The Raw and the Cooked

How Primera eats spaghetti: very, very slowly. Strand by strand, in fact. Think about how many strands can be in a bowlful of spaghetti.

One of her therapists noticed when she was younger that she didn't put the food in her mouth: she nibbled it in from outside, which is kind of what she still does. She rarely opens her mouth wide and just shovels it in. Instead, she kind of works away at the end of the spoonful by degrees. Also, she prefers taking handfuls and leading it directly to her mouth to using utensils. She can use the utensils, mind you. Like Bartleby, she prefers not to. I wonder sometimes if it's a sensory thing.

She still only eats a limited number of foods, though she'll generalize across settings, to some extent (though she'll eat stuff in the school cafeteria that she spurns at home). She was one of those kids who would start getting more and more specific: first she'd eat fries with something, then only the fries, then only McDonald's fries, etc. When I look back at what we used to have to do for meals, it feels like progress.