Help! Escalating Fast!

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My son is 6 years old and we have been trying to figure out what is wrong with him for over a year now. I've been told by many people that he sounds like he is high spectrum autistic. I even had a couple school teachers at church come up to me afterwards, after witnessing him having a pretty bad day, telling me he shows some definite signs of autism and should be tested.

I wanted him tested a year ago, but his pediatrician assured me that it couldn't be autism since he makes good eye contact. She said everything else fits, but in her experience eye contact is a deal breaker. Anyways this past month has escalated a ton! I wont go into it in great detail. But he gets in these extreme giggly moods. Once in them, he doesnt register his name or anything you say. He has run away while in the mindset, hurts others, and has almost hurt himself. We have had to restrain him sometimes. He states he doesnt remember what he did afterwards. I have appointments for autism testing and a psychiatrist, but it isnt for awhile. When he gets like this, it is like he is in another world. Does this sound like an autism symptom? Please help! We are so desperate.

I can tell you that eye contact is definitely not a deal breaker if it's ASD.

At first, it sounded a lot like an austism spectrum disorder. However, I can't recall reading about anyone forgetting what happens during a meltdown. It might happen, but most of us who are called high-functioning will remember it with chagrin. I learned eye contact very early. It's just another skill that some of us get easily and others never master.

The sudden rage and harming others, as I understand it, happen for fairly predictable reasons in most cases. It's possible you could figure out some immediate stimulus that was present in all cases. However, I had another idea that you could check about. Has your child experienced some kind of trauma, abuse, or bullying recently? In some cases, we can fail to pick up on that when it happens, so you could ask. Please try not to make it a leading question, but just ask if anything upsetting happened around the time the outbursts started. Actually, just avoid all leading questions, ever (pet peeve of mine, shared by some others).

Thats good to know! Thanks!

Has anyone seen this in any of their children or experienced it? It probably doesnt sound too serious on my above message, but if you saw him, it is just so scary. His heart races and he becomes drentched in sweat during these episodes. What breaks my heart is that he is in this other world more and more frequently throughout the day. What is worse is some of the times he will snap out of it and just cry and cry like he is scared. You can just feel his pain. When we ask him about it, he says his mind becomes blank amd dark and he doesnt remember what he did. I feel like my little boy is slipping through my hands, and he is only six.

We homeschool him and cant do that currently with how it has escalated and continues to. We are rarely bringing him public these past few weeks, because we are scared of what he will do. He is signed up for karate classes and engineering classes (he is obsessed with engineering), but he is just way too unstable to go to them now.

I'm sorry you are going through this. I am not a professional, so this is just an amateur's opinion, but it sounds more like a seizure, like some event in his brain than a typical meltdown. Does anything seem to trigger the events? How long do they last? My daughter gets stuck emotionally and melts down in a fairly typical fashion. Her events have predictable triggers. Again, really sorry, I can feel your pain in your post. Perhaps it's a temporary phase? Even if it isn't, telling yourself that it's temporary might help you get through until you get him to the professionals.

Thanks for your reply! He does have many triggers. Normally during those triggers, he has a meltdown for a long time. He gets fustrated over the simpliest things also. We have four kids and he is the oldest. It wasnt till a year ago and three kids later that we realized this was not normal. I spend 80%of my time with him and 20% total with the other 3 kids.

Anyways, the meltdowns have almost transformed into these episodes of giggly out of this world type of thing. Instead of having a meltdown, he now gets fustrated and then immediately goes to this other form. At least that is what I think I'm observing. Triggers can be: too hot, too tired, too overstimulated, too noisy, someone touching something that he has in a pariticular manner (he is extremely particular), not being able to finish whatever is in his mind, and other triggers that I am unsure what they are. It seems whatever the triggers are are becoming much more and his new type of meltdown is becoming longer and more aggressive. These episodes last for 1/2 to 3 hours.

