Happiness between bribery and discrete trial...

In general, ABA has not been the best treatment for Grant. I do give the therapy credit for the early days in bringing him out when he was completely lost in his own world. At that time, he did not respond to us, and the repeated trials eventually got him to pay attention and look around. However, as time went on, he did not respond well at all to discrete trials; he hated it. If anything, discrete trial became its own "aversive" to his behaviors :)

What does that have to do with today and our path towards chelation? Well, let's see... the boy who we were convinced would starve before he would eat foods outside of his tiny menu of acceptable items is now on a diet which pretty much bans all of the food he used to eat.

No dairy (cheese, milk, ice cream, the list goes on forever.
No corn.
No soy.
No oats.
As little sugar as possible.
No pears
No peanuts

And, we are now up to 5 supplements - Drainage complex, nistatin, zin, vitamin b6, and dmg... with 6 more to add over the next 10 days - enzymes, vitamin c, cod liver oil, calcium, magnesium, and alpha ketoglutaric acid. All this for a kid who would fight any kind of medicine in the past.

After a week or so of struggling to find something, anything he would eat, we are getting somewhere. He ate some steamed carrots and fried chicken. He is also taking all of his supplements. How? Why? Believe it or not, our arch-enemies the Teletubbies have something to do with this. Grant is obsessed with the tubbies; when they are on TV, he loses control. The rewinding goes out of control (not that it ever is in control), the arms and legs go wild, the squealing, everything we are trying to teach him to control goes out of control. So, we do not let him watch this show. We do however USE the tubbies in other ways - we use them to communicate with Grant, to draw with Grant, to write his letters, and on and on.

But, to eat this food and take these supplements, we've had to break down a bit and use the tubbies as a last resort; he gets to watch them if he eats the food and takes the pills. AND HE DOES! Amazing, simply amazing. Watching him eat a carrot or take a capsule is like waking up and suddenly remembering you are on vacation for a month. Elation and unbelievable, all at the same time.

thx Teletubbies! Ouch, that really hurt to say that...