One of the few constants about children is that they need to eat.  (It’s that, sleep and poop, honestly – the big three.)  And despite being behind verbally, he does let us know that he’s hungry, if not in the most elegantly phrased way, but by shouting ‘EAT!’ at us.

As I’ve talked about several times, the Monster is a very finicky eater.  We’ve not figured out if there’s a rhyme or reason to his choices for what he will or won’t eat, which leaves us frustrated more often than not.  It’s not uncommon, from what I’ve seen looking around the community, but it is a giant pain in the ass.  For more than a year now, his meals have been fairly fixed at home, with dinner being a slice or two of pizza.

So for a few months now, he’s been involved in a feeding therapy program every other week (it switches off with some behavioral therapy he’s getting).  This therapy’s introduced the whole concept of “food friends” to try to get him to eat more, and it’s had some modest success – he’s been drinking milk again, as well as eating macaroni, albeit one noodle at a time.

So last week, the wife made stuffed peppers.  Nothing too fancy – just ground chicken, onions, tomato, some cheese… because it’s delicious, for one, and because she and I really could stand ourselves to eat more healthy food.  After she’d prepared the peppers, and after the Monster had his usual slice of pizza, she gave him a bowl of the filling…

And to everyone’s shock, he ate it.  No cajoling, no on-going bribery.  One M&M to grease the skids with the first spoonful, and then he ate the rest of a healthy portion of the filling.

But honestly, these kinds of one-offs happen a lot.  So you can imagine our surprise that he did it again last night – this time eating the pepper and all for his grandmother, as well as a cup of milk apparently.

I’m still not calling it a breakthrough, since it’s only a slight broadening of the food he’ll eat, but this was the first time in a very long time that he’s been eating exactly what everyone else is eating at dinner… and hopefully it’s the start of a trend.