The making of the Christmas cookies has always been a forte of Steven's. One year, he made almost 500 cookies! The gluten free casein free diet Zach is on, would have made me think prior to all this diet nonsense, that cookies would be off limits - but indeed they aren't!
We have a decent flour substitute, and there is GFCF margarine and chocolate - so we are off. Buckeyes, Gingerbread, Sugar Cookies, Russian Tea Cakes, Fruit Drops - he did good! We scaled back this year since we won't be having the company we usually have.
The irony of this is that Zach, was throwing up about a week ago, while eating these cookies. The association of the puke and the cookies has made them not desirable to him whatsoever - so here are the rest of us eating them up! We went on to realize the nausea was from Zach's really severe ear infection. *sigh*
We have managed to get several doses of medication into him - using ABAish type stuff (start playing a computer game, and turn off the monitor mid game with the syringe filled with pink gooey stuff at hand) , and then fading back until he just accepts it. The first dose took approximately an hour and a half to get into him, the second dose, about 20 minutes, and it has gradually become easier. A relief for sure! But a commitment - an hour and a half of trying to get Zach to take medicine was a bit stifling mentally. This is one item for those of you with typical kids to take note, a lot of things that are commonplace are not with our ASD kids. Things that should take 10 minutes, take hours sometimes. A parent to a kid with an ASD lives on patience and persistence. I think of all the things I should be anticipating in the future to help prepare him. I want Zach exposed to as much of the world as possible. I do not want him set into some firm, schedule that will result in a meltdown if broken. What things will be expected of him in the future that I should expose him to now? School - I think I have that one down. I am now considering giving him fish oil twice daily using the syringe in order of keeping him in the habit of taking things this way so that future medications will not require as much commitment. I am also thinking I should get those pullups on him soon. Potty training exhausts me just thinking about it. Doctor says he is still young - I know that if I don't have some expectations of him, and exposure to him now, I could hurt my chances in the future.
Anyhow - we sure have a lot of GFCF cookies in the house.
1 comment:
A lot of cookies, but I am sorry that Zach won't eat them because of his ear infection. You are right - I can simply not imagine spending an hour on medication. Anna practically begs for it when she feels even remotely under weather. I hope that the next potty training attempt will be more successful that the first one. Good luck!
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