The Goldfish Whisperer

My daughter April has four wonderful sons. Her third son Caleb was born without a brain and as you might suppose has many special needs. Because of their special needs brother, Josh, Matty and Mitchel know about ventilators, g-tubes and lots of other medical interventions to help their brother stay alive. When my son-in-law Dallan brought home a gold fish that wouldn't eat, the boys asked their mother if perhaps he might be a special needs goldfish. I think you might enjoy this story told in April's own words. . .


Dallan recently went home teaching and came home with a gold fish. Yes. A goldfish. The family he was visiting had a daughter who was asked to home coming with it and asked if he would take it.


The boys were so excited, and over the next several days we tried to feed it. That little fish would gulp and gulp at the top of the bowl, but we couldn't get it to eat anything even though we made two trips to the store to buy different foods to try. At first we thought we had a picky eater gold fish. Then the boys started to wonder if we had a special needs gold fish. They thought that maybe he needed a g tube. Finally, I started to spoon feed it. Yep. I'd wait till he was gulping at the top of the bowl, then spoon feed food into it's wide open mouth. After a couple of days it started eating! Lots. And now he's been alive for 3 weeks (way longer than we thought.) I think I might have a knack for this sort of thing. Just call me the fish whisperer.