when's dinner?

Would you like to come to dinner? All seven of you?

It's a simple question. A simple question followed by hours of food preparation, house cleaning, cooking and entertaining, but a simple question nonetheless. For our family, it's a simple question that can make you run for the Pepcid or Tums. Or a bottle of alcohol.

From the day we took the twins on our first outing as a soon-to-be family, eating has been problematic. That day began somewhat normal. Michael and I stopped at a local grocery, I bought pretzels (because what toddler doesn't eat pretzels?) and we apprehensively took responsibility for two little boys. The apprehension came from having met them the day before and realizing what a mountain of struggle we were up against. They could hardly walk... and they were two years old. There was zero understanding of basic needs like thirst and hunger. They could say a handful of words, actually it was more like they parroted what they'd heard, and it was obvious there was no comprehension of what these few words even meant.

But they smiled. And they were happy. These two little boys would be joining our family and we needed to get busy on making a connection with them. 

We chose to have lunch in our favorite Alaskan town of Talkeetna, about an hour drive from where the boys were living. We set out on our date with songs and finger play to keep the confusion of "who are these people" at a minimum. At one point, somewhere in BFE Alaska, I handed each boy a pretzel. I was raising three children, for crying out loud. The act of handing a toddler a pretzel in a car was second nature. I could do it in my sleep if needed. 

Pretzels were taken and I turned around to enjoy the beautiful scenery as we made our way towards Denali. The sound of deep, guttural retching didn't really register at first for either myself or my husband. Up until that part of our parenting chapter, those sounds only occurred when a child was violently ill. I turned around to see one child beginning to vomit and like a precision clock set to go off exactly two seconds later, the other child vomited. All over themselves, all over their seats, all over the rental car. 

Fast forward a few years, because revisiting those first few months with these children who could regurgitate like penguins if you only showed them a spoon much less had them take a bite would require a bottle of wine and some long weekend on a tropical island, and mealtimes still are not our favorite activity. Our better days, the ones where the boys actually want to eat and clean their plates with no gagging or frequent jags of protest, do occur. Not as often as we'd like, but they happen. 

We learned it was impossible to expect these children not to gag at some point. Nick has cerebral palsy and literally forgets to swallow periodically. So, he'll start to talk and forget he has a mouthful of food. And up it comes. Matt will occasionally shove too much food in his mouth in an attempt to be "all done" and leave the table. He chokes and up comes the food. 

Acceptance of this behavior was integral and necessary for us to maintain some sanity, so we taught them to vomit quietly and efficiently. Throw up into something, whether it's a bowl or a napkin or your own shirt (OK, this was only once and Nick was really sick in a store where I didn't want to make a scene because we already get enough rubberneck stares as it is). We also trained ourselves and the other children to not give the situation any attention, to the point where we can help the child but not look at them, so others with you aren't alerted to what is going on. In fact, Matt threw up yesterday while we were eating lunch and I'm not sure my mom even noticed. We kept the conversation going, Matt really didn't make a sound and no one stared or said anything. 

Added to the boys' oral motor difficulties are the years of trauma they experienced in life, but especially with food and eating. Trauma that told them reaching for food was unacceptable, trying to feed yourself was unacceptable. And paramount was that if you vomited, you were taken out of the chair. A meal was/is seen as a punishment. We've come a long way (think around the world long), but we still have several more planets to traverse before we ever reach anything that resembles a relaxing family meal where everyone smiles and chats and no one gags or asks for ketchup.