Chewing ideas please

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I am autistic and part of my autism gives me the desire to chew things. Not all the time but when I feel the need to be comforted or need to calm down. I do not have the money to buy things to chew that are made for us who have autism. Chewing gum does not work for me as one piece is too small and I don't want to waste the gum. I do have something I use to calm myself but can only use it in private. I have two pacifiers and I chew on them when stressed if I can find a place to be alone and if it's convenient. Please, if you have ideas of cheap things to chew, please share with me. Thank you.

Perhaps buy a cheap wash cloth, or a piece of rope. I don't know where one could find rope, however. I know cloth works for me because as I press down on it with my teeth it becomes more dense and hard.

As for plastic (which would be easier to wash), maybe look in the pet section at a grocery store or in a pet store for cheap dog toys. They're made for chewing, so shouldn't have lead or anything harmful in them.

I chewed all my lego tires to bits when I was a child, now it's usually biro lids, no one seems to notice them go missing...

Yeah, dog toys are a good idea, you could get one of those massive kong toys and saw it up.

Dish/wash cloth or towel. Depending on where you live a supermarket, ie Walmart, tesco etc will probably have though baby teething plastic/rubber things, they might not be too expensive. I would probably avoid dog chews as they have a really weird plastic smell often and they are always really hard and they may not be suitable for humans to chew as dog toys maybe less safe, though I'm not very sure, I would just check that out if you think about trying that.

What do you class as cheap, we may be able to offer more suggestions?

Thank you all so much for your advice! I think I'll check out the dog chew toys because a store near me has a section of dog toys that are only a dollar. Great thinking! As for the rag, I think that would be too soft for me and would probably grab attention of other's. Thanks again everyone for the advice! Have any of you used pacifiers before?

As far as how cheap is cheap is for me...I'm thinking $10 or under. My bank account is currently in the negatives.

As far as how cheap is cheap is for me...I'm thinking $10 or under. My bank account is currently in the negatives.

That kind of bracelets feel nice and are cheap. I am not sure how safe they are but I have one of them anyway.

There's this website maintained by Cynthia Kim from the blog MusingsofanAspie called Stimtastic.co, and she has several quality chewable pendants/objects for sale. Chewables such as the Gem Beads, the Fan Pendant, the Donut, the Trapezoid, the Lotus and the Faceted Square Bangle are all under $10. I think with most of them, you can even choose the colors you want. My favorite one is the Cloud pendant.

I like to chew a toothpick.

You can also use it to pick your teeth as well.

These days I tend to keep chewing gum a long time after the flavour has gone, I just park it on my desk or any reasonably clean surface and keep going back to it, though it's probably not everybody's idea of socially acceptable. It's very cost-effective anyway, and I can add more to it until it's a nice big chunk. The lack of flavour is a pity, and makes me retch a little after a while, but I haven't found anything good to flavour it with.

What worries me about all these other chewables is that I guess they're mostly plastic, and I'm not sure they're really non-toxic. Even some chewing gum is plastic these days rather than natural gum. And the artificial sweeteners they put in chewing gum don't look too safe to me. I tried Glee Gum which contains xylitol, as I thought that might not be too bad, but it gave me a lot of flatulence, which became embarrassing.

I say just stick with your "soothers". Large nippled pacifiers do the trick for me as I've been a lifetime compulsive nailbiter who's experienced bleeding and infection problems in the past from the unbrakable habit. The paci, binky, dummy, whatever one wants to call it is way healthier for me than constantly having my fingers in my mouth. I will look for pacifiers that are not bright colours to reduce noticeability when out and about with one.

If you're too concered about public sentiment (which I'm not), perhaps you can try gummy candy pacifiers as they're rising in popularity and are even being sold to older kids in skating rinks.

If someone gives a disgusted look, simply say, "Lighten up, dude...it's only candy!"

Hm, where I live you can get extra strong autism chews for ~£8.

I do wonder whether they'd withstand my chewing, though.

One thing to consider might be a baby teething mesh - you could free either water, fruit juice or mashed fruit and chew on that?

At the moment I either chew on dried pasta or I buy 1kg of carrots for £1 and chew those.