Dinner with us

I'm not very good about going back and linking to old posts, but some of you may remember that I wrote a bit about Gary not wanting to eat with us. I wrote that in my early years of doing care I would have thought that it was about rejecting me. Now though I didn't see it that way at all. Instead I think that after years of having to eat on group home schedules it was difficult for him to feel hungry on command. He really didn't want to be told to eat.

So I mostly stopped serving dinner as sit down meals. I left food on the stove and told people that they could come and get it when they wanted. They could eat in the kitchen or else where if they brought back the dishes. Gary started eating more when I did that.

Slowly I have been asking people to eat at the table with me more often. Gary has become more and more comfortable with eating with us.

Today Roland and I were going to go out and buy important things like bed spreads and furnace filters. Because I wanted to be out of the house for a while we also decided to get some fast food dinner. Brian announced that he didn't want to come. He would just get himself something to eat. I asked Gary what he wanted to do, fully expected him to say he would stay. Truthfully, I was sort of looking forward to a couple hours with just Roland.

Gary though said, "I'll come!"

And he did. We three went shopping together and then we cheap dinner. He was relaxed and cheerful. We all had a really good time.

It was nice to see him so relaxed, and it struck me that he has come a long way in the past six months.