There are tons of people that would stand in line and tell you just how terrible it is to give in to your child and allow them to eat out, snag restaurant food, and that you're doing this incredible dis-service to your child if you allow them to dictate their eating habits. But when you have a child with special needs all that mumbo jumbo gets thrown out the door. You do what you need to do when you need to do it. And if you have a child that will boycot all other meals until he gets his favorite meal then you go fetch it and you fetch it fast and with zero mommy guilt.
Noah is that child. And his favorite meal happens to be Chick-Fil-A. He prefers the same meal: A child's 2 count chicken strip kids meal, with fries, chocolate milk, a medium fruit cup and a gob of mayo and two packets of Chick-Fil-A sauce. We bring it home and blend it all together in the Vitamix. His idea of the best meal on earth. If he isn't feeling well and doesn't want to eat - Chick-Fil-A will do the trick each and every time. It's sometimes financially hard to keep up on Noah's desire to visit Chick-Fil-A on such a regular basis, but I'm thankful that Chick-Fil-A exists, even if that means our bank account is taking a tad bit of a hit for his idea of fine dinning.
Noah has even memorized the route to get there, and squeals with delight the closer we get. He also isn't a fan of long lines and waits in the drive-thru so I'm always grateful when the line moves fast. Luke also knows that Noah does not like anyone playing with his food until we get home. So Luke likes to remind everyone not to play with the food until we get home. There is no snacking no drinking on the way home. We don't eat until Noah gets to eat - which is only fair. If I was in Noah's shoes I would be tremendously frustrated if someone was eating and drinking in front of me and I couldn't do it without help. Luke is always looking out for his big brother.
Noah can finish every single bite of his Chick-Fil-A meal, and he never grows bored of it. Some weeks it kind of feels like I live at Chick-Fil-A. And Luke loves to decipher Noah's needs and doesn't even hesitate to tell me that Noah want's Chick-Fil-A. In fact, Noah himself has grown increasingly good at communicating on his Tobii Eye-Gaze device simply because he's motivated to build sentences that tell me and his speech therapist that he wants to go to Chick-Fil-A. So you can pretty much guess what we get to go do on speech therapy days.
We all have our favorite things in this world and for Noah Chick-Fil-A is just his.
Love,
Noah's Miracle by Stacy Warden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.