Culinary Therapy...

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To all parents of children on the spectrum...

I am a chef, diagnosed with Asperger's. Pastries are my passion but I also cook in a upscale rest.
I am venturing in to my own establishment and I would like to begin doing culinary therapy with children ages 7-11 who are on the spectrum.

Any thoughts?

I do not have children, but I have a desire to help children on the spectrum and I have wanted to ever since I discovered my own diagnosis. I did not have options as a child, I went undiagnosed until age 26.

It would offer the kids a stable, professional enviroment, a project they can work together on to accomplish the same goal while feeling productive, it would be more likely to catch their interest since your goal is quickly obtainable and it is a new skill and as much as I hate to say "obsession", of all obsessions, culinary arts is worth while and can give them the beginning of a career focus which will make them strive harder. I can relate to the spectrum, having been in it all my life and not knowing. I understand that a child with aspergers can do the exact same thing and accomplish the exact same goal as a NT child yet do it in a completely different way. I've faced this all my life and while working on the line I do everything different from the other cooks, but my goal is reach in the same amount of time.
I have considered many options like a 3 week cooking course and the 4th week the kids prepare a meal for a group of people. This could be a group of seniors, a group of autism supporters, a group of homeless people during holidays, etc.

This is an idea and if I feel there are parents out there who would think their child could benefit from these please give me your feedback. Good and bad.

This also would help with sensory issues as the children would be touching different types of food textures, learning better coordination skills, adapting to the various sounds you hear while cooking in a kitchen atmosphere. While surrounded by peers that can relate.

Yes!

I am convinced that the source of self confidence is competence. One of the things I became competent in as an older child is cooking and I am ever grateful to my Mom that she gave this to myself and my siblings.

Please consider venturing into this area of teaching step by step. Start with only 2 kids in the first round.

Aspergers kids may have startling motor skill and perception challenges. The 1st time I did a baking project with my high functioning aspie Godson he was 13 years old. He couldn't spread flour on the work surface. I did it first at my work area to demonstrate. In response, he tried to spread flour by jabbing his fingertips at the pile of flour. Clearly, using the flat of his hand to spread a powdered or granular substance was new to him and it took some time to learn it. I hadn't anticipated teaching at this basic level and had no idea that motion would be a challenge.

PS; although spreading flour was an unanticipated stumbling block; something which I find challenging; rolling a round of dough effeciently; always from the center outward at all the angles; was no problem for him! Quirky and unexpected.

It's a great idea and how I wish you were in Ireland, because that is exactly what my daughter would be happy to do. (There are not many things I can say that about. ) Are you in the US? I agree MountainLaurel the source of confidence is competence . I have noticed with my daughter that she has a flair for making the plate look nice, something which I overlook, she takes those extra pains to do it. She currently cooks supper once a week, and always makes the same thing, pasta and sauce with peas, with cheese sprinkled on. She resists me teaching her a new dish, but I know she would let someone else teach her.
Anyway, I think it's a brilliant plan and go for it!

catbalou hi as you can see I am doing an very Irish thing, what part are you from, are you family going to effect by they savage cuts all over but especially the education/special needs etc.

Have you dealt with your local C.A.M.H.S or gone private, if you have any recommendations I would appreciate.

Thanks

Annmaria

Thank you for the feedback... I am in the U.S., but this could start a global chain.. Hopefully this becomes a success, cooking has helped me with so many sensory issues. I am anxious to get this started! Once I do I will post a link where it can be viewed online.

In what state are you located? You might want to consider separate classes for gluten free baking as so many aspie kids are greatly helped by being gluten free and it would get them to "own" it better. I encourage your efforts either way.

As much as I love the idea, I think adequate enrollment, getting enough kids to make it pencil out, could be an issue. You would need an unusually dense population with a large AS cluster, I think. We have a culinary summer camp in our area, open to all kids, that has struggled to stay full (hard to make a profit on anything less).

