Medications for Aspergers kids?

Post Reply New Topic

Hello: I'm very new to this Diagnosis and new to this site. I wonder if anyone has kids that cannot control their anger? My 7 year old, dx with Aspergers and ADHD-I about 6 to 8 months ago is hitting/punching kids when he gets mad. He has seen a behavioural therapist a few times and she is recommending a medication eval. I looked up the treatments and I really don't like the side effects. Also, to me, it seems so extreme for a 7 year old to be on drugs so stong as the ones listed. If anyone has a similar situation and/or dilemma can you please reply with some advice. I've called about every resource in the area. Waiting lists are 3 to 9 months. Not many specialize in this area of Autism spectrum disorder either.
I'm almost at my whits end and am desperately seeking help for my son. I apologize if I did not post this in the correct forum page. Again, I'm new to this type of help/support.
Thank you in advance for any advice you may give.

I'm the only one in my family with AS, so I don't know about AS kids. I can tell you that my 16yo son who has ADHD has a horrible anger problem. His stems from frustration.

He's on Vyvanse now for the ADHD and it not only works great for that, but it's really helping him with his anger issues.

I think it's approved for kids 7 and up, and it doesn't give any of the bad side effects that the other stimulants do. You said your son has ADHD as well as AS, so I don't see a problem with getting it for him.

You mentioned that you didn't want to give someone so young drugs so strong. I can understand that. However, sometimes treating the symptoms that he's having trouble with outweighs the fact that you have to give him meds. Also, you don't have to take them forever. My oldest was about your son's age when we started him on Ritalin. That's what they gave first back then. It helped him greatly, but Ritalin kept him from eating and sleeping and his heart rate was always so high. We took him off that because the tradeoff wasn't enough. By the time the other meds were so popular, he had learned to manage his symptoms himself so he wasn't ever on anything again.

My younger son was given a trial of different ones when he was about 8 or 9. Some of them he couldn't tolerate because they did him the way Ritalin did my younger son. Straterra, which is the nonstimulant drug, made him extremely negative and made his anger worse. On top of that it did nothing for the ADHD. So, we went without anything for a while. A while back he decided he had to have something to help. We tried Adderall xr. Lowest dose. He focused allright. He focused on the "speedy buzz" he got from it. He hated it and thought he was going to have a heart attack or something. He's pretty sensitive to side effects. Someone I know has a kid on Vyvanse so we got him a script of that. It worked like a charm! He can eat normally, no insomnia, no "speedy buzz", no elevated heart rate, etc. I give it to him when I get up at 5am, and he goes back to sleep. By the time I wake him up at 6, it's already started working some. He can wake up better and concentrate on getting ready for school and not be so angry about everything in the mornings. It kicks in fully 3 hours after it's given, so that's when school starts. It stays steady in the system for 12-15 hours with a gradual letdown. By the time he's ready to go to bed, he's sleepy. He eats normally on it, his bp is fine. It's not that strong of a med. Lots of kids are on much stronger meds without problems. I know that it's easy to say that and understand that but when it's your own, it's always different. It's that way for me too, about mine.

I'd urge you to look into Vyvanse and do some research on it. Go to some ADHD forums and see what parents and kids on it have to say about it.

The stimulants aren't dangerous unless your child has a heart condition, etc. Even though, I dislike giving them to my kids, but this one is so low dose, and so effective, that it doesn't bother me to give it to him.

Good luck, and let us know what you decide!

BTW, AFAIK there aren't drugs made specifically for AS. There are only drugs made for symptoms that AS has in common with other things.

I just wanted to say thank you for your very informative post. I think I feel a little better, knowing others feel the same but tried it to help their children. We finally found a doctor in our area that actually specializes in Aspergers/ADHD. I almost cried with relief.
I also appreciate you sharing the story of your children including the side effects and the outcomes. I applaud their strength, and yours!
For as much as I have learned, just by reading, a few videos, and from his behavorial therapist, I realize that there is much, much more and I have not even scratched the surface
Most importantly, thank you for taking the time to respond.
I wish you the best!

