Pill Taking & Special Diets
My child is fighting taking the supplements and following the special diet we are supposed to be on--can you help?

These new choices and challenges that parents of very young children, just diagnosed with Autism, must face may involve new, or fairly complex, biomedical protocols. So, these new potentials offer us promise and problems. It used to be that we had to little information, very few options, and no emergent research in Autism. Now, we may all be drowning in all that is out there. Here, are tips to help you better access and implement new resources:
•Experienced families and the professionals can help us all find each other and sort through information quicker. •Parent support group members can share experience and expertise in using diets, supplements, and various intervention protocols as a great peer-teaching resource.
•Be sure YOU are fully ready, able, and willing to follow these protocols, because any unreadiness, unableness, or unwillingness you may be unaware or unknowing about in yourself can be mirrored as false, or magnify a child’s true, unreadiness, unableness, and unwillingness to manage these systems of support and demands too.
•Be sure to assess swallowing readiness, ableness, and willingness for pills. Do not force things or rush learning. •Use liquid prescriptions or crush pills into liquids and then use an infant plunger to position it between the teeth with the tip just to right of throat. Then the liquid can just slip down without any choking or spitting up.
•You can use the methods for managing both eating and treatments that are discussed in this issue to introduce new or end familiar, drinking, pill-taking or menu items. •You can also first learn how to use visual information systems and skill building stories within step by step skills training on easier skill items first and then try to apply them to reach this top of ladder set of provider skills. The key is to ease up the intervention skill ladder.
•No one treatment works for all typical children, this is even more true for our children, who may react to foods, supplements, herbs, or medicines in an atypical fashion. •MORE is NOT always better. Alternate between adding a new biomedical approach and continuing to implement essential elements of educational interventions. Then, a child’s physical and mental treatment needs are both met timely. However, this must be done in a way that allows observers to tell which interventions are working well and which are not working well, or that have negative results.
This means that we must trial just one new biomedical or educational or therapeutic intervention at a time, until we have a new stable baseline, before starting the next trial. Otherwise, we waste money and sabotage our progress.

POSITIVE PROCEDURES
How we make dental and medical appointments and procedures less upsetting for myself, and my child?

The first step to reducing everyone’s anxiety, and make things go easy about is to find a good practitioner parent team match (see the Teeth Brushing & Dental Care Link).
•Next let go of the idea that people with Autism have “special” medical and dental care needs. Our needs are usually the same as typical people’s needs, including having our care need met using adaptive resources that best match our selves as individuals and group members. This is why best practice dictates that care team members’ work together to accurately identify needs and create treatment plan matches.
•Next advanced preparation and rehearsal of difficult event plans will help us reduce everyone’s anxiety. This also gives us a chance to work through mutual learning gaps or communication glitches about how to be calm, skilled participants during procedures.
•Again, step-by-step visual and/or written directions can
be used, with our start to finish treatment materials baskets too.
•Carol Grey Social Stories™ that concretely state and clarify the basic care procedures in just general and positive ways can both reassure the person, and share our expectations of their conduct in ways that produce amazing treatment experiences.
•Avoid panic or rage by using numbing creams for shots or IVs and humane, safe tranquilizers for painful or long procedures. •Always identify and understand our children’s specific smell, taste, oral and skin tactile and auditory, or other lower sensory tolerance levels, before insisting on using any supplies, tools, equipment or actions that may overwhelm them and so, us too.
•Remember, check out sudden onsets of biting, chewing clothes, and excessive drooling issues timely with your whole team. They may be due to incoming molars and wisdom teeth or other oral pain, or be atypical Autism behavioral issues too.
•Always U-Turn on a failing plan and stop treatment as needed.

Note: these articles were originally published with the author's permission in the The Net Journal of the Autism Society of Oregon. Winter 2004 Issue. Sharone Lee, Editor and Author. They have been returned to their home at Threshold, but have been kept in our public access pages for all our parent's use.

You may send in additional questions on this topic for us to answer.