Scary day.

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This morning, I left Eldest at home alone for about ten minutes, while I was down at the corner waiting for his little brother's bus. He's seven, I wasn't far, I wasn't long, I didn't think that there would be any problem. I gave him the choice; he chose not go out with me and little brother.

But....

I got home, offered him breakfast. He accepted eagerly, but when I gave it to him he complained about his tummy hurting, and didn't want to eat more than one corner of one quarter of his sandwich. We were doing something special today -- a summer science class -- and I figured it was nerves.

Got him to the class, went home to wait for Youngest to get dropped off, and then the two of us went to get Eldest. He was sort of flopping around on the floor, all listless (it's a library; they have cushions for the kids to stretch out upon) and moany. Turns out he had to go lay down during the class; the librarian agreed with me that it was probably nerves.

Of course, it wasn't.

On the way out the door, I asked him again if he was feelign okay. "Dad, I've got to tell you something....."

When I was out with his brother this morning, he decided that he was going to consume "three handfuls" of the gummy vitamins we give the kids each morning. This explained a hell of a lot.

Got him home, called poison control, was told not to worry, but he should have extra fluids. I made it clear to Eldest that I was VERY glad that he'd told me what he did, but that it was a very bad thing to have done, and very dangerous.

"Are you mad at me? I'm STUPID. Are you REALLY mad at me?" and so forth for the next hour. He spent the rest of the day laying on the couch, moaning and complaining, and I must confess that I was not nearly as patient and nurturing as I should have been. His mother had a minor OD a few months ago (major depression, and it was purposeful) and I was having something of a flashback. Very different circumstances, of course, but still...ugly memory.

Here's the thing that bothers me most. We put him to bed that night, and I asked him if he'd learned anything. He said that he had. "Will you do it again?" I asked. "I might," he said.

I was flabbergasted. "Guy, look how sick you are! I told you how dangerous this was! Why would you do it again?"

"I don't know. I just might. You should put the bear medicine where I can't reach it."

I'd already done that. And we're getting rid of the damned things; the kids are such picky eaters that they NEED a vitamin, but this isn't the best way to go.

It's good -- great, really -- that he was honest about what he might do. But god, is the impulse control THAT bad? Does it ever get better?

might be a comorbid.
I know a girl who was only recently diagnosed with OCD in her thirties because she didn't have physical expressions of OCD, only the mental ones (repetitive thoughts of drinking shampoo whenever entering the shower, etc).

I'd suggest you
1) Determine if your kid knows the difference between a thought that might hurt him and a thought that wont hurt him.
2) Discuss what are repetitive thoughts.
3) Get him to promise to tell you if any thoughts that might hurt him ever come into his head for more than one second.
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Mind you. You may have put the ACTUAL explination in your post already:
Perhaps he knows what his mother did, and is mimicking it because of some psychological need to understand it / does he know about it? are you sure??? have you discussed it with him since? this might be a cry out of "i don't understand!"

If that's the case, you might wanna get advice from someone trained in psych to give you some tips before you tackle it.

He doesn't know what happened with his mom; that was at night, and he slept through the whole thing. Thankfully. He knows that mom is sick, and we've discussed depression, but he doesn't really get it. He seems to think that she's "lazy", which he will not hesitate to tell her.

A diplomat he is not.

The catalyst seems to be that the stupid vitamins look and taste like candy, and he told me that he just decided that they WERE candy. And I wasn't there to tell him "no".

If nothing else, that's the last time I leave him home alone for a while.

I have a lack of impulse control and Asperger's. I usually don't act on it but ever since I was very young knives, the garbage disposal, tall balconies, the bleach under the kitchen sink, even riding in the car with access to openable doors struck fear of death in me not because I thought these things would jump out and attack me or that someone would attack me with them but because I ALWAYS had the thought that I could kill MYSELF with these things in a few simple motions and I had an urge to.

The urge was never acted on until I was 20 and actually did take a knife and cut myself with it and this became a routine. I once opened a car door while my sister was driving 40 mph planning (or not planning, just having the impulse) to jump out cause we had been arguing.