First I would like to say that physical violence when angry is not inherent to AS. Some children with AS may physically lash out, but many do not. Concerning medication, if the child is inappropriately hitting or kicking other people and behavioral therapy has not helped, then I couldn't necessarily say it would be inappropriate to medicate him, however at the same time I could not determine for you if it would be appropriate. This is a case by case basis situation.

I recommend reading the book written by one of our members, free for download at ASDStuff.com

The book talks about meltdowns and prevention, and the many factors that can lead to someone with AS lashing out at the world. Sometimes conforming the environment more to the child's needs can fix the issues one might look to medication for and when that can be done, it is a much more permanent and healthy solution.

We've had many, many threads on this topic and I recommend searching them to get a better understanding of all the factors involved and all the varied opinions on this difficult topic.

Sorry that you are going through this difficult proses.....but luckily you are getting answers from the docs.....
My son is also struggling with aggression and irritibility....
From what we went through the last few months and seing the terrible impact it had on our family relationships, I would strongly advice an appointment with a child psychiatrist and neurologist!
We had 3 different types of meds! The first 2 had bad side effects....it made him more irritable.....the last type was ok, but sinse we lowered the dosage his irritibility again got better....The reason for meds for AS is often to lower their anxiety and in my sons case lowering OCD thoughts and little bit of depression.
But I pushed for an EEG because I was worried about his aggressive outbursts and turned out he might have TLE causing the behaviour or even brain tumor! We are waiting to get neuro appointment now to investicate further....So dont just except diagnosis....make sure there is no underlying neurological problems....this is not a short road...you will still learn and experience alot!
Hugs coming your way!

I'm new to the diagnosis as well. My son's only been officially diagnosed for about 2 weeks now. He has been on meds for two years, though. He was originally diagnosed with childhood Bipolar Disorder and was put on meds for that. I understand your hesitance to try medication, though. We've had sever behavioral issues in school since my son started kindergarten and I resisted medication until he was in 3rd grade. At that point, he was exhibiting similar behaviors to your son; hitting, kicking, throwing things, etc. Add that to the fact that he's always been quite a bit taller & stronger than other kids his age and we were basically to the point of not having any other options.

From what I understand there aren't technically any medications specifically for AS. Instead, medications are used to treat specific symptoms. I think you're justified in being worried about the side effects of some of those medications, though. My son, at one time or another, has taken Abilify, Klonodine (sp?), Imipramene, Depakote, and Risperidol. Some worked, some didn't, and some just weren't worth the side effects.

Unfortunately, medication is a trial-and-error process to find what works and what doesn't. I think the best thing you can do is just make sure you do the research before agreeing to any medication regimens and make sure you're comfortable with whoever is prescribing the medication. That was my biggest mistake when first putting my son on meds was assuming that the individual prescribing the medication knew exactly what she was doing and that, since the recommendation was from a professional, I didn't need to do research beforehand.

I can empathize with your feelings of frustration and confusion on this. It can certainly seem overwhelming at times wanting nothing more than to help your child but not knowing how. I've found that just reading posts on this board have helped me quite a bit. I hope you find some useful information that helps.

I want to get a little more into the process of dealing with anger. There are more things for you to try outside of medication, if you have not. I've written this what seems like a hundred times to a hundred parents, so forgive me for not just jumping to it the first time. Maybe some day I'll learn to save my own posts!

Violence in children tends to be reactive, an instinct, and a cry for help. Think for a moment how you would react if you were in a room with continual nails on a chalkboard noise, in an extremely itchy outfit, being asked to do calculus, and hold a conversation in a foreign language. How is your self control for anything difficult doing? That is what life can be like for an AS child.

So what do you do? You figure out what the stress factors are and you control them for your child until he has matured and learned enough to do that for himself. Is he sensitive to noise? Light? Texture? The energy from having too many people around him? Look at everything, and remember that AS kids do not experience the world the same way we do.

