Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Sadie's feeding therapy

Sadie has been doing feeding therapy/speech therapy for a couple of months now. She's been working on becoming aware of her mouth and how to use it more efficiently. So, I use that Nuk brush with her in the mornings before breakfast, like you saw in the video of her eating. And when the therapist comes she does a lot of the same stuff, but with different tools; like a little vibrator, or a vibrating spoon, or a little sponge. Today for therapy, Nancy asked Sadie to choose if she wanted her to use the Nuk brush or the green sponge. I had no idea how Sadie would react to a choice like that, since she has a really hard time using her arms. She can't reach out and grab her choice. But you'll notice in the video, Sadie gets her right hand going, clearly choosing the sponge (maybe she could see it better, maybe she knew the difference, I don't know), I know this was a deliberate choice because Sadie almost always (90% of the time) tries to reach with her left hand. This made me start thinking about how we treat Sadie. I always say I think she's smarter than we give her credit for. She's trapped in this deficient body, but her mind is ahead of wat she can do physically. Yet, all day everythin she does, she eats, she looks at is dictated for her. I think it's time we start having her make some of her own choices, like in this video. Maybe she will shock us with the choices she makes and we will learn some things we never had any idea about! The video shows therapy with the sponge, then with the Nuk brush, then you'll see Sadie make her choice.

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