If you've seen Toy Story 2, you'll know who Zurg is. He's one of the "bad guys" in the story. He's actually Buzz Lightyear's father. Sort of a take off of Star Wars - where Darth Vader says he's Luke Skywalker's father.
Anyway ... as mentioned countless times, my son is a huge Toy Story Fan. He pretty much lives and breathes Woody Buzz (aka Toy Story). So we do a lot of pretend play in my house. My son is a big fan of Buzz, and Zurg seems to enter the "pretend games" often.
Since my son has to do these "feeding clinic exercises" which really is him eating from a spoon I feed him with 1-3 ounces of yogurt. I need to do this twice a day during the last 10 minutes of any two meals. I've had to resort to bribery of every kind and proportion to get this little stinker to eat one ounce of yogurt. Many times I get so frustrated I have to resort to "threats" and punishment and I've nearly thrown in the towel because this is no way to get a child to eat. Just seems wrong on every level.
Today, I had a break-through, since he did well the last half of last week with one ounce, I told him we were going to do two ounces. Each little cup I have contains one ounce so I had two containers and told him we needed to finish both. He was not buying this increase in yogurt happily. So I went to the microwave and set the timer on it for 10 minutes. I said to my son "you have until the timer 'beeps' to eat the yogurt up. If it beeps before you finish your yogurt, Zurg will get us". He smiled and with just a little coaxing he was ready to play this game! He ate two ounces of yogurt with little resistance and it was actually fun to do the exercise for a change. We tried this again at the next meal and he was just as eager and amused.
Hopefully I cracked the code by speaking to him on his level and integrating Toy Story villains into our assignment. I hope the therapists don't find fault with this approach!
Thanks Zurg - you're my Hero for today! Shhhh....don't tell anyone that!
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