Open Letter: Grocery Shopping with Your Aspie Child

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Well, when I was a kid, and I'm Aspie in spades myself, I had a teddy bear. And a cat, with whom I had long and philosophical discussions. And books. And an extremely vivid imagination. When I was REALLY little, I had a thumb to gnaw on. I had my closet, which I decorated up and made into an interstellar space ship - I remember spending hours in there. I did yoga. I stood on my head. I had a backyard in which I could spend hours on my back looking up at the clouds and taking myself to the most amazing places. I had a spot where I could pace for hours, if I needed to. I had a bicycle. I had playing cards that I could lay out in rows and use to play "Concentration" for hours if I wanted to. I had a pencil and paper. I had the living room couch, where I had a cave behind. Or I could lay on it and look at the ceiling and imagine what it would be like if the house were upside down and I was walking on the ceiling everywhere. Every now and then I'd have a cardboard box that I could pilot with Snoopy to fight the Red Baron.... I remember sitting huddled outside my back door on a bad day, and then watching how the melting snow was forming little rivers in the dirt and how the various hydraulic forces moved the dirt (and any leaf I set in the water) around. And what happened when I placed little pebble dams at various places.

No, don't go to the "Aspies have nothing" place. Aspies have plenty - perhaps different, but it's there just the same. Nobody should need to tell an Aspie how to cope... it's not something someone CAN tell you, actually. It's what you really have to learn on your own. And it doesn't always depend on your getting some externality. Just like it is for a NT, really.

You don't get what you want? Then you go to the next best thing. If that's something you have to provide to yourself, you do it.

And don't feel too bad about your family almost "getting torn apart." Mine didn't, and we'd all have been so much better off if it had have done.

Oh, now THIS brings back memories. My mother used to buy liver. And put it in a big pot full of water, and throw a few sliced onions in on top of it. And boil it until it was vulcanized and the house reeked. She accidently dropped it, once, when trying to lift it out of the pot. It bounced. No, really. Bounced.

We all took off out of the dining room and hid, but it was there waiting on our plates for breakfast anyway the next day.

You know, people do tend to forget that children are people. I always tried to treat my daughter as a person. A very small person when she was little, but a person just the same.

I had a pretty good idea of her limitations and abilities and always tried to communicate as much as I could (information) to her in a way that she would understand what I was trying to tell her. I used to keep almost a running commentary on what I was doing and why - how else is a kid going to learn how to make judgment calls? You either watch someone else make them and learn from that, or you have to deal with the situations on your own and deal with the consequences. That can be pretty bruising.

The kid tells me now that she's thankful I did all that, because she sees no reason to go out and fall flat on her face (metaphorically) in a situation if she can have avoided it by observing the situation for someone else and learning from it.

I never bribed her to behave at the store. It was expected that she would behave as a proper young lady, and she did.

When I was little I was practically addicted to this brand of canned spinach with a picture of Popeye on the can. Amazed my mom, LOL!

I think that this thread is diverging into three separate, but equally interesting conversations.
1) How to make children with aspergers feel a part of decision making and respect their need for self awareness and self comfort.
"You know, people do tend to forget that children are people. I always tried to treat my daughter as a person. A very small person when she was little, but a person just the same."-Nan
2) Ways in which to deal with grocery shopping and a high needs child.
"Every aisle involves a discussion of what our options are, and what the kids think about them. We always go home with at least one item that was each child's sole pick, and many more that they collaborated on. I want them to be happy with the food served, so it has always seemed natural to me to include them in the process. Its really fun to see your child run up to the tomatos and say, "mom, can I pick some of these?""DW_a_mom
3)Interesting food choices of picky eaters with sensory issues
"You think it might be a texure thing with the fruit and berries? My younger son won't eat them fresh but loves the dried kind they give a bigger bang for your nutritional buck if she's a chili head you might want to try the dried mago with chili power lots of great vitamins ect in mango"-CRD
All of these discussions are very interesting, would it be possible for us to put them in separate threads? In response to CRD, yes I do think it is a textural thing. She likes dried foods to the point where we purchased a food dehydrator and make our own fruit leathers so that she will eat some fruit. In the past, at about 18 months, she would drink tobasco and cinnamon straight out of the jar, so I think there is some taste sensory stuff. But it gets a bit more complicated than that. I also think it may be a bit of a shock value. I would LOVE to see a discussion on feeding kids with sensitivites/sensory issues/ and extreme pickiness. I'm sure there are lots of ideas out there that could be floated around.

That was very well articulated... thank you for posting that.

I'm one of those horrible mothers whose child never threw a tantrum, ever... despite us both being aspie, and I think part of it is that we both understand each other. I always remembered how I felt being dragged around shops, and I wanted my son to feel part of it. So even from when he was a baby, anything I picked up I would show to him, and talk to him about it.

As a result he was helping me look for ingredients on the back of cans at three, and informing random strangers that he wanted bananas because they were full of zinc. (He'd sing going down the aisle when he saw bananas, lentils or mushrooms, "zinc, zinc, it helps you think!") He always felt part of our choosing process, and he never played up.

I, on the other hand, have a clear memory of lying face down in a supermarket, screaming so loud my face was hot, thinking, "they'll be sorry when I'm dead!"

I think remembering the child's eye view is very important.

