Back to School ~ Back to Reality

Alex & Michael kicking off their 1st day of 1st grade while Mom sets off to work at the high school at the next town over

There hasn't been much time to stop and process this week as we have just kicked off another school year. The twins started 1st grade, in separate classes. This has me both excited and nervous. Excited because they can concentrate on being their own person and forming an identity outside of their brother. The nervousness though comes into play thinking about how they aren't together to watch out for one another if something happens during the day.

With every new school year, comes the most dreaded task, talking to my son's teacher about his eating habits. There is always a sense of worry that it will be perceived as bad parenting instead of a legitimate obstacle he has to work to overcome. Last year at least they were in the same class so I was less concerned about his eating in the lunchroom with Michael by his side. While I did let his teacher know last year before school even started, I still packed him half a sandwich and other things I knew he wasn't going to eat. Partly because I thought maybe, just maybe, the new environment and social pressures would be enough to get him to try something new. But honestly, it was mostly that I feared someone seeing his lunch bag full of saltine crackers, a Hershey bar and water, especially alongside Michael's PB&J, fruit snacks, apple slices and a juice box, might see it as a form of abuse like we were punishing Alex by starving him. A few weeks into the school year, his teacher reached out to me and said to only pack what he was comfortable eating. There was no need to waste food or create a stressful situation for him when the school day is stressful enough already.

So, for Kindergarten... someone please give that teacher a gold star! She truly understood and empathized with our situation. Beginning 1st grade, my apprehension was lightened considerably thanks to the awesomeness of his Kindy teacher. But with a new person to approach and the same eating habits... there will always be a fear of non-acceptance.

I reached out to introduce myself on the 2nd day of school and emailed her a bit of his health history. I felt it was incredibly important considering how recent his last hospital stay was. Once again, we were greeted with how much of a pleasure he is to have in class and that she'd let the lunch staff know to look out for him. No judgment. No push to send him with anything he can't handle. Just acceptance with a side of helpfulness. This time of year also means back to work for me. I work at the high school for our neighboring town in a contained emotional disability classroom. The reason I bring this up, asides for maybe giving myself even a shred of credibility to speak on special needs matters such as this, is because we had a lesson this past week during our social skills class about the difference between having a fixed and a growth mindset. It hit me like a ton of bricks that we have been living in such a rigid state when it comes to Alex that we weren't allowing ourselves to see any kind of progress this whole time. Without even trying, we were setting up barriers.

What we've been saying: "There's no way Alex will eat that."

What we need to be saying: "That might be something he can work on smelling and tasting."

Saying there's no way he will eat, I'm immediately putting up that road block for him, limiting his opportunity and motivation to even try.

We had meet the teacher this past Thursday at the boys' school and it was really eye opening to see the teacher's commenting on the boys' behavior. Unrelated to food, they are always more reserved around any one not in our immediate family. They often refuse to speak, hide behind us and give off a deer in headlights look to anyone else around. This was also how they were behaving at meet the teacher night. (Well, all except when we stopped in to visit their Kindergarten teacher.) Everyone though was commenting on how they are never that quiet in school.

Wait.... what? This was only day 3 of classes so I honestly couldn't believe this could be true, not yet at least. If I could be wrong about their shyness level - what else am I wrong about as a parent? Probably a lot, I know - but when it comes to knowing my kids likes, dislikes, moods and behaviors, surely they are mixing them up with someone else. Right?

So that right there is another example where my fixed mindset could be inhibiting his personal growth. It honestly made me stop and think - do I baby him too much? Have I become a crutch for him to lean on instead of a foothold to climb towards his goals? What is it going to take for me to see his potential so he can no longer be limited by his obstacles?

I have to first lead by example. I know this. I've said this before. He has to know that others believe in him so he can believe in himself. But how do you show a six year old who has so many "can't" mindsets that they can? Going back to the lesson we gave our high schoolers, it's about building confidence. The steps we gave them were as follows:

1. Visualize the end goal

2. Believe you have ability to approve

3. Practice failure

My plan going forward to work with Alex is to start by helping him visualize what he wants to achieve. Our end goal is for him to eat a healthy selection of foods. We are lucky in the fact that he has eaten some of these foods in the past. I even have photos of him doing it. (Yeah, just call me the Mamarazzi ~ I have pictures of practically EVERYTHING!) So our homework - make a collage of any and all eating pictures I can find of him throughout the years. This collage will show the end goal plus be reinforcement that he has done it before to show he can do it again. I think that kinda kills two birds with one stone checking off both beginning steps. As far as practicing failure and building that resiliency - it's what we have already started under the guidance of his psychiatrist. For him, he needs to experience new tastes and textures. Our goal is to have him sink his teeth into one new food a night. Whatever we are eating for dinner, he can bite into and immediately spit it out if he wants. We have modified the direction at least here at the beginning and started off slow with foods he used to like. His 1st attempt was a blueberry nutrigrain bar. It didn't end with it being more than held or smelled and nearly resulted in losing the whole sleeve of saltine crackers he had just eaten for dinner. The 2nd attempt went a bit easier but still resulted with him gagging and spitting out the graham cracker we had him try. Both of these snack foods were ones that he ate daily before his 1st hospitalization. Another night we did expand it to something he's never tried before. Since one of his safe foods are saltine crackers, we talked about how plain potato chips are something that are similar in texture and salty like a cracker. He agreed to give it a try and picked the safest looking one out of the bag. I think he got as far as licking it before the smell became too much. The advantage of practicing failure is that each new attempt gets a little easier which takes the anxiety out of the equation little by little. (Here's the video we showed our kids to demonstrate the lesson)

Everything starts with a single step... whether it's walking into school to start that new year of education or it's taking on a challenge where your confidence is lacking. You will never reach that end goal if you don't take the steps you need to in order to reach it. One day at a time. One meal at a time. One moment at a time. It's all we can do. What might be a step forward today could result in two steps backwards tomorrow. We have to face challenges with resiliency and teach our kids it's okay to fail. Too often we are quick to react out of frustration for our situations instead of taking a breath and moving on.