Kay Toomey

Hayden's feeding therapist recently went to a conference by Kay Toomey, a pediatric phychologist.  She learned a lot of good information to share with us that we hope will help Hayden begin to accept food into his mouth.  One of the things we haven't spent enough time on is integrating Hayden's senses of touch and smell into his eating experience.  These are especially important because of his blindness.  We've been jumping from him letting us touch food to his mouth to trying to get it in his mouth.  Once again, we have changed how we feed Hayden.  I am excited about this technique.  It makes a lot of sense, especially with his blindness.

We are now using Kay Toomey's SOS (Sequential Oral Sensory) Approach to Feeding.  I was blown away to learn that there are only two process that take all of the body's organs...eating and procreation.  So now, we are working on the 32 step process of eating.  These steps are grouped into several categories-tolerate, interacts with, smells, touch, taste, and eating.  Some of the steps, especially in interacts with, Hayden is too young for, or would need to be able to see to complete.  So far, he has aced the tolerate step since he is okay with the food being on his high chair tray.  We are now starting our feeding sessions by placing a puree and a hard munchable (carrots, pretzels, licorice, beef jerky...) on his tray.  The point of the hard munchable is to get him to desensitize his tongue and move his gag reflex back, so there will be gagging.  While he is playing with the food, we try to spoon feed him some puree.  This helps him to learn about what is being put in his mouth.  The only real rule is not to clean food off of him unless it is in his eye.  Since he is constantly poking his right thumb in his right eye, his eye gets wiped off alot.  Feeding time for Hayden is getting messier and messier, but whatever it takes to help is okay with us.  We may just move his feeds to the bathtub : )  The one thing that I keep forgetting to do is to clean him up AFTER he is removed from his high chair.  That is really hard to remember when we've never done that before and we have Nicholas that we clean up before he gets out of his chair.  No more autopilot. 

We were also excited to find out that ChildServe will be offering a feeding clinic next year.  Can't wait to find out more about this!