I don't _like_ to take my son on a trip to the grocery store, but I find it actually makes things go easier if I take him on short trips for certain items. For example, the other day I needed to get stuff for his lunches at school, so I took him with me. We talked about the various options, their pros and cons and which one he wanted. Thankfully he does pay attention to his health, so I had him looking over the nutrition label on the options for breakfast, we compared fat, fiber, protein, sugar, etc and in the end HE was the one to make the healthy choice. I think that also made breakfast the next morning go easier. When he asked for the sugar junk, I reminded him of the comparison we did, so now when we eat our oatmeal he talks about how "it only has 4g of sugar and it would be nice to stay at 0g of sugar, but 4g isn't too bad."

So bascially I've had limited success with the grocery store, but
1. keeping the trips limited (NO FULL BLOWN trips to get food for the week - I try to make my husband do those without us) and
2. making sure we are all in a decent mood and
3. making him help me decide what we should get - but that requires a LOT of talking and what not.

I've also done similar conversations in other stores (like a toy store etc). We talk about the price and money etc. From a VERY young age, he had the idea that something isn't your UNTIL you pay for it. I might let him hold something while we continue to shop, but it is NOT his and no we can not open it until AFTER we pay for it.

--Beth

It looks like the first Open Letter issue is working out really well. I'm seeing a lot of great posts, and finding out that my life as a child is an exception rather than the rule, but it still sucked. As a result, I have hell of a lot of difficulty believing that parents have a hard time saying no, but that's beside the point. Anyway, I noticed one major thing in common among all parents who let their kids pick an item they want while going shopping with them: LACK OF A FORBIDDEN FRUIT!

That's something I didn't even realize when I wrote the first post in this thread, which focused on how a shopping trip might look and feel like to a child. But the forbidden fruit factor is a big one. Because my parents said no to 90% of my requests, the junk food items I wanted had an air of mystery, wonder, and pleasure, as opposed to the mild aversion I feel now (at age 26). I saw them advertised on TV and saw my classmates eating them, but I could never get them myself. On the rare occasions my parents gave in, I felt like I was eating a world-class feast, as opposed to low-end crap that just fills me up. So I wanted it more exactly because I wasn't allowed to have it. If I had more-or-less free access to it, I'd probably eventually get bored with it and not want it so much. (I guess another side-effect it had was making it harder to truly appreciate home-cooked, freshly made food until I hit my 20's.)

Parents who let their child pick an item on a shopping trip, I commend you. By doing that, you are eliminating the forbidden fruit factor, which will let your child realize that junk food is nothing out of the ordinary, and instead let them develop a taste for healthier foods.

I must be the worst mother in the world! LOL! No, really. I'm an Aspie but I have 4 NT kids. I plan our meals based around MONEY not how much sugar or fat is in it. I NEVER look at that. I pcik a meat and a vegetable for supper and that's what I cook. As for snacks, the kids pick them. I don't care what it is cause I usually like it too. The only thing I tell them is, get something everybody will eat. And nobody can hog a certain snack, you have to share.

I also don't mind saying no, and no is because I said so. You don't like it, tough, you'll have kids of your own one day and you can set up your own banana republic there at your house like I did here at mine. No reason, no explination, just cause. That's my answer. "Cause". When they say "cause why" I say "fine then I'll go put <insert item here> back then". And they say "Ok, ok ok."

I never read labels. I pick what tastes good. I cook the old fashioned way, most everything from scratch. Yeah it's a high fat meal, high cholesterol, but also REALLY GOOD.

When I was a kid we lived with my grandparents and my Nana took me to the store with her. If I was good (meaning leave her alone and go look at things but not touch) I'd get something. Otherwise I wouldnt. I was pretty happy with that cause I'd spend the time walking around deciding what I wanted. Or I might go talk to Mr Joe who was the manager and he would let me in his office and let me look at the knives he was making, that was his hobby, making knives. Or I might go talk to Mr Smitty the butcher and if I wanted a steak as the thing I'd get he would let me come back there and watch him cut it. Yeah it was a small grocery store. When I got older I got money for the pinball machine Mr Joe put in there and I'd play that. It was only two blocks from the house but my mother was overprotective and would have a fit if my Nana had let me walk back home so usually I'd end up having to leave my game and let Hoyt the bag boy play the rest of it.

I'd like to commend all the parents who are really putting in the effort to treat their children as people. I think a lot of the techniques here work for most children, they're just so much more important for aspie ones.

My parents were complete opposites in their approach. My mother involved me with both household chores and household decisions as soon as I could put together a coherent sentence. If I couldn't have something or couldn't do something, she would always tell me why. She did her best within the limitations my father imposed. He ran his house like a totalitairan regime. Things were done this way because he said so, and no other input would be considered. When, as an adult, I asked him why he had been this way, he said that it was because that's how his parents had been. Whilst I love my grandparents, and as grandparents I couldn't have asked for more, even they concede they did a very poor job as parents.

Despite a recent rough patch, I still have a very positive relationship with my mother. My father, on the other hand, I only still see because the rest of my family made such a fuss when I stopped talking to him that it was easier just to pretend I cared. Usually, tellling of my experience gets the response "you don't have kids, what would you know?", often from the same people who say they had kids so they had someone to look after them in their old age . No, I am not a parent, nor have I any intention of becoming one, but I still have some pretty good first-hand experience of what works and what doesn't.