Co-ordination can often be a struggle for young children with Autism. You'll sometimes hear how they prefer finger-food, or will only use a spoon for certain types of food (Noah's is yoghurt), but not for anything else. It can make eating away from home fairly tricky, and ensures you never go anywhere without a pack of baby wipes ready to go!
It's something that they will master eventually, but as will all things Autism, it will be very much in their own time and in their own way. Noah is currently the King of finger-eating. He will happily scoop up all manner of wet meals with his finger tips instead of persevering with a spoon or fork, chicken curry is a personal favorite of his, despite most of the rice ending up on the floor instead of in his mouth!
We offer cutlery at every meal, and model how to use it ourselves. He definitely understands what he's supposed to do with it, but he also knows that he can get it into his face faster if he doesn't have to work on balance and co-ordination and just grabs it with his fingers, so the motivation isn't quite there for him.
One thing we've always found tricky with Noah is ice ncream. We've always resorted to spoon feeding it to him from a bowl, because he couldn't grasp the concept of using the stick and licking it... that was until this week!
A lovely mum from school bought all of the children an ice lolly at pick up as the weather has been so unbearable hot. Noah clocked the packet and reached out for one, and without any prompt from me, held it by the stick and ate the whole thing, properly!
- granted, it melted as fast as he could eat it, and he broke off one or two pieces to eat with his fingers, but he never let go of that stick. A huge co-ordination milestone for him!
Needless to say, I've since stocked up our freezer with lollies so that we can reinforce this new skill!
Today, it's lolly sticks... tomorrow could be cutlery!
