Delaying puberty in boys with LFA

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I don't believe an ethics board would approve such a radical intervention for an ambulatory child. The reason it is done specifically on non-ambulatory children is that they are completely dependent on their caregivers for positioning so they don't get pressure sores and mobility so they can be involved in their family and community. Left alone, these children would just lay wherever they were placed indefinitely. LFA children and adults without physical disability are able to move independently to interact with others in the home and community and are not at risk of pressure sores from lack of mobility.

Actually, that mobility is a potential source of great danger to them. Many LFA kids are known to elope with ZERO awareness of safety. My son, for instance, likes to run down to the community pool at the end of our street, and attempts to jump into the water - even though he cannot swim despite 2 years' worth of swimming lessons. He also runs helter-skelter and crosses the road haphazardly upon eloping if something on the other side of the street were to catch his attention, without caring about the cars / vans that come hurtling down the road (we live around a rather steep curve in the road, further adding to my mental anguish / fear that he may be hit by one of those monsters if I take my eyes off him for a nanosecond).

Secondly, a child in a man's body has the physiological urges of an adult male but the toddler's ability to deal with those urges and / or to fulfill them. A full grown adult male's toddler tantrums or inappropriate actions are still the actions / tantrums of an adult male, as far as outsiders are concerned. While every reasonable parent wants their offspring to live their lives as productively as possible - no one wants to have a "Peter Pan" - sometimes, that is just what happens, except that our 2-yr-old Peter Pan has the body of an adult.

Is there no solution at all to this ? Should a child inhabit a man's body just because they are "ambulatory" ?

The tools are drugs that have puberty blocking properties as a side effect, like Lupron, spiro and massive short-course hormone treatments. They all have risks, some quite severe, in short term use. To use them long term or for long term effects is only considered in the very most extreme cases, such as when a child is bed/chair ridden and cannot advance past a few months old mentally - if they are even that functional. And in those cases it's typically for the benefit of caregivers as the assumption is that the child *has* no quality of life to consider (judge that as you will).

I'm not a physician. I'm a HFA/Aspie with a talent for & love of research who shares a number of genetic, endocrine & neurological issues with my oldest child that happen to be very much in my spouse's and my minds as puberty approaches for that child. We've been reading & talking to researchers and current experts in endocrinology, neurology, genetics and developmental biology since our daughter was four.

How is putting a child who is immobile, and cognitively severely impaired, on medications to delay puberty infinitely an act performed solely for the benefit of the caregivers ?

In your opinion, what "quality" of life do these children have and how do you think they will "benefit" from puberty ?

I think some of you guys are confusing puberty with growing up. Historically castrati avoided puberty. That didn't prevent them from growup up into full-grown and formidable men. They were typically a head taller than their other counterparts in court and often jobs as palace guards. In a society of universal beards, if you saw a tall guy with a baby face coming down the street, you knew to keep them on your good side. Life expectancy was also typically 30% longer than complete men with a similar lifestyle. Most of the centenarians before the 20th century were eunuchs.

The ethical issue is that you're not considered competent to make the decision until it's too late. Even then, most male doctors cross their legs and stop talking about it rationally once you bring it up. You basically have to convince them that you're trans, or commit pedophilia before they'll take you seriously.

The only guy I know who was successful was a physician who started prescribing himself DP. I used to work with the stuff, it's powerful.

Okay, this is purely opinion, and possibly a poorly informed or educated one, at that. The closest I've come to the situation at hand is working with severely mentally dysfunctional children at a long-defunct psychiatric lab/treatment center when in college. It was truly a place of last resort, but all were ambulatory. Anyway, everything I've read on preventing puberty in severely autistic & developmentally disabled children was done to ease future handling & transportation of said person. Please keep in mind that the write-ups were *all* written from the perspective of clinicians, not parents.

Again, in my opinion and knowing what I know of the endocrine & neurological developmental processes that occur during
puberty, it would *seem* ( <---unqualified opinion, aka guessing) possible that if restraint & transportation are not issues, there may be advantageous endocrine developments insofar as lower brain development, serotonin regulation and the like. Does that at all balance the repercussions of a 1-yr old or less having the body of a grown woman or man? Probably not. But I would not even venture to assert that with any certainty as I get emotionally blocked when I try to consider it applied to one of my own children...which alone tells me it would not be worth it.

