Autism and Eating Meals

[iluvmickey2008]

Hi,

I'm planning a trip in 2014 for my sons, who will be 3 and 6 at the time. My older son was diagnosed with Mixed Expressive and Receptive Language Disorder (MERLD), meaning he cannot talk (he is completely non-verbal) and he is not fully understanding what we say to him. I really think that he is on the autism spectrum somewhere, but we are going to take him for a 2nd opinion. He goes to a special preschool and has speech therapy.

He has tantrums and we are working with him on that. He is improving (pointing to things, enjoying other kids more, trying to say some things) so we are thrilled!! By the time he goes to Disney, he will have come even further.

My question is how do you handle eating/food? Like if my son sees grapes, ice cream, etc, he goes nuts. He is ok if we go to an amusement park for a day; not sure how to deal with it every day.

I was thinking of doing pictures for the disney food and making a book or using a visual schedule with ice cream at the end of the day, etc. We are going to use a grocery service for his favorite snacks. Also, it won't hurt to have some lollipops on hand! Any other ideas?

 

[lanejudy]

Hi and welcome to disAbilities! I'm not entirely certain what you are asking with regards to "how do you handle eating/food" but will try to give some suggestions. If I'm off-base, feel free to post again to clarify.

Are you using a PECS system? I think I recall a post with PECS pictures somewhere but I'm not finding it right this minute...hopefully someone else will remember.

If you wanted to print your own pictures of Disney food items, I suggest you check out the menus on allears.net and you can get a good idea of what is available on the kids menus as well as the snacks. There may even be some pictures, but the menus will be a start.

Bringing your own snacks is a great idea. Saves you $$ as well as making sure your children will have something they like. We always carry water bottles and the individual drink packets (lemonade or kool-aid or something). You can get free ice water at any Counter Service location. We try to keep our meals and snacks to DD's typical routine - hungry tummies lead to meltdowns faster than you can realize. Don't wait for the kids to say they are hungry, know their usual times to eat and try to stick to it. We do mostly counter service meals with a couple of TS character meals, that's just what works best for our family. Others will swear by having those ADRs and regular TS meals. And some avoid character meals with ASD kids but others prefer that as a way to skip character meet & greets. You'll have to make some educated guesses as to what will work best for your family.

A visual schedule is also a great idea - my DD loves schedules and always wants to know "then what? then what? then what?" as we talk about the days' plans. I suggest that you try to keep it somewhat "generic" and with plenty of room for adjustments because 1) you can't control if a ride is down or otherwise unavailable (line too long, etc.) and 2) you may find that based on your kids' moods on a particular day you need to change plans. My DD is fairly good with changes in plan, as long as we hit the major points and that I caveat things (for example...we'll go back to the hotel and swim this afternoon IF IT'S NOT RAINING) - if I don't include that caveat, she'll expects to swim in a thunderstorm!

A touring plan and use of FastPasses should help you get through the day without spending too much time waiting in lines.

Good luck and ask if you have more questions.

 

[ladyjubilee]

My question is how do you handle eating/food? Like if my son sees grapes, ice cream, etc, he goes nuts. He is ok if we go to an amusement park for a day; not sure how to deal with it every day.

I was thinking of doing pictures for the disney food and making a book or using a visual schedule with ice cream at the end of the day, etc. We are going to use a grocery service for his favorite snacks. Also, it won't hurt to have some lollipops on hand! Any other ideas?

Do my son its not food, its balloons....and the part he's obsessed with is letting go to watch float away. Then he gets mad because I "won't" get the balloon back We took two approaches. First we dodged balloons and tried to distract him when someone brought a balloon close. But we also gave him his own money which we talked about for months. Each morning I put money in his pocket and told him he could buy whatever he wanted with his money. Next, when the time came that we just couldn't sneak past balloons, we let him buy *one*--with extra weights. We helped him take the money out of his pocket, give it to the balloon person. That seemd to give him some control (he's non verbal).

Sooo, for food maybe a variation, where he has preferred snacks in a bag that he controls and maybe some monies that he can use if he really really really wants to buy something.