It takes a lot to make any children's program click in enrollment: they've got to live close enough for the parents to bring them, they've got to have parents who can afford it, the child has to be interested, and the activity can't conflict with something else on the schedule. That is a lot of I's to dot; you have no idea how much effort it takes me to get stuff pulled together for my kids, even though I am surrounded by wonderful options, and I'm one of the few willing to pay for a premium opporunity...so much we'd think would be wonderful just don't work out for us.

So. I think that stepping in gently, trying to incorporate this with the work you already do, maybe enrolling only one child at a time could be a nice way to start. Then you can have a thinner demographic but still provide something meaningful.

I started teaching my son to cook before I knew he was on the spectrum. We've been doing it for four years now, and I can tell you that while it's been very rewarding and has had definite benefits for both of us, it's EXTREMELY challenging. He has been cooking all this time and has prepared exactly ONE meal on his own: a layered taco dip that involved no cooking at all, just assembling.

For one thing, be aware that kids on the spectrum don't generalize well. You can teach them knife skills (keeping in mind that you're going to REALLY have to watch that nobody makes gestures with a knife without thinking about it) but they won't necessarily learn that you can use this same technique to cut up a potato, a cucumber, a tomato, a garlic clove...with every different thing, they have to stop and re-learn. 3-4 weeks sounds like either way too short or way too long of a time, to me. DS gets lost in all the different steps, and has difficulty following through (he often leaves the room once he puts a pot on the stove and turns it on. Sometimes without adding the ingredients - and this is with me there, hovering.) Now, my son makes up for this (sometimes) by learning lightning-fast and not usually having to re-learn, but it means you start each lesson from ZERO: how to boil water, every single time.

You might consider just having an evening of, say, pizza-making (or pie-making; we've had good success with pies of all kinds; lots of good physical activity, spatial planning, textures etc.) and seeing how that goes. I can't imagine doing this with a whole roomful of kids on the spectrum, but you might be able to have a bunch of NT kids and a few kids with special needs that you can be more hands-on with.

I think you have a great idea! Kids learning to cook is a major step in being an independent, functioning adult. Our local natural food store puts on cooking classes and they invite different people to teach the classes. They have classes in all different kinds of things from bread making to gluten-free cooking. Perhaps there is someone in your area doing something similar and you could start out teaching a class through an already established program and then branch out from there. I think kids could really benefit from AND would be interested in learning basic kitchen skills, measuring ingedients, how to clean and prepare different fruits and vegetables, basic food safety like handling raw meat... There is sooo much before you even get to following recipies!

Good luck!

Oh wow, I'm seeing a lot of aspie kids being good at cooking; I was like that too. I cooked my first dish (as opposed to assembling, like a sandwich) at the age of 6. It was fried eggs with salt pork. It turned out pretty well, especially after my parents taught me to crack eggs by hitting them with a knife; it results in a clean breakage, with little or no stray shell pieces. I advanced pretty quickly, although I wasn't allowed to use the oven until I was 12. While I have a lot of gripes with the way my parents raised me, this is one of the things I'm glad they did. I now live alone, and can cook tasty meals (even advanced dishes like stuffed Rock Cornish hens), as opposed to spending a lot of money on takeout or eating cheap crap from fast food places. Plus, I could always impress the girlfriends I was with in the past, when they came over.

Here's the recipe:
Cut a thick slice of salt pork into 5- to 10-mm cubes (bacon won't work for this recipe), and toss them into a preheated pan on high heat. Move them around with a spatula. Once they start to shrivel up, crack one or two eggs over them. Break the yolks if desired, but do not scramble. Lower the heat to halfway. Cook until the eggs solidify completely. Flip the eggs over, and cook just long enough to brown the other side. Serve with coffee or hot tea, to rinse out the salty taste, otherwise you'll be thirsty all morning.

I make this dish to this day, at age 28. It tastes amazing. For a portable version that I can eat at my work desk, I just put the eggs between two slices of toast. Hope other aspie kids benefited or can benefit from learning to cook at a young age.