Hangry

This little infographic shows the typical process we experience when we’re hungry:

And this little infographic shows how hunger turns to hanger and how easily the state of hungriness can lead to escalation in our house (and I suspect we’re not alone):

I love hangryness, its a real joy.

I’ve previously written about Interoception  and Adopted Children & Eating Issues and Demand Avoidance if you’d like more info than the little bits here that you will no doubt need to squint at (it does look pretty though).

I’m assuming that time and working on interoception are going to help with this. I also need to remember to leave Little Bear a tray of healthy snacks outside of his bedroom door for when he wakes up at the crack of sparrows and none of us are ready to leap out of bed and make him some breakfast. On the occasions when I’ve remembered, it seems to have worked well in terms of pre-empting some of the issues above. Anticipating hunger and regular snacking and routine mealtimes do seem to keep things as calm and even as possible (though don’t actually take away the underlying issues). If anybody else has any clever tricks, I’d love to hear them.

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Unwanted Changes

Things have been going really well for a few weeks here. That way where you begin to think you might have cracked it and that having no specific difficulties is the new normal way of life. I wasn’t getting complacent about it; if anything it was making me feel a bit uncomfortable and suspicious, not because I want to have difficulties but because it seemed a bit too good to be true. About a day after having that thought, some problems predictably began to arise. I don’t think it is anything major at this stage, hopefully not, but we are at the point of thinking Little Bear’s behaviour might be escalating and we are keeping a close eye on what’s going on.

There are two issues, both school based. At the start of the school year we had some School Worries and then various things happened to resolve them (see Alleviating School Worries). Since then there have been niggles but generally an upward trajectory with Little Bear and Mrs C, his TA, getting to know one another better. Over the past two months or so I would say they have got into their groove. Little Bear feels safe with Mrs. C; he listens to her and accepts her authority. Mrs. C has come to understand Little Bear and what he needs and how to help him. Consequently Little Bear’s behaviour has been very settled and he has made fabulous progress. We have been very pleased with how everything has been going.

Unfortunately, Mrs. C is now experiencing some personal issues; a member of her family is very poorly and understandably she needs to take time out to care for them. She is still coming in most days but sometimes only helping Little Bear for an hour before leaving. Obviously I know it can’t be helped and I really feel for her, having been through it all last year with Supergran, but at the same time, with my parent hat on, I’m a bit gutted. Consistency is so important for children who struggle with attachment and trauma. It has taken a long time for this relationship to be properly established and just as things have settled seems an unlucky time for disruption to happen. Mrs. C is Little Bear’s safety net at school now. He knows she is there to help him and without her I suspect he is a little lost.

We are lucky in that Little Bear has made good progress and can now cope with a bit less support and still get some work done, where he couldn’t have managed to earlier in the term and would have become very disruptive. However, we are all too aware that things can escalate quickly when much needed support is taken away. We are keeping an extra close eye on how Little Bear is and checking in with his teacher more frequently.

The school are not currently covering Mrs C’s time when she isn’t there as it likely to be a short term situation but we are concerned that they may need to if Little Bear shows us he isn’t coping.

When I picked Little Bear up yesterday he appeared dyregulated and really struggled to listen on the way home. He did daft things like hide in someone else’s front garden and tried to put a Hula Hoop in his ear that he would not normally do these days. Could this deterioration in behaviour be a sign he isn’t coping quite so well as we thought?

Well, it could, but equally it could be due to the other school issue that we are also concerned about. For some reason that I can’t fathom, the school have changed the entire dinner menu. They have changed it on the premise of it becoming healthier. In practise, they have removed all carbohydrates. Cauliflower rice or celeriac mash anyone?

I’m all for healthy eating and children having their vegetables, of course I am, but I do think this menu has gone about three steps too far. Little Bear loved buying some toast at break time and I always encouraged it because he gets very hungry and I felt it was regulating for him. I am sure there is some evidence about children who have experienced trauma needing more fuel because they expend so much energy trying to stay within their window of tolerance (if anyone knows what I’m on about please point me in the right direction). I also think Little Bear has to work harder due to his Developmental Language Disorder, another reason to keep his energy levels up.

Anyway, needless to say he can’t buy toast anymore because bread is the food of the devil or some such nonsense.

The lunchtime menu now has one choice only so I guess you eat it or you don’t. Previously there were always two choices and personally I feel there still should be – aren’t children allowed to have preferences? My feeling about the food now is that it would probably be delicious for me, a grown up with developed taste buds, who is conscious of my waistline but either I have failed as a parent or my children are lacking in some way as they are very unlikely to eat it. I don’t know many children who would eat harissa lamb or Greek salad or greek yoghurt and berries for every pudding, to be honest. Apparently they have done it on purpose to get the children tasting more things.

The thing is I feel as though they have misunderstood the function of a school lunch. In my eyes yes, it should be as healthy and fresh as possible, but it should be appealing to most children because the most important thing is that they eat it, fill their tummies and are able to approach the afternoon well-regulated and able to concentrate. I think that pushing boundaries and trying things can happen at home or during special events at school but the last thing I want is for Little Bear to push his posh nosh round his plate, not eat any of it and spend the afternoon swinging from the lampshades. Being well-fed is crucial for Little Bear’s behaviour regulation. If he is hungry he will not be able to control himself and he certainly won’t be able to learn.

