Ashley Eats Drywall

Throughout the years of being a Mom, I have seen my kids eat some pretty strange things. Josh ate a glass Christmas ornament when he was a toddler. Hailey licked the floor of Chuck E. Cheese, along with every surface imaginable, when she was little. Now she has a highly superior immune system and rarely gets sick; I’m sure there is a connection. They all enjoy frozen pizza rolls- frozen. But of the three children, it always amazes me what Ashley will consume. Ashley used to really enjoy eating things like soap, shaving cream, hand sanitizer, play-doh, and sand. There was one day she ate hair spray. Now none of these things are healthy to consume, some are quite dangerous. We do our best to keep things put up, but things happen. There have been many calls to poison control. Ashley has, for the most part, gotten past this habit of eating inedible things, and seems to have escaped unharmed. However, the other night, I put her to bed with a snack and drink in her room. A little while later I could hear her crying and banging her head. She seemed unusually upset, so I went to check on her. When I walked in the room, I noticed she had put a new hole in the wall with her head banging, and was actually eating the drywall. I stopped her, and noticing that her snack was gone, asked her if she wanted more to eat. She immediately stopped crying and asked for chicken nuggets. I got her eight chicken nuggets, which she ate and immediately fell asleep. I’m thinking you have to be really hungry to want to eat drywall. In her defense, she had a migraine for a couple of days prior to this and hadn’t eaten much. I felt so bad for her; it is really difficult to be Ashley. I cannot even begin to imagine what she goes through many days. I am careful to give her a large snack now. And some of the other odd things she eats, like raw onions and picante sauce by the gallon, don’t seem so odd. Originally posted March 2011