Take hash-browns, baked beans and sausage. Offer to one autistic five year-old, for breakfast.

He’d got upset the night before because we didn’t have sausage for dinner, so my husband thought he’d like it for breakfast. But now it’s a very anxious “no sausage, no sausage!”. That’s fine, only put baked beans and hash-browns on the plate. Unfortunately, some hash-brown touched the baked-beans at one point, making those pieces inedible according to our son. The inedible pieces can’t be left on the plate though, or even on mum or dad’s plate, they must be put out of sight into the bin.

He’s very clear that he wants only a spoon and fork, no knife. The fork gets dirty (ie, it touches food) at one stage and must be cleaned straight away. Not licked clean, not just put out of sight, but cleaned properly so there is no trace of food on it anymore, but then left on the table beside his plate again. Later I make the oversight of using the fork to assist him in the aim of scooping beans onto his spoon. That of course upsets him again. At least he now has beans on a spoon and can get them to his mouth.. right..?

Beans make it to his lips where he has a pretend nibble of a single bean, then lowers the spoon carefully to his plate and gets up to leave the table, anxiously saying over and over “cold cold, timer”. He’s trying to say that he wants his food to be cold, not warm. And believe me, by this stage, the food barely counts as luke warm, and is very close to cold after the various theatrics. But fine, I tell him that’s OK and he leaves the table, having only eaten a couple of small pieces of the hash-brown, using his fingers. He doesn’t return to his plate. …continue reading