Then you encourage your child to do self-calming activities, usually some sort of repetitive motion. Most ASD kids will have some sort of stim, or physical repetitive motion, that may be socially inappropriate but is actually an essential part of maintaining self-control. Too many parents try to suppress this; that will backfire. Teaching time and place is fine, but do not suppress.

Once you've got those in place, you can make note of the patterns in your child and all the opportunities to mitigate the stress build up. You teach your child to see and take responsibility for these patterns.

The goal is to have the process done before your child hits pre-teen hormones, or simply gets too big to control physically. But be prepared that this is a process that takes years. Still, when it is done, your child has skills that last a lifetime.

Sometimes medication is necessary to get a child into the space he needs to be to work on these skills, and some kids don't develop the self awareness it takes to acquire them. But I think you go through the process first, see how far it goes for you, before you look at medication. We never had to medicate; we were able to figure out enough to get through without our son lashing at people outside of home (he got violent with me plenty of times, but as long as he was small enough to not do serious damage, I just sucked it up as part of learning). He had himself under control before puberty.

My son was not having fits of rage at a young age. He got angry, but he never hit me. When he turned 12, everything changed. Thinking back, I think that hormonal changes also added stress.

My question for everyone, is what do you when you get a later diagnosis, in our case at 14. What therapies work then?

Is it too late? My son has hit me in anger, and feels badly later. Right now he is on a medical leave from his school. He verbally threatened another student. In evaluating our situation, I think the medications are making him very tired and unable to think through things rationally sometimes. We are in the process of reducing his dosage to see if it helps.

There's a resource recommended as part of my degree studies (on understanding autism) which I think may be invaluable to parents struggling with knowing what interventions to go for. It's a UK based charity call Research Autism. They are dedicated to reviewing all the interventions available and giving impartial advice on their effectiveness based on scientific evidence. They maintain a database of all the interventions and are gradually working through them.

Here's a link to their website:

http://www.researchautism.net/autism_tr ... tions.ikml

Wow, Mother - I'm going to add that to the "suggested reading" list and put it on my Parenting Index!

Speaking of which, there is a section where I've put a bunch of the threads regarding violence together, it might be helpful to read through them. My story of our struggle is there, often.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt166142.html

We were told to medicate (very, very randomly, by a school-appointed psych who saw him for two hours and didn't talk to us at all) at about the same age as you, decided against it for various reasons - mostly that it seemed like it was a way of avoiding figuring out the problem, at the time. A friend of mine said of the psychiatrist "If the tool you have is a hammer, eventually everything starts to look like a nail."

We started to re-think our decision when DS was 10 and things began to get much more serious...but got help that eventually made the meds unnecessary; DS has been violence-free for over a year (and just successfully completed a week without name-calling! Yay!) Had things not improved, we would have started to explore it; I know from personal experience what a long process it is; it takes a lot of 'tweaking' to get it right (I was medicated for depression in the days before SSRIs.)

My personal rubric for medication, which is just my own opinion: is your child a danger to himself or others (an actual danger, i.e. will he or someone else wind up in the hospital, not will someone get a scraped knee) is the big one. The other one, that's tougher: is your child "stuck" because he is unable to learn and change without getting a "break" that he might get from medication.

http://www.freevideosforautistickids.co ... ation.html

We have had a lot of success through treating my sons' co-existing medical conditions or "comorbidities," namely the severe anxiety disorders selective mutism and obsessive compulsive disorder. They each get Prozac (fluoxetine, a first-line treatment for these and other anxiety disorders) by day, and Clonidine at night and during a severe anxiety attack.

The top video on the page features a child psychiatrist discussing recent research regarding comorbid psychiatric conditions. The bottom video is an overview of medication use presented at Yale University. The bottom link is a summary of different medications commonly used in the U.S. with ASD patients.

I am currently overhauling my website, so a lot more material will be added and reorganized over the course of the next few weeks.