So... I guess what I'm saying is.. yeah your son should probably have obviously dangerous stuff hidden from him and I think it actually might be a symptom of childhood depression/bipolar disorder/PTSD. It occurred to me recently I may have been living in a nightmare state much of my childhood and that this was not normal because of genetics that caused depression and due to my sensitivity to my parents' arguments.

None of this is to blame you in any way or make you frightened, just to say maybe you should investigate the possibility of depression/PTSD/bipolar disorder in your son and also make the house less tempting to his impulses and also try to investigate this further with a therapist?

Best of luck!

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Last edited by purchase on 25 Jul 2011, 1:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Rolzup

So sorry to hear about that stressful situation. Sounds like the last thing you need is more stress in your life. I think you made the right decision to just not have them in the house anymore, at least for the time being. Vitamins are actually one of the most common things kids accidentally poison themselves with. I resisted for a long time even having them in the house. Of course, I came out of the shower one morning to find DS doing "shots" of benedryl so I have had my terrifying moments on the phone with poison control . Take care.

In many households, it is necessary to keep all medications/vitamins in a locked box. A tool box, or a tackle box, with a lock on it, can often work nicely for this purpose. Depending on the situation in your house, it may be easier to use a combination lock than one with a key - that way, all adults would be able to access the box without having to worry about finding the key. If a babysitter is going to be watching children when medication needs to be administered, the dose should be taken out ahead of time, and left with instructions for when (and how) to administer the medication.

You're right that your children may need vitamins, and it is not a solution to throw them out, simply because they cannot be trusted around them. Securing them is a better solution, so they can get the benefits, but they don't have unlimited access.

OK, I'll admit it, I was that kid. Ate the whole bottle of Flintstones vitamins, then LIED about it. I remember the colorful bottle on the kitchen table with the cartoons on it almost begging me to have one, then another, then all of them. There was also a commercial on TV, with music and dancing and happy kids! It really felt like finding candy. I was around 7.

My Mom had to line us all up and tell us whoever ate them was gonna die in an hour if they didn't get to the hospital to get me to admit it was me because I knew I was in TROUBLE. Of course after I 'fessed up she explained that I wasn't really going to die, but had to drink a lot of milk.

Her solution was pretty good, she stopped buying vitamins that looked and tasted like candy. She bought the regular kind and kept them up high. That will probably help your kids remember to not confuse them with candy.

Hope it helps.

To make you feel better.

My baby brother J bird [now 14 years of age] at age 8 decided to drink shampoo. Boy that was a fun day. Don't worry nothing serious. He's still here with us. Not enough for him to kill himself. I think he realized it tasted like ass to drink it.

This is a rather common thing to happen ASP NT or other so I wouldnt read too much into. Unless you start seeing a trend I wouldnt start worrying about some other co morbid condition just yet.

As for the conversation it's important to remember how logical and honest the aspie mind is. The vitamins taste and look like candy. He knows this would still be a temptation to him so he may have just honestly answered that he was not sure.

I would ask some questions and talk to him a bit but I would not start jumping to any conclusions about others possible issues based on his doing something that many many children do.

Oh, I did something very similar as a kid. With me, it was an entire bottle of these little silver balls used for cake decoration. I can't even think of those damned things now without feeling nauseous.

We talked this morning. I asked him once more if he thought he'd ever do this again, and his response was "No way!"

"Then...why...last night, why did you say you weren't sure?"

"I was just kidding!"

Eldest was too miserable to kid around last night; I think that he really was being honest. And he was also being honest this morning about never doing it again.

He is large, he contains multitudes.

Strange, when I was 11 I knew that medicine and vitamin pills were not candy and that you should not take them unless your parents said it was okay, even if they tasted good. When I was 13 however, I used to think I was going to start drinking my parent's alcohol while sleepwalking. This bothered me so much I used to tie empty tin cans to my bedroom door to wake me up. But it never happened.

There was a comedy show recently that built part of its storyline around the fact that kids do frequently end up in the emergency room from those candy-like vitamins. One answer is definitely to buy something that doesn't taste horrible, but that does NOT look so appealing, either. The gummy vitamins look far too much like candy, and taste too much like candy, to be safe around kids. Even when their brains understand the difference, there isn't anything inherent in the item to check the impulse to simply eat something that tastes good.

Sorry you had to deal with that.