The moment when you kid tells you he doesn’t know how to eat Spagettios.
It’s so exasperating and a battle I typically don’t fight alone, but I felt feisty this week. Twice this week I made my kids try something new.
If you have ASD kids you might realize what a beast of a fight I was walking into. But I knew I had to be strong and firm.
If you don’t have ASD kids you may not realize that one issue related to ASD is the issue of change. They don’t handle it well. I’m an no talking about simple big changes like a move where most people would have anxiety as well. I am
discussing small insignificant changes like instead of round waffles you buy square. That small simple change can send my kids into a hour long riot. Where in the end they still haven’t eaten and if they have they mental taste a difference in shape which causes them to throw it up. It’s no joke. It has been done before.
So you ask why try to introduce new things or why change old ones. It’s simple- one day they might realize square waffles and round ones taste the same. It’s a novel idea that one day I hope they realize. So I go to battle.
This week it was peanut butter sandwiches on bread; not crackers and Spagettios. Yes, we have deprived our children of a favorite childhood meal.
So I heat it up and serve it. Tears, screams and full on body flailing occur. And they aren’t even to the table to sit yet. A riot soon starts. Screaming, throwing food, back talking. I was prepared.
I had a second can. Sure, I thought, throw your food on the ground. I have back up. So I made another can. By this time the natives are starting to settle. Then I bring out the positive reinforcements (I will talk about the difference between that and bribing later).
Bug picked up his spoon first. He studied it assessing it color, shapes and sizes. 15 minutes later he is still staring at the same spoon. I finally snap. “Take a bite!”. “I can’t” he tells me. I ask why. Why did I ask why!!!
“I can’t find the letter A and A is the first letter in the alphabet so I can’t eat yet”. “A?” Shm.
Yup, that’s pretty much how it goes around here. Tip- don’t buy alphabet Spagettios. Apparently they come with a starting point.
In the end he did find a “A”. It was stuck to a meatball he tried…and threw up.