Freedom and food

What a bizarre feeling: I have just walked away from both of my children, left them with another mother who is taking them home for some play with her kids. I have never done this before. I walked to the park this morning with 2 kids, and have just walked home from the park without them. Forgive me for labouring the point, but I can't quite grasp what I've done.

Every time I have a step forward like this, a return to the simple freedoms of life unencumbered by children, I am a bit kinder to myself. Who wouldn't be a basket case when the prospect of a few hours alone at home is such a bewildering, foreign experience?

So this is probably the high point of the day; not that it's been dreadful by any means, but P was up before 6 (never a good thing), and I took the time this morning to make pumpkin & sweet potato doughnuts from a recipe in Deceptively Delicious, as I happened across a very cheap doughnut maker on the weekend. To my delight, he ate one with enthusiasm, but stopped halfway through the second one, looking truly sick. I tried to press the point this time, because I am getting desperate. What happened? Why did you stop half-way through? Because, he said, he finished the sugar (on top) and then it didn't taste good. This often seems to happen with food; he starts with enthusiasm but something goes wrong, and I feel that his explanation is inadequate to say the least. I found Just Take a Bite very helpful in informing me about the complexity of the problem, as it makes clear that it could be sensory, motor (including not just the mouth but the posture of the whole body), taste, texture, oh who knows!

This incident also called to mind his early days at child care. After his diagnosis, it was felt to be important for him to be around other children as much as possible. These days, that seems to mean day care. I was not happy to deposit him so young, and was given a lot of leeway, I'm happy to say, in staying myself for quite a few months. But the staff were ever anxious to move things along, and were pushing for him to stay for lunch. I used to take him home at lunchtime, as the centre provided a hot meal -- fabulous for most kids, but one more problem for us. He was given plain noodles, and I watched from outside the room, as always with S strapped to my chest. Well, he ate the noodles with no problem, and they asked him if he'd like more. He responded positively. Looks like worried Mum was over-doing it! Then I watched him spoon noodles into his mouth and then open his mouth and let them drop down his front, again and again. Maybe he didn't know when he'd had enough? He might have been spooning them in, I think, because he was offered more, and thought that he had to have them. This is with hindsight; I doubt that he could identify a request, or an offer, from a direction, at that age.

So I've sent him off to play with an array of crackers and breakfast cereal. He's even going off white bread rolls. I find it extremely difficult to remain calm about P's diet.