Tongue Thrust

Jane is stuck in the tongue-thrust stage of development. It took me over a year but I finally figured it out.

You know that stage in an infant's development when you first start feeding them solid foods? They're about 4 months old and so tiny you have to strap them in tight in the high chair so they don't flop over and bang their head on the tray. You've just bought new baby feeding spoons and someone has a camera ready as you open the baby food jar. You make faces at your baby and they are delighted and laugh their toothless grin back at you. Right when their mouth is open you slip that first spoonful in and immediately, reflexively, they thrust it right back out with an emphatic tongue thrust as their expression turns from confusion to horror. We capture the moment on camera and put it into their baby books and laugh about it later.

That reflexive tongue thrust pushing the food back out of the mouth is so cute at 4 months old. It's positively gross at 4 years old.

Combine the instinctive tongue thrust with a sensory disorder that means she can't sense or feel anything on her face and every meal she has food, combined with drool, running down her chin. It's not a pretty sight.

It took me a long time to figure out what was going on. This week I was seated at a different angle from her at the table and I finally saw it. She puts a bite in, then does this thing with her tongue like an infant tasting, but not liking, a food for the first time. Of course she does like the food (she likes all food and lots of it) so she's also enthusiastically eating as fast as she can all at the same time.

It's like her sensory disorder means she doesn't really feel the food or know where it is so she has to do these exaggerated tongue and open-mouthed chewing motions in order to interact with the food. Because she wants to interact with it. She loves food more than anything in the world and, when not monitored, will literally put her face right in her bowl and lap the food up.

Basic table manners has led me to correct Jane, as I've done with all my kids, when they're gross at the table. As every other parent has to do, I've taught all of them how to hold a fork, when to use a napkin, not to slurp their drinks, and to close their mouths when chewing, etc. It's a process but the rules are clear and all my other kids, including Kate, who is only 3, have mastered them.

I have reminded Jane to close her mouth when chewing at least once a day--probably 2-3 times a day, actually--for the approximately 570 days she's lived here. That's 570, or more likely, 1,140 daily reminders. At this point all I have to do is catch her eye and then close my lips tight. Don't even have to say anything.

But she won't do it unless I'm at the table and I've directly reminded her. I wonder what habit I'd still be doing after receiving over 1,000 continual reminders?

And she's just fine eating with her mouth closed, by the way. No breathing issues; no choking. She can eat an entire meal properly without slurping and drooling if she wants to. But she doesn't want to.

She still wants to eat like a baby and talk like a baby. The baby talk is almost constant right now. It seems to go in waves. This month has been another peak. I correct the worst of it but let most of it go because it's exhausting to deal with every word she says. I try to only focus on vocabulary such as, "The pwants gwowded" instead of saying, "The plants grew." (That's a real example from last week. I sent her inside to think about her words. She came out 10 minutes later and said the second phrase without prompting from me--so she knew the verb was 'grew' and was capable of pronouncing 'plants' but she chose to use baby talk the first time even though she knows it annoys me and gets her sent away from me. Why?!?!?)

So...kids are supposed to regress back into stages for a reason, right? We've all heard about the formerly potty trained kid who regresses after a major family stressor like a new sibling coming into the home. Is she going back to this stage of oral development for a reason?

Or, is this a neurological thing? Is she "stuck" in the oral development stage due to her FAS?

The hardest thing about coping with an almost-5-yr-old who eats like an infant and talks like a 2 year old is that sometimes she acts like a 7 yr old. Yesterday while getting ready to go to the beach I sent her all over the house to fetch stuff we needed. She had to listen closely and follow multi-step directions.

For example, "Go look on the deck for the bag of sand toys we took to the beach last time. Count how many shovels are inside. If there aren't three shovels then go get more until we have three. Don't get big shovels, though. Find small ones that will fit in the bag along with three buckets."

She did that exact task perfectly, quickly, and without any follow up needed from me. She showed me what she'd put in the bag and explained why she'd swapped some items when choosing the sand toys. By the way, she spoke clearly and used mature vocabulary during that conversation.

It's well documented that kids with a traumatic past exhibit these multiple-stage behaviors. Knowing it's a real thing doesn't make it any less puzzling to watch, though.

The girl who can completely independently get up in the morning, use the bathroom, get dressed, come downstairs, get a bowl and a box of cereal from the cupboard, open the box and pour the cereal, correctly refasten the box flaps and put it away, and take her bowl to the table to eat should not then be mouthing those Cheerios like a wobbly infant tasting food for the first time.