Halloween is scary.

As we were walking home from trick-or-treating, a nine year old walking near us said "I wanna be really scared.  Like, I wanna have nightmares tonight."

Thing is, halloween doesn't need any help to be scary. 

You put on strange itchy clothes.
Then you knock on doors of houses that you usually never go up to.
Angry sounding dogs bark at you.
And in our neighborhood, adult men wearing masks hide in the bushes and jump out at you.
Then the smoke machine and strobe lights turn on so that this thick smoke curls between you and your parents trapping you with these strange people who jump out of bushes. 

One guy who really scared Mowgli felt so bad.  He started trying to apologize, but the first thing out of his mouth was, "Look, it's ok.  I have snacks.  They're good snacks.  Fat free."

Tofu

A few days ago, I made some miso soup.  This was the first time that I have served tofu on the dinner table and Mowgli didn't gag when he tried it.  I keep serving tofu, because it's one of the few things I can be absolutely certain that Mowgli doesn't like.  Or at least that was my plan.

See, Mowgli's a smart kid.  He knows the 'right' answer.  He knows what adults want to hear.  So when we ask him if he liked X.  The reply he always gives is "I like X."  always with the same sing-song intonation. 

Was that a good apple?
It's a good apple.
Was that a good brownie?
It's a good brownie.
Was that a good mushroom?
It's a good mushroom.
Did you like those noodles?
I like noodles.
Did you like the tofu?
I like tofu.

Many parents would give anything to quit hearing but I don't like it.  Sometimes my brother is one of them.   But this is a real problem for us!  Mowgli's not answering the question, he's just giving us the response that he thinks will satisfy us.  And really, he's at an age where it's developmentally appropriate to think about favorites.  Favorite colors, favorite movies, favorite stories, favorite shirts...  We've got to get past just replying it's good to everything. 

But tofu made him gag.  Mowgli would tell me it's good around choking on it.  It was a golden opportunity.  So my glorious plan was to periodically serve tofu until he would tell me It's yucky! I don't like it!

Well, that was my plan until tonight.  Tonight I used the tofu leftover from the miso soup to make mabo dafu, a lovely combination of tofu & ground beef with a thick sauce.  Tonight he ate the rice and the tofu.  He picked the ground beef off of the tofu.  Ate the tofu.  Then asked for seconds of tofu.  He did not want seconds of rice.  He wanted tofu.  And he ate the seconds too. 

I can't tell if I'm winning or losing this battle. 

Being angry

I just saw an article in the NY Times about how this generation of American parents almost universally yells at their kids.   And of course, like spanking, we shouldn't do it because it might harm the little tykes psychologically.

I think that's ridiculous even with neurotypical kids, but with autistic kids it's just downright wrong.

See a lot of the early research showed that autistic individuals don't recognize emotions, but that's not exactly true.  It's relatively easy to learn the 'big' emotions:  happy, mad, sad.  This person is very happy, and they can see that.

But almost universally, they never learn to recognize more subtle emotions, like say this

 So what does this have to do with yelling?  Well, if your child can't tell you're upset if you're only a little bit upset, then you have to act upset enough so that they recognize it.  They have to understand that what they just did was bad, or dangerous, or mean, and that their actions have an impact on the people around them.

Rediscovering Cracker Jack

Eating is a lot more interesting when you have to pay attention to the ingredients of every single thing you eat.  I can't buy bags of meatballs at the grocery store because they have breadcrumbs in them.  I can't let my son eat a hamburger at school, because those burgers usually have textured vegetable protein in them, and that may or may not contain wheat.  And you might as well skip the snack food aisle.  Most BBQ potato chips have milk, and don't even think about the Sour Cream & Onion.  Even the chili cheese fritos have wheat.

So it was with great joy that I read the ingredients of a Cracker Jack box today.  In slight translation, the ingredients are:
sugar
corn
more corn
peanuts
more sugar
and more corn

Two more play-script books

Ok the first two books I made were for playing Pirates & Dragons.  Nice thing about those, I didn't have to draw any people.  People are harder than just about anything else to draw.  This time I manned up and drew some people, in two very different styles.

Let's Play Doctor:

Let's Play Fireman:

The way we use these for therapy is to have Mowgli play with the toy for a little while.  Then he reads the book with his therapist, then they act out the play-script with the toys again. 

Again, anyone who wants to use these images for their own therapeutic purposes, is welcome to do so.