Seeing some progress from ABA therapy

Andy has been picking up a fork from the table and putting it in his mouth! It is so awesome to finally be seeing this happen. He is gaining muscle memory somehow through repetition with the ABA technician at therapy. We also reinforce this at home, but we've never seen a big change like this, so suddenly. The ABA therapy really seems to be paying off! He attends 4-5 days a week. Andy does start to lose interest in picking up the fork after about 5-6 times. Once this happens though, I hand him the fork and he will continue eating for about 10 more bites. If he starts lessening his grasp on the fork when I try to hand it to him, then we finish the last few bites with hand over hand feeding.

I'm trying to consistently show Andy that he needs to hold the utensil every time, if he wants to eat. He has no problem putting toys and rags in his mouth to chew on them, so now we have to push our expectation that he will feed himself. We are seeing some improvements, and this comes with a great relief! Andy does not stab at food with the fork, but just getting him to put the fork with food on it into his mouth is unbelievable.