So, yeah. It depends highly on the specific situation.

Just to point out, castrati did live longer, because they didn't have many of the heart issues from testosterone. Nor did they typically have the physical life of hard labor of say, a virile, strong, typical man either. But they did have very low bone density, enough so that their long bones often grew curved. And, we now know that there are a whole set of developmental processes that occur in the brain at puberty; an adult brain is very different from a child one, and those specific changes occur at puberty. That's why if possible, pediatric endocrinologists now wait until puberty has just barely started to block it with chemicals; those growth processes like many in the endocrine system require just tiny hormonal triggers at just the right time to begin. They also lived their entire adult lives without proper regulation of serotonin, which co-regulates in a three-way feedback loop: sleep, mood, digestion, sensory sensitivities, appetite & thirst, metabolism, immune & autoimmune systems. It was the first mammalian regulatory hormone and so is crucially important. After puberty, it co-regulates sex hormones & they in return co-regulate serotonin in a loop.

Thank you so much for this post. I guess I should have been more clear in my OP about why I am deathly afraid of puberty.

It appears from this post, Edenthial, that it *is* possible to regulate / suppress testosterone (and associated sexual behaviour) without actually affecting physical growth and / or other developmental growth ? Am I understanding you right ?

I do know that sustained use of Androcur (currently not FDA approved for sales within the US) or Depo Provera is linked to the long term development of osteoporosis, so chemical castration does come at a steep long term cost (even if they help with LFA individuals in the short term with repression of physiological needs).

...Full-reading just the beginning , I presume that (1) that you are the LFA child's mom and (2) you are " thinking of the best " reasons for doing so ~ But I find it sort of questionable , though I can see that you could have reason for your worries , and you have a hard job .
Do you just mean " no sexual development " or some greater " keep him a child " ?

This is all good endocrinological thinking, but whether the endocrinology actually lead to meaningful signs and symptoms is suspect. There is a tendency in the medical community to mistake the map for the territory. A set of symptoms may be associated with a change in a particular lab test, but drugs the drive the lab test back to normal often don't treat the symptom. Low bone density does not automatically translate into weaker bones. Medications which increase bone density must be used with caution because of the risk of producing dense, but brittle bones because of the reduced overturn and repair of micro-fractures. With all the data available for eunuchs, there's no evidence of increased fracture rates. Nor is there evidence of increased rates of sleep disorders or depression. This is not all historical. There are more eunuchs alive today than any other time in human history.

I agree with much of what you say, with the exception of the last few sentences. The bone density problem is very real and has been recently re-discovered in light of trans kids management by pediatric endos. Ten years ago they didn't realize the long term effects of blockers as the application was still new. The fictional "eunuch-as-guardian-warrior" is not really supported hostorically; around half lived as women, the other tended to have positions such as Minister of Finance, or other such where trust (and no potential offspring to pass stolen wealth to) was essential. In other words, bureaucrats & clerks. Castrated enemy soldiers were considered worthless in part because they no longer had T for muscles & rage, but also because they tended to not be as hardy in battle. Please do correct me if I'm wrong; I always love to learn new info about that odd longitudinal slice of human history.

I'm also curious about your source for that last sentence, or more accurately I wonder who they are as I was not aware of large numbers of people today who are post-pubertal, pre-menopausal and are deprived of sex hormones, other than cancer victims (who deem it worth the risk).

...It seems you asked the same thing about delaying (what I guess is the " proper " word for puberty in a female) menarche in a girl last year . Are you the custodian/parent of both female and male LFA children ?

No. My daughter is either an HFA or completely NT - she is currently being tested.

My son is an LFA, who seems very reluctant to migrate up the spectrum at this point.

...Thank you . Is the girl older ?
Um...Why I can understand why you would want to...How can someone " mirate up the spectrum " ?

My daughter is still in grade school, and my first born.

By "migrating up the spectrum", I meant that he would develop language and cognition. Is that impossible to do ? I've heard of a few kids who had cornered a bit of the market on severe autism up until age 10 or 11, and then had sufficient language skills and cognitive skills to qualify as MFA or HFA in adulthood. That is my hope for my son - that he'd stop squatting at the lower end of the spectrum and move on up (at least enough to be considered MFA by adulthood).