Mark of Fridays: Struggles in Foodville

Lynne and Matt like to eat. They eat for survival. They eat because food is tasty. They come from long lines of eaters, some of whom (most notably on the Seago side) are world-renowned for the volume of food they can cook and eat in one sitting.

So it never occurred to them that Mark might not want to eat. Or that Mark - no matter how hard they tried to sneak food into his mouth when he wasn't looking - might cry and spit and gag and simply refuse to swallow.

The problems started last June, when the pediatrician told us to stop buying baby food. She said Mark could now eat whatever we were eating, just mashed up a little. The problem was that he simply refused to eat anything that didn't come out of a jar. He wouldn't eat table food that had been mashed or even pureed. He wouldn't eat - let alone touch - a Cheerio. He wouldn't put cut-up fruit in his mouth.

When we went back to the pediatrician in September, she advised us to buy a food processor, then puree our foods into liquid form. If Mark would accept that, she advised, we could then gradually make the food chunkier until he'd willingly ingest it. But he would not accept it. Not in any degree of chunkiness. We tried other foods we thought had an acceptable texture: yogurt, cottage cheese, mashed potatoes. We dropped chunks of solid food into his Gerber jars. Nothing worked.

We grew frustrated and a little desperate. In December, the pediatrician referred us to a speech therapist for an evaluation of Mark's palate and throat. She watched Mark eat (or rather, not eat) and freak out when he was presented with new foods. She concluded that Mark was a little bit behind other kids his age in the way he was (or more accurately, was not) able to move food around in his mouth. He also gagged too easily, because he didn't have much experience eating or working with solid food. Most fundamentally, though, he was afraid of food, probably as a result of having pyloric stenosis and doing lots of upchucking as an infant. All of this sounded very bad, but we were assured that the problems were fixable.

So Mark started to work with Miss Kelly the Speech Therapist in January. They pretty much play in food. They feed all of Mark's animals. They stack up food like blocks. They carry it around the room. They give it kisses. In a food therapy session, Mark's parents would think many times: are we really paying for this?

But then Mark started having discoveries. He tried banana. Then he learned to hold onto the banana - peel and all - and take big bites out of it. He ate pieces of an apple. Then we had the Great Cantaloupe Breakthrough. He was introduced to cantaloupe for the first time in the morning, had it on the tray at lunch, and by dinner he was eating it. Matt cried a little. In the days that followed, Mark willingly tried nectarine, Nilla Wafers, yogurt, and a chocolate chip cookie. The gap between when Mark sees a new food and when he's willing to put it in his mouth are narrowing. He's starting to be a true Food Explorer. Lynne and Matt couldn't be prouder.

We still have a long way to go, but it looks like Mark is becoming less afraid of his food. We think maybe part of the solution is that we let him be in control of the new foods now: he gets to hold them and decide when to put them in his mouth. We no longer try to sneak anything in there. And there's no question that the food therapy, where he has learned to play with food in a non-threatening way, has been a game-changer.

If things continue the way they're going, by summer Mark will surely be ready for a True Eater's big challenge: Grandpa Barry's Specialty Three Meat Summer Barbecue. Hooray!