stress induced illness?

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Hey
so.... where to start ?
My DS is 12 and has aspergers ( only been fully diagnosed for past 2 years ), he while in primary school he used to have 'melt downs' which would included crying, kicking out and violence...... he has recently started main stream secondary school and the melt downs seem less often ( he seems to generally enjoy the routine they maintain at secondary school )....
BUT i have found that when some thing goes wrong, or he fears he will be told off or lack of homework or similar things he is now getting headaches and stomach cramps............ and is getting sent home from school. i would say it could be to get out of a certain lesson but sometimes the lesson that has caused him panic has already been !
can his anxietys and stress be causing these ?

Yes, definitely. I used to have tons of issues due to anxiety and stress. Teach him some simple breathing exercises, they worked wonders on me:

Breathe in for 4, hold for 4, breathe out for 8. Or another time length using the same ratio.

Another one I like is four short breaths in, four short breaths out. Kind of like puffing the air out.

I agree that those symptoms can certainly be caused by anxiety and Danny's suggestion for breathing exercises is a good one. He needs to practice the breathing exercises often when he is calm in order to be able to use them when he is in a high anxiety state. A therapist once described it to me this way: If you are going to rob a bank and plan to use a bicycle as your getaway vehicle, you better learn how to ride a bike first! In other words you can't expect to rely on an exercise to help you if you only try to do it when you are already feeling panicky. If he's willing to try the breathing exercises, have him "practice" at regular times throughout the day whether he is feeling high anxiety or not. Maybe he could set an alarm on his watch or something for a time when it would be convenient for him to take a minute out to do this. I think its also helpful if you can work with him on monitoring his emotional state more closely. The goal would be for him to recognize when his anxiety is first starting to build up and take steps to calm himself as soon as he notices it. If he can start to catch it before it gets really high, hopefully the physical symptoms of headaches and stomach cramps will greatly reduce.

My DD5 gets stomach pains and headaches too, also her bowel movements are always soft. I have taken her to the Drs several times, they have done sample tests and found no bugs etc, they have no explanation for it physically. I have suggested that it could be stress related due to her aspergers and they all say it cant be and dismiss it. This is really frustrating because the stomach pains are still there and I cant do anything about it!

One thing that I noticed when watching the film Temple Grandin is that she only ate jello because she had stress induced colitis, this makes me think it could be similar to my daughter but Drs all say no. I dont know what else I can do about it. She also bites herself and grinds her teeth with anxiety so I dont see why her stomach pains are not linked to the stress. People get stomach ulcers with stress!

Will think about trying these breathing exercises with my dd too

Possibly you are getting this response from the docs because they don't often see a young child being affected by stress to this degree and probably just can't fathom it. You know your daughter best and your instincts are probably spot on! DS takes a probiotic supplement which has helped his digestive issues a lot. He would go back and forth between constipation and loose stools. Several folks suggested yogurt with active cultures but that just didn't seem to be enough. With the addition of the probiotic tablet (I found a chewable that tastes like vanilla ice cream ) and at least one yogurt a day this has really balanced out. For the biting and teeth grinding, have you tried to substitute more appropriate things to chew on? Surgical tubing is cheap and from what I understand, safe to chew on. There are also plenty of chewelry items available that can be worn as a necklace or bracelet.

Bombaloo, thanks I will have a look for some probiotic supplement and see how that works for her! She has a chewigem necklace, shes almost eaten it now lol, might need a new one! She also has an old teething dummy in a U shape which she seems to prefer. She only has these at night as this seems to be when shes doing it. Maybe surgical tubing could be cheaper seeing as they get thoroughly chewed instantly.

Thanks for the tip!

I had this as a kid and DS does, too. One thing we found that helped: cutting out liquid milk. We are both lactose-intolerant and that gets exacerbated by stress. You might try different dietary changes one at a time to see if they help.

I am not saying anything about diet being a miracle cure or anything like that, but I do think that many autistic people have gastrointestinal sensitivities just like they have sensory sensitivities. Chasing those down (just like you chase down sensory sensitivities) and eliminating/reducing them does help.

As for the anxiety, have you talked to an OT? There is an Occupational Therapy just for emotional regulation - what I liked about the one we did (How Does Your Engine Run) was that they tried lots and lots of different methods of calming and arousal until we had a list of the ones that worked. (Breathing is terrific, if it works - it didn't work at all for DS, who needs a fidget or something.)

Thank u everyone, i've booked an appointmnt with the school senco worker so we can discuss what why and where, i'm gonna mention OT to her and hope she can arrange some thing x