I feel as though the school has inadvertently created a very exclusive menu which will inevitably exclude many children. There has been no consideration for children who may have restricted diets due to underlying conditions such as Autism or children who have had limited life experiences. Before Little Bear came to us, he didn’t eat any vegetables and perhaps only one or two fruits. The fact that he will happily eat a range now feels like a success to me; I don’t feel the need to push him beyond his comfort zone and I don’t appreciate the inference that my child (or my parenting) is somehow lacking by him not wanting to eat anything on the exclusive school menu. I feel as though it has somehow become an elitist basis on which to separate the parents – those who have succeeded in getting their children to eat like grown-ups and those who haven’t. Bring back jacket potatoes and roast dinners I say, are they really that detrimental to our children’s health?

As an aside, the children are no longer allowed to bring a cake in when it’s their birthday either which I find very sad. I know we are meant to be concerned about childhood obesity but neither of my boys sits still and Little Bear has a six pack to be jealous of. I think he can eat a slice of cake now and again without any of us getting too concerned.

Anyway, menu-related rant aside, I am mainly concerned about Little Bear’s wellbeing and him pushing his friends about and trying to shove crisps into his ears could well be due to hangry-ness. Little Bear not eating his lunch could well be a disaster and could easily lead to an escalation in his behaviour. I am trying to keep a close check on whether he is eating at school, though it is proving difficult as, according to him, yesterday’s lunch was soup and porridge which even by the new menu’s standard seems unlikely.

I know change is unavoidable but on this occasion I really wish they’d left things well alone. For our children, those who have been through enough already, small things can be big things and medium-sized things like not having your trusted adult or being expected to survive a day without carbs can be enough to upset their wagons completely. Here’s hoping this is just a small bump in the road and not the next dip on the rollercoaster.

Dinner Winner

I have decided while I Am Writing to post some shorter blog posts for a few weeks about some products we have bought recently.

This week’s product is the Dinner Winner plate made by Fred.

 

 Meal times have always been a bit tricky here, ever since we first met Little Bear. I suspect his development was disrupted around the weaning stage and when he first arrived I probably should have gone back to basics with introducing solids and different textures. He was over three at that point though and I was pretty distracted by many a pressing behaviour challenge. I did do purees for him and I have fed him on and off since.

Little Bear is six now and at mealtimes, especially tea time when he’s tired, he tends to mess with anything and everything but doesn’t focus his energy on eating. He will clamber over the bench, fiddle with his cutlery etc. but not touch his food. It has always driven us a bit mad but we have tried to be patient and to feed him if that’s what he needs.

I wasn’t looking for another solution but a few weeks ago I was flicking through a therapy magazine and came across these Dinner Winner plates. I immediately felt it would be worth a try because it is essentially a visual support for eating your meal. It evidently struck a chord with the speech therapist in me: it’s such a clever and practical idea and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen one before. We found you could buy them on Amazon and one was with us the next day.

There are lots of designs but I chose the superhero one as I felt Little Bear would like that one and it was a bit more grown up.

On the first day, the plate worked like a miracle. Little Bear LOVED it, especially the fact that there is a compartment with a lid for you to open at the end of your meal and hopefully find a treat. I explained to him that you start at the beginning and eat one compartment at a time. There was a risk Little Bear wouldn’t care about the order but he took that aspect very seriously and finished his dinner in record time. I don’t want him to rush but tea it is usually a very lengthy affair so this was a clear improvement.

The second day was similarly wonderful. After that, the novelty wore off a bit. However, I can honestly say that though the plate hasn’t delivered a miracle it has certainly improved things significantly. I think Little Bear is much less prompt-dependent now. Previously I had to prompt every mouthful or load his fork for him but now he does often feed himself the whole meal, without prompts, just with a bit of dithering between compartments. I now wonder whether seeing a whole plate of food was overwhelming for Little Bear and he was having difficulty breaking the task of eating into parts. The plate has done that for him and one compartment at a time is not overwhelming. Also, when one has gone, counting the remaining compartments gives a natural countdown to being finished which seems to help Little Bear with seeing an end to the task. Sometimes we are winning at dinner.

I don’t think the treat at the end would be appropriate for all children, depending on their issues with eating but it does work for Little Bear. One chocolate button seems to be motivation enough.

On a practical level the plate requires a bit more preparation from me. I tend to serve his food onto a normal plate to check I’m giving him the right quantity and then I need to chop it up and divide it between the compartments. It is a bit more faffy but I feel as though it is worth it. The first meal he had on it was baked potato which obviously had to be modified a bit more than usual!

Overall I think it’s a fabulous piece of design and a really clever use of visual support. I would definitely recommend it and this is not one of those blog posts someone has paid me to write!

As an added bonus, Little Bear practises his reading on the words written in the compartments. It’s a big thumbs up from me and my little dude.