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Comment by ethagknight | Hacker News Reader

Would applying a bitterant to both fake and real AA batteries help?

I don’t have experience working with people on the autistic spectrum but seems like the first priority would be to strongly discourage a habit that could seriously poison / burn the child’s stomach?

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I'd agree with that, I'm no autistic kid expert but at some point every kid will be upset about something. Being upset is part of life, learning to deal with it also is. I wouldn't use anything that look like a battery to reinforce his habit, it might be alright for a while but he'll get his hands on a real one at some point and if he hasn't learned that it's a no go he'll chew on it / might swallow it

I think the bitterant is a pretty good idea, have any suggestions? Unfortunately he is very autistic, and instead of being sensory inputs avoiding he is very much into heavy sensory stimulation.

I remember once he ate some of my extremely spicy thai food, he hated it, was crying and rubbing his tongue. Walked around the room, walked back and tried to eat some more.

I bought some in a spray can years back because our (young) rescue dog was chewing on cables and I didn’t want her to chew on a power cable.

If you touch something with bitterant on it and then eat food with your hands, it’ll taste bitter. Washing your hands doesn’t help much. Just thought I’d warn you - maybe the brand I bought was too good.

I have no experience with them but people biting their nails is a common enough problem that I know there are bitter tasting products out there designed to be applied to your nails to stop the behavior, so consider googling for those.

I think I’d start with getting some “chew stopping” spray from a pet store. Not ideal to use a pet product, but way way better than eating a battery.

My suggestion with real and fake batteries was to train with a fake bitter battery (leave some lying around), and then thoroughly dousing any batteries in use around your house, inside remote controls, etc.

Would not recommend using this on real batteries, but if you end up finding fake ones - spraying compressed air upside down (so it comes out as a liquid) and coating an object in it will make it very bitter, as compressed air commonly has bitterant in it to prevent huffing it. I used it myself to prevent myself from biting my nails.

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