In honor of Autism Awareness Month, I invited author and mother of four (including a 10 year old boy with Autistic Spectrum
Disorder and an 8 year old daughter born with Down's syndrome) to share her experience cooking with special needs kids. Deborah teaches cooking classes in her home to mothers and children with mild special needs. Check out Deborah's amazing, powerful, and insightful new memoir A Brief Moment in Time
, published by ASD Publushing Co, New York, available where ebooks are sold.
Cooking can
be hectic, messy and stressful. A brief loss of focus or minor slip up can lead to overly-spiced and over-cooked food, or blood and burns. Because adding children to that mix is quite often a ‘no no’ for many mothers, children are missing out on grasping the tools of a fundamental life skill.
Cooking
time with mum gives children an opportunity to learn about the different food
groups and the importance of health, safety, and hygiene during preparation. Furthermore, whilst we live in an environment
where the consumption of processed food is more appealing than spending time
preparing fresh food from scratch, we have a responsibility to teach our
children how to make the correct culinary choices.
As a mother of four children, two of whom
have special needs, finding the patience as well as the time to teach my
children is no easy task. Yet making the
effort has taught me that cooking with children who have special needs is just
as effective as a therapy session.
How
is this so? I am certainly not a professional
in the medical field with little expertise in the different techniques used
when working with children with disabilities.
However, what I do have is a very specific skill set when preparing
food. This skill set is managed by rules
and regulations that ensure safe food management and consumption. Children with communication, coordination and
attention difficulties thrive on rules and boundaries because they help guide
them on how to behave. By learning to
cook using this skill set, they become more confident and focused by being able
to reap the almost immediate benefits from their efforts by enjoying the food
they have prepared.
It still amazes me that my 10 year old son,
who has Autistic Spectrum Disorder and thereby has trouble focusing on a given
task and trouble with hand eye coordination is able to egg, bread and fry
chicken, under my watchful eye of course, with absolute precision.
Below are my top 5 tips for cooking with
all children:
1. Allocate a 30 minute time slot for cooking:
For the first few sessions outlining a
start and finish time will help the concept feel more manageable to you. Also your child, who may have difficulty
starting a new activity due to concentration issues, will be more inclined to
participate knowing that this activity has a start and end time.
