Seeing things? Hearing voices? Anxiety /drugs for toddler

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Totally agree with you. I believe NZ and Oz are very similar and you're spot on in your analysis of the differences.

I think you will really love Emma's Hope Book (the whole blog). When I read your story about your daughter that blog was the first thing that came to mind. There are a number of non-verbal, brilliant autistics writing out there, too. Check out the fabulous Amy Sequenzia. http://nonspeakingautisticspeaking.blogspot.com.au/

There are a number of autistics (and carers) who write about gentle parenting of children on the spectrum, too, which you might enjoy reading. http://respectfullyconnected.blogspot.com.au/

You should look into getting a weighted blanket for her. There are also weighted vests.
The important thing is to get the weight right - I think no more than 10% of body weight is the recommendation.
As someone who enjoys this kind of pressure myself, I can tell you that it feels wonderful to me.

Are you seeing a doctor that specializes in autism? I find that a focus on compliance and controlling behavior tends to be a red flag that a doc or therapist doesn't know what they are doing (controlling anxiety is another way of controlling behavior.)

DS had significant anxiety as a preschooler - he was threatening suicide at age 4, before he even understood or had the words for death and dying. We didn't get the right supports for him at the time, but we also didn't medicate, although that was lightly suggested a couple of times. He did report seeing and hearing things during this time, but we think that was due to his inability to describe his feelings appropriately (he had excellent language skills, but very poor pragmatics) While I do see the benefit of medication, I can attest to the benefit of waiting: if you take away the symptoms, you have less of a chance of learning what the anxious behavior is trying to tell you, and you are less likely to solve the problem.

I don't believe that anxiety happens in a vacuum, people who say someone is "just anxious" are IMO, full of crap. Yes, you may be anxious because you are hypersensitive, but the hypersensitivity is driving the anxiety then, it isn't that you are "just anxious."

It may be that something is happening at school: we found that my son's anxiety was driven by a very middle-school-like social hierarchy of bullying at preschool which was affecting many other children (but affected him more because he understood it less.) After we went to the school, they intervened and stopped a lot of the excluding behaviors and language that kids had started to use: the anxiety went away, at least for a time. It doesn't have to be a social problem, could also easily be that it's just a sensory issue: too loud, too bright, too much visual noise (kindergarten was AWFUL for us for that reason - who thinks it's a good idea to cover a room in artwork so that it's even dangling from the ceiling?)

Detective work and research will get you farther than medication; I'd think of medication in terms of whether it is going to help or impede your ability to figure out your child's needs. The needs will remain, anxiety or no.

This is not to say that medication is never the right choice, my personal barometer is to exhaust all other possibilities first (Sweetleaf is right that constant anxiety isn't good for anybody, but if there is another way, I'd hate to tinker with the neurology of such a small child, which is what most anxiety meds do. It's also a looooong process of finding the right medication - took me several tries as an adult, I'm still not quite there; it takes about 6 months to figure out you are on the wrong medication and sadly finding the right one is mostly trial and error.)

One exception is that kids who benefit from stimulants typically benefit right away and those medications are quicker to "tweak," don't have lasting effects, but that is a very specific subset of children, and I'm not sure they are appropriate for very young kids.

There are a couple of threads on the subject of kids hearing or seeing things; it's not unheard of in our community:
http://dev.wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7013 and http://dev.wrongplanet.net/forums/viewt ... p?t=224375

I, myself, had an extremely detailed and complex paracosm and talked to people and animals in it all the time: as a kid, it was the only successful social interaction I had (although I didn't realize it at the time.) Wikipedia has a terrific article on imaginary friends and paracosms; I'd imagine they are common in the spectrum community because they function as a social skills "lab." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_friend

The reason I think it is unhealthy is that it keeps bad emotions caused by e.g. some change, stored up inside the child instead of released and dealt with. Like when you make some small change, the child might respond with bad feelings caused by change, then if you immediately appease the child to avoid the meltdown by getting rid of the change, the child can never release these bad feelings. Meanwhile, it appears that the child has calmed down, but ackshuly just another thing has been added to the growing list of things that the child has to avoid until their little world becomes super regimented and same same all the time, like locking into some set pattern for good. Instead, if you keep the change, and let the child have the meltdown to release the bad feelings, the bad feelings are gone after the meltdown, and the child often has no problem with the change afterwards. This is because it was not the content of the change that was the problem ever, it was the fact that there was a change that caused the bad feelings. So if they get rid of the bad feelings, they can accept whatever it was that changed afterwards. Then, their world is not locking into a set pattern, as they can accept new things as they encounter them, deal with change, and probably start to get accustomed to changes happening, so that as they grow up, they can become flexible people who can deal with changing situations and of course they will be higher-functioning in multiple areas if they develop this ability. I have observed this pattern in most autistic kids and teens that I have met and been around for awhile.

Many parents describe high anxiety in their autistic children, perhaps some of that can be attributed to often avoiding things rather than releasing emotions in meltdowns and confronting things directly. I would err on the side of melting down more and less on avoidance to find some healthy balance for each child.

Another thing specific to drugs is that while they may calm a person and make them feel better, over time most drugs taken by autistic people have no long-term benefits as shown by studies, have side effects, have unknown effects on developing brain in a child, and I think their effectiveness may prevent a person from developing their own non-drug-dependent internal coping mechanisms for their emotions or situations, and these skills are I think important to adulthood functioning and even general happiness of person. For eggsample, I know someone with ADHD who always had the classic problems of ADHD growing up and going to school, but she couldn't be on meds due to allergic reactions, so she worked hard to develop coping mechanisms to get around some ADHD problems, and of course this takes effort on her part and sustained effort over long periods, but she functions well as an adult due to this work that she did, having no choice due to drug reactions.

Responding to the meltdowns aren't all bad thing, just want to share that sometimes my son gets suicidal ideation after a meltdown because he feels so horrible about not being able to control it. So they aren't something to encourage as a coping tool, in my book. They are the result of not being able to cope, in my experience.

I think there are other things you can try to minimize anxiety before considering medication. I have to run get my kids, so i don't have time to list them here. But I can say that I refer a lot to the Autism Discussion Page by Bill Nason. He has two books by that title that inter-relate to each other, and a Facebook page. The green book addresses anxiety, behavior, school and parenting strategies.

My guess is that suicidal ideation is its own problem and not a general effect of meltdowns, as the same person who gets suicidal ideation following X may get suicidal ideation following Y and Z, etc. Perhaps the idea of having to always be in control contributes to a person's anxiety and suicidal ideation after an incident of losing control.