The last few days have been repetitive, frustrating and demanding. Tougher than I ever could have imagined, and we haven’t even really started. As ever, being Michael’s mum, I’ve had to jump head first in to scary, unknown territory.
The hardest part of this journey is learning to understand and live by the technique Clarissa is teaching us. Our challenge is to use his environment to allow him to combat his defensiveness around food, and my attention is the most powerful tool we have, to succeed in doing this. My role is patience and consistency and that’s why the last few days have been tough going.
It’s a barrage of screams, shouts, shrieks (but they’re drowned out by the headphones I’m instructed to wear) and a little left hand, constantly shoving my right hand away (before I even get close). Of course, this isn’t behaviour we want, we need Michael to learn to feed of his own accord, so my job is to turn away and ignore this pattern, for as long as it takes.
This is all about Michael learning to do this for himself, standing on his own two feet. He can eat. We just need to teach him how.
