It’s been a long 18 months since we started Oral Motor Therapy with Megan the Magnificent , (a regular contributor to some of our videos...the link to the video also features my son.) and since we began, if I had to guess we’ve probably had 40+ visits.

She’s known him since he was first diagnosed at 19 months of age and began seeing him when she was with ECI (Early Childhood Intervention). She has a great relationship of trust built up with Mason and can get him to do things that Rashele and I still struggle to do daily. He really looks forward to her coming over every two weeks and asks for her constantly.

We’ve been trying to mix things up a bit with Mason’s diet, introducing fruits for the first time since ingesting baby food.

Just a few short weeks ago he’d not even touch a slice of watermelon. Through much patience and gentle prodding from Megan he kissed it. Then he licked it. Then he took a nibble and hid the piece of watermelon in his mouth before spitting it out. Then he took a bite and chewed it and then spit it out. Then he took a bite and now somewhat used to the texture and flavor swallowed it down.

He’s asked for watermelon every day since then.

We thought we switch things up again yet keep with the theme of round fruits ….sorry star fruit, sorry banana.

Grapes.

We had these on his plate the past couple of sessions, so he was used to seeing them and touching them. Friday was the day when we really pushed him to experiment with them and we repeated the steps that we followed with the watermelon weeks before.

Smashing the grapes in his fingers was entertaining for him. We managed to stretch that into kissing grapes, licking grapes, hiding grapes in his mouth, chewing once, chewing twice etc.

He finally started swallowing the grapes with very little prompting realizing they were good. He even forced me to eat one (I’m not a grape lover or fruits in general) but I figured I had better set a good example.

Like watermelons he’s been eating them every day since.