Autism: Surviving and Thriving

Fourteen years ago my youngest 3 boys were diagnosed with autism within a 9 month span. Devastation and grieving followed. Doctors gave me little or no hope, but they didn't know me very well. I refused to believe that my boys were doomed.

My boys are now young men, adults with autism. They are thriving, but every day presents its turmoil and challenges.

My family: husband Mike, sons Ryan 23 yr, Nicholas 21 yr, and Cameron 18 yr. (Ryan and Nick have autism; Cam has recovered from autism.) Our oldest sons, Michael 34 yr and Stuart 25 yr, moved out of the house. Ryan has also moved out, and is still working towards complete independence.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

The Countdown Begins: Second Task: Dinners


We have slowly tackled dinners. Over the last several days, I have doubled the recipe for whatever meat dish we made for dinner. We ate half, and froze half. So now we have enough meat dishes for a week.

The only problem here is that I will be working (I hope) longer than one week. The next step to tackling dinner was asking all the boys to learn to cook one complete meal.

Cameron stepped up and volunteered to cook dinners on Tuesday. I asked him what he wanted to make. He looked in the fridge, and he came back with a menu: hot dogs, apples, carrots, and muffins. That's not bad for a nine year old. The menu was definitely kid-friendly. Now to see Cam in action.

I walked Cam through each step. We started with muffins. Since all the boys are gluten-free, we made muffins with rice flour, potato flour, and tapioca flour. Within 30 minutes, we had homemade muffins, complete with cinnamon. I made sure Cam knew how to check if the muffins were done with the toothpick. If it comes out of the muffin "clean", the muffins are done.

The hot dogs came next. He started to boil water while the muffins were in the oven. He opened the package of hot dogs, and the "juice" spilled. Well, he saved the hot dogs from flying out, but he did have to clean the "juice". While the hot dogs cooked, Cam cut the carrots and apples.

Dinner that night was colorful and easy. Cam was extremely proud of his meal!
photo credit:Alesist

1 comment:

  1. Good for Zach! Sounds like a dinner you'll be enjoying more often in the coming months!

    ReplyDelete