We faced a similar situation with one of our daughters who is adopted. She was adopted at 6 1/2 months. At almost 3 years old she started chewing and spitting out her food but rarely swallowing. She still wasn't able to speak so we couldn't talk to her about why she was doing this. She wasn't gaining weight. One night I realized that she was stopping breathing while she slept for 14 seconds at a time! I took her to the doctor who looked down her throat and saw that her tonsils were huge. He said, "There is no way she can swallow anything!" She got her tonsils out and has been eating ever since. What if we would have punished her for not swallowing when she couldn't? What damage we would have done to our relationship! THANK YOU for your articles and books. You words have made all the difference!!!
Braden DuncanOctober 4, 2017
So helpful. Thanks!
Debra WoodsSeptember 26, 2017
Not only do we need to consider this with children in our lives, we, too, were once children and had ideas and interpretations of things that made sense then. We may have totally forgotten why, to this day, we have certain attitudes, responses, habits, that all started when we were little children trying to make sense of our world. We ourselves may do and feel inexplicable things that we struggle over or have no defense for when questioned by others. We can either accept that we are just that way for forgotten reasons, or, if it is interfering with our lives here and now, we can try to explore it and find a way to comfort that inner child and let go of it some which way or other.
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JuliOctober 5, 2017
We faced a similar situation with one of our daughters who is adopted. She was adopted at 6 1/2 months. At almost 3 years old she started chewing and spitting out her food but rarely swallowing. She still wasn't able to speak so we couldn't talk to her about why she was doing this. She wasn't gaining weight. One night I realized that she was stopping breathing while she slept for 14 seconds at a time! I took her to the doctor who looked down her throat and saw that her tonsils were huge. He said, "There is no way she can swallow anything!" She got her tonsils out and has been eating ever since. What if we would have punished her for not swallowing when she couldn't? What damage we would have done to our relationship! THANK YOU for your articles and books. You words have made all the difference!!!
Braden DuncanOctober 4, 2017
So helpful. Thanks!
Debra WoodsSeptember 26, 2017
Not only do we need to consider this with children in our lives, we, too, were once children and had ideas and interpretations of things that made sense then. We may have totally forgotten why, to this day, we have certain attitudes, responses, habits, that all started when we were little children trying to make sense of our world. We ourselves may do and feel inexplicable things that we struggle over or have no defense for when questioned by others. We can either accept that we are just that way for forgotten reasons, or, if it is interfering with our lives here and now, we can try to explore it and find a way to comfort that inner child and let go of it some which way or other.
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