damned "next" spoonful of Lucky Charms.  She was pretty "adamant".  I really wanted to avoid a meltdown, and I'd decided I was going to back off and give her some time and space when she said to me, "Pause it."

This perplexed me.  "Pause it?  Pause what, Lily?"  We were watching something.  I don't remember what, Backyardigans or a DVD of her big sister's dance recital...something she enjoys.  

"Pause the TV," she replied.

I stopped what I was doing and looked at her, and then looked at the remote sitting next to me at the table.  

"Alright," I said.  I pointed the remote at the television and paused it before replacing it on the table. 

"First you eat, then I unpause the TV," she recited to me.

I smirked a little at that, and repeated it back to her.  I brought the spoon again to her lips.  This time she opened her mouth.

"NOW you get TV," she said.

I laughed outloud, repeated her statement back to her, and unpaused the television.  It reminded me of the scene from The Simpson's where Homer ordered Bart to go to his room and spank himself because he was too lazy to do it himself.  

She remembers.  God, I'm glad this kid is around to raise herself.

When she's not disciplining herself, she steals my phone and takes selfies

Filling in Valleys

We're having issues with Lily's eating again still. There was a brief time maybe two months ago, maybe three, that her eating actually seemed to be improving straight across the board. People at school and daycare were having some success getting Lily to eat.  We were having some success.  Now nobody seems to be having success.

Go Stillers!

My inability to get my daughter to eat really bums me out.  I think what makes her eating the "Perfect Bummer Storm" for me is that 1) she's already undersized, and 2) when she's hungry she's more prone to meltdowns/behaviors.  When she eats, I think my wife would agree, we can almost make our peace with just about anything else going on in her world.  When the bites go in and don't come back out it's like a weight is lifted off our shoulders (only to gradually crush us again by next meal time).

The last week or so she's been allowing just about anything to go in her mouth. . . then right back out again.  Oh, she chews it a few times; long enough for me to reach for the next bite, then plech. . . down the front of her shirt.

Our morning routine becomes even more problematic because we can't be as patient with her as we can during other meal times when we don't have places to be or things to do, because we want her to get a good night's sleep, but doing that means we have an hour to get her up, dressed, fed, and ready so that I can drop her and her big sister off at the daycare.

And lately our morning routine has gotten sloppier.  We put off feeding her until the last minute because it's such a frustrating process.  And that just makes compounds the problem because we know it's got to happen, and when you add the stress of needing to get out the door in a set, diminishing timeframe to an already stressful task, we're left with acceptance of failure, temper tantrums (ours, not hers), or being late to work daily.

Lily also spits.  It's her, "I'm pissed at you and I know you hate this, so I'm doing it" response to being forced to do something she doesn't want to do.  So. . . this morning, dressed in my work attire, feeding Lily until the last minute we need to get out the door, she spit a mouthful of peaches all over my shirt.  Fan.  Fucking.  Tastic!!

happier (dinner) times. . . 

I was good this morning.  Ever since her 'wrap' Psychologist told us to "put it on extinction" . . . ie. . . ignore it away, my patience level with being spit on has gotten better.  I don't know why, but knowing that ignoring the behavior is what I'm supposed to do makes it somehow easier.  That said, I was bummed and vented to my wife.  And I'm essentially just venting now.

My wife leaves early for work on Wednesdays so she can leave work to come home early in the evening and take Emma to dance.  I called her after the drop off and vented and she gave me the advice I always give her when she's in her low spots.  "She'll come back around.  She always does.  We just have to chop off the peaks and fill in the valleys and remember."

That's our little mini mantra.  We seem to overreact both ways.  We celebrate a little TOO boisterously and let ourselves get gobsmacked to heartbrokenness by subsequent setbacks.  Peaks and valleys. . . chop off the peaks, fill in the valleys, and you're left with something that approaches your new "normal".

The bright side is that, though Lily was upset at having to eat (until I set her free anyway), when I asked her if she was sad she said, "I no sad.  I'm mad!  I'm frustrated!"  We try to reinforce the labeling of those emotions with her and I think she's understanding the differences between happy/sad/mad and using them appropriately.  Because. . . she was not sad.  She was mad.

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.