Appointments and autism the third
Now what shall I move onto next. Ah yes, DENTISTS. OMG! Dentists! Bad enough seeing them in the first place for yourself but for a child? ! And one on the spectrum? Oh no!
Have you ever tried to clean the teeth of an autistic child or person? Well, I can assure you it is no joke. Actually nothing in bodily care is. Teeth and nails…..speak to a carer or parent of someone on the spectrum. The stories they could tell!
Anyway, back to teeth. Initially, we tried with a normal toothbrush and toothpaste to see if we could actually get the job done. In the end we would have to pin him down to get the teeth sort of brushed. Then it was a matter of finding another way to do it. Determining that became the key to possibly/hopefully resolving the problem.
So we then progressed on the fact that maybe, just maybe, we didn’t have the right toothbrush…but that WASN’T before he thought he was helping out by cleaning the bathroom walls with his toothbrush. I bought a brush that was 3 sided so basically doing both sides and the bottom of the tooth at the same time. Well, yes, that helped somewhat because it meant you could do it more quickly, but didn’t solve the actual problem.
After that, Kevin came home with a child’s electric toothbrush, that added to an app on the ipod. And yes, most autistic people are fascinated with anything computer related and we knew he most certainly IS, so we got the app, which has a small creature (I think called Sparkly) and you can get stickers and stars and stuff for different achievements and you get made aware of different foods that have a negative or positive impact on the teeth. And we are still at that toothbrush and app today!
HOWEVER, the other problem we then hit was that he doesn’t like mint flavoured toothpaste so we thought we would try different flavours of toothpaste and we have finally discovered he like non flavoured toothpaste.
But going to the dentist is still a problem. We found a dentist that deals with children on the spectrum and she is brilliant with him. If you find something that works for other appointments, try it with the dentist. And don’t offer them something sweet for while you’re there, obviously. But go with whatever will help to calm them and ensure that you are able to take them yourself in the future.