I didnt mention this, but he has always had these giggly episodes since I can remember. It is just they are becoming more dominating. It scared us so much when he ran away last week. My husband and I, my parents, and my grandparents were all looking for him. We were just about to call the police when we found him. No matter how many times we tried to explain the seriousness of what he did, he kept trying to run away. He was in that other world for hours, and we couldnt seem to get to him.

His pediatrician, I believe, suspects he is bipolar. That is why she wants him to see a psychiatrist I guess. Before this escalated, though, it seemed like a classic high spectrum autism to me besides the avoiding eye contact.

I'm trying to just live day by day and trust in God that everything will be okay, though. I was just hoping that someone might have dealt with something simular that could help.

Haha, I understand! He has not had any abuse at all. He is homeschooled also. Although, he doesnt understand social cues like his friends blantly telling him to stop. He hasnt been bullied, but his friends have been getting more and more upset with him because of this.

Anyways, there is something i left out that I probably should have said. The reason we havent seen any type of autism specialist or psychologist is because his pediatrician (who we love dearly) was positive he had anxiety. Because whatever he had was effects his school very badly amd other issues, she placed him on a generic zoloft. The trigger point that we he started getting worse (at least in our opinion) is when walgreens switched manufacturers without informing us. He seemed to take a nose dive from there. We ended up getting him back on the same stuff, but it didnt seem to matter at all. He kept getting worse. The doctor weaned him off the meds slowly, to get him back to base, but it did not slow down is rapid increase in meltdowns/losing it. Im not for sure that the switching of the manufacturer was the cause. It is just a hypothesis.

You mentioned that the meltdown might be kind of chargrin when remembering. I wonder if to a 6 year old, he thinks he is not remembering it?

The challenge of diagnosing Aspergers is that that people on the spectrum can be so different. But, at least among the higher functioning of us, we didn't have any difficulties with people telling us to stop. The normal issue is picking up the non-verbal hints when we got old enough for people to expect us to pick them up.

But, most older Aspies remember the social mistakes they did as a kid, going really far back. We tend to have memories like the stereotypical elephant. Which is great if you are a scientist trying to pick up patterns. Not so good when you don't have a good social editing filter.

I'm not sure lay people can be of any real help in diagnosing his problem. There are specialty groups all over the internet that can help you with a particular disorder or disease, but you have to find them. As far as I know there isn't someone here that can tell you what to expect for all the stuff almost like Autism.

Eye contact is not a deal-breaker. Plus, it can be easily faked. I know because I employ some strategies to that effect. Also, I have had memory lapses following meltdowns, so that's certainly possible.


And frankly, what kind of pediatrician is it that thinks anxiety rules out autism?

What you really want is a doctor who has a lot of skill in identifying different disorders.

This is much different that being an expert in treating common disorders. Being an expert in treating autism is a lot more lucrative than being someone who knows a little about everything, as you typically won't see a lot of the rare disorders.

Hi. I'm not an expert, and I hope it isn't irresponsible of me to mention, that some of your son's behaviors are quite similar to those of a child (also 6 years of age) who attended a ceramics class that I taught, and he has, recently, been diagnosed as having 'early on-set bipolar disorder' (a treatable condition). It had initially been suggested that he might have been experiencing petite seizures. Of course, your son may not be experiencing either of these conditions, but, thought I would mention this, since you said it will be a while before he is assessed, and you might want to do a bit of research, being that, his symptoms have been progressing, rapidly...

https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/guide ... d-families

https://www.rareconnect.org/en/communities

Thanks everyone for all your responses!! ! The autism testing center called and said they had an opening, so we immediately grabbed it. Today he went and he had an 1 1/2 testing. She said she is going to email me the rest of the testing and then she will add up the results to see whether autism is his diagnosis. She didnt explain anything about how it all works yet. She did say that she saw some significant delays/symptoms (not sure how she worded it) for his age, but she is on the fence until the last bit of the testing is filled out. I should find out the end of this week!

The psychiatrist, that my son's pediatrician wanted him to see, also had an early opening this week, so we will see about bi-polarism also. I'm just praying for the correct diagnosis, whatever it is, so we can learn how to correctly handle the situation.

He sounds manic. It could be Bipolar Disorder.