21. Preparing for a Successful Valentine's Day
Valentine’s Day is full of celebration and traditions, but this can also be a time of high stress for you and your child with autism. They often have more exposure to new foods or the foods that they may be allergic or sensitive to, and it can also be really overstimulating! This is a great time to explore new food options, and if your child is comfortable, new social opportunities!
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IN THIS EPISODE
Preparing your child for new interactions through some social stories
Talking to teachers and your child’s care team about preparing for the holiday
How to incorporate your child’s nutritional needs without compromising the fun of Valentine’s Day!
LINKS
Join the Autism Nutrition Library
Follow @AutismDietitian on Instagram
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Nourishing Autism Podcast where you take a deep dive into the research on autism and dietary changes, nutrition supplements, and lifestyle modifications. Every week, we break down nutrition topics and an easy-to-understand way for you to feel less overwhelmed and feel confident on your nutrition journey with autism.
Hello everyone! And welcome to the Nourishing Autism Podcast. I'm so glad that you're here. And today we're going to talk about getting prepared for Valentine's day and how to make it the most successful for your child. I love talking about holidays. If you've been listening to my podcast for a while, we talked about Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. All of these holidays can be difficult because there are changes in your child's routine. They often have more exposure to new foods or the foods that they may be allergic or sensitive to, and it can also be really overstimulating. So it's really helpful to prepare ahead of time for these holidays, for your child to have the most successful time and to reduce stress for both you and your child. So holidays and Valentine's day can be really fun too. It can be a great opportunity for social skill development.
Valentine's Day in particular can be a great opportunity to express your child's special or shared interests with other children. For example, if they love Frozen, we can get them some Frozen Valentine's day cards or Paw Patrol, and get them really involved because it's something that they share an interest in. So it's really fun to buy those with them. Or if they're interested in helping develop those themselves, it can be a really fun way to get them involved.
Now Valentine's day in particular is one of those that often has a lot of candy and a lot of added sugar, and I know from experience, majority of my clients do not feel great when they have that much sugar. They noticed an uptick in hyperactivity, inability to focus, maybe just a drop in the performance at school or in therapies, and it might not just be the sugar. It can also be the wide variety of other ingredients that are found in those candies, like artificial, additives, or dyes.
Maybe there's some gluten or dairy and maybe they're sensitive. So I still love kids to enjoy these holidays and a lot of times we can just find a another alternative so that they can still be involved with their peers and still share that same experience, but we still have a more nutritious option. So what I want you to think about, first, I want you to think about talking to your child's teacher. Understand if there are any upcoming parties so that you can prepare ahead of time. What you can do is talk to them about the foods that may be present?
This is also a great time to remind them if your child does have any special dietary needs, like removing gluten or sugar. And while you talk about this, asking if they will have the alternatives or if you can make these and bring them. You can always batch prep a large batch for the rest of the class too, or if you want that specifically for your child.
If you are going to prepare a new recipe, I would recommend trying that recipe at home first, before you send it with your child to school. At the time we publish this podcast will be about 10 days until Valentine's day, which is the perfect amount of time in order to try out a recipe, see how your child likes it, and make some changes to it before you send it at school to make sure that they would have an option that they really like at school.
If your child does enjoy candy and will want to eat that on Valentine's day, there are some better candy options out there actually ever growing. I'm really impressed with the better options that they're putting out in the different brands that are popping up. Now, keep in mind, these are still going to be sugar. So if your child doesn't respond well to sugar, these will be no different, but they don't have those added artificial food dyes, or maybe any preservatives or other artificial ingredients that you might not want in the candy.
So when we put them side by side, it's better for us to choose one of these options rather than one of the conventional candy options, just to set your child up for success, if they are sensitive to those added ingredients, which many are. Some of those brands that I love: Yum Earth, Smart Sweets, Enjoy Life, Unreal, those are all really great options. I've seen them at Target, health food stores, seeing them online on amazon so there's a wide variety of different places that you can find those and they're becoming more and more reachable.
Now Valentine's day has some interesting traditions that may not come very naturally to most people if you're not familiar with those traditions on Valentine's day. So if your child may not have gone through these traditions before, I think it's really great to talk about Valentine's day and role play through some of the scenarios that they may be experiencing at school.
One example of this is taking Valentine's card and putting it inside someone else's Valentine's day box. A lot of times they'll do this at school to collect candy and Valentine's cards. So this could be a really great thing to role play or have a social story where your child could get used to putting it inside of that box. That can take some fine motor skills as well, so maybe practicing this, talking with your child's occupational therapist on developing some of those fine motor skills as we lead up to Valentine's. Then you can also discuss the meaning behind Valentine's day if it is developmentally appropriate. We can talk about how is it time for us to share that we love our friends and our family, and makes sense of this holiday for them.
All in all Valentine's day is just another opportunity for your child to socialize and to get to enjoy some different foods that they might not usually eat. So what we want to do is just set them up for success, and this may be talking to them ahead of time running through some social stories, preparing for those events on Valentine's day, talking to teachers ahead of time and you just feeling prepared so that we can reduce stress for you and your child.
If you're a member of the Autism Nutrition Library, which is my membership for parents looking to expand on their child's nutrition and feel confident on their nutrition journey, I have prepared a Roundup of cleaner Valentine's day treats, including different candy options, as well as a few different Valentine's day recipes and some Valentine's day treats that aren't food like some sensory poppers that are Valentine's day theme.
To clarify, of course, it's best if your child avoids sugar and candy, but if they are going to eat it, I want to provide better options for your child to enjoy, to just take advantage of the situation. But if your child is open to trying other foods that don't include sugar and have a wide variety of protein and fiber and vitamins and minerals that is of course ideal and we have those options for you inside the library
You can log into the Autism Nutrition Library, go to the recipe section and you will see it in the newly added or in the Roundup section all about Valentine's day and how to make it successful for you and your child!
Thanks so much for joining us on this episode of Nourishing Autism. I hope this was helpful in preparing for Valentine's day and helping your child have the best time.
I will see you next week on the next episode of Nourishing Autism. Until then I would be so appreciative if you rated my podcast on both Spotify and Apple podcasts and subscribe if you're not a subscribing member already and that way you can get notified when new episodes come out. I will see you next week!
This podcast is brought to you by the Autism Nutrition Library, a one-stop hub and community for all things autism nutrition created to help you explore evidence-based nutrition approaches that have proved to be effective to help individuals with autism feel their best, do their best, and be their best.
Join now by clicking Autism Nutrition Library or by stopping by my Instagram @AutismDietitian. See you next week.
Transcribed by Descript
ABOUT Brittyn Coleman, MS, RDN/LD, CLT
I’m a Registered Dietitian, Autism Nutrition Expert, and the Creator of the Autism Nutrition Library.
I work with parents of children with autism to optimize their child’s diet, supplements, and lifestyle based on their unique needs. I help expand accepted foods for picky eaters, improve digestion and gut health, find the root causes of many symptoms, and ultimately help them feel their best so that they can do their best and be their best.
Not only do I relate to families on a professional level, but also on a personal level. I have been a part of the autism community for over 20 years, as my younger brother was diagnosed on the spectrum at a young age.
I look forward to working with you to uncover the root cause of your child’s symptoms and help your child be the best version of themselves!
