The Autism News | Special Guest

By Pamela Mari | Mom to Joey, 13 yrs old, author, Curvy Herbie and Straight Nate: A Lesson in Curved Line Thinking, podcaster: Autism Warriors

We can put a man on the moon but we cannot create an easy method of transmission for giving
medicine to children. This task, not an easy one for the parent of a regularly developing child, is
increased in difficulty ten-fold when dealing with a child on the autism spectrum. I could have filled a
garbage dumpster with the hair dye it took to cover the grey hairs I developed over the years dealing
with dispensing medicine to my son with autism.

I enlisted the aide of my husband and even my neighbor on occasion to get medicine into my son when
he was a toddler until about the age of 12. When I was successful at getting him to take the spoon into
his mouth, he would then run into the bathroom and spit the medicine into the toilet. I worried myself
sick that he would not receive enough medication to cure whatever ailment it had been prescribed for.

Then, one day my husband noticed a segment from the cartoon series “Tom and Jerry”. It showed Jerry,
the mouse, who had been left out in a blizzard. “Tom”, the cat rescues him and brings him in to sit by
the warm fire. He administers a spoonful of “schnapps” to Jerry mouse who then make a miraculous
recovery and begins dancing. My son Joey loves Tom and Jerry and Daddy began using the segment to
illustrate “Tom is giving medicine to Jerry”.

After numerous tries, my son, who always normally wants to act out what he sees in videos, decided to
play along as himself being Jerry and me or my husband being Tom. We have to play this video every
time now that he takes medicine.

Another little touch we added to the mix is to have an additional spoon handy on which we put a little
honey to kill the taste of the medicine. We also have to have handy a toothbrush and a little toothpaste
as “yucky” taste killers. To get my son to take 2-3 teaspoons of medicine takes about 20-30 minutes.
But, it is for us a lot better than him not taking it at all or everyone in the household having a meltdown,
including the adults.

So I suggest if you have a child that is in love with videos as much as my son, try to find a video scene
where the characters are taking their medicine or their “schnapps” it’s close enough.

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