New here- Having a sad day

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Hi,
I am at work and like alot of you all I started thinking about my son Tyler- he is 7, he was diagnosed with aspergers, ocd, stress anxiety and ADD all at once in April, it took us over a year to get a diagnosis even though I didn't need a file to tell me what I knew in my heart. I love my son, if I could keep him this age forever I would. He is my 2nd to youngest out of 5 children. I don't know why tonight I have been down about things with him, my husband acts like because he is on zoloft and alot of his anxiety is under control that he is cured, he is having a hard time facing this I guess. He will still ask us the same question 25 times unless we answer him back the same way he asked, yes and no he does not understand. He has always been pretty well behaved, he did something this past week that upset my husband and I and maybe it is what has brought me here, he was at his grandmothers and he killed a baby bird, no one saw how he did it, he said he wanted it to fly so he was running it across the floor. I didnt see it but my husband said he pretty much squashed it. I want to think this was an accident but he has thing with killing bugs and taking them apart. I have no one else to talk to. I have no idea if this is cause for concern. I have 2 older boys 22 and 19, if they ever did this I never knew. Tyler is the most kind hearted kid, he tells me that he loves me 100 times a day and he loves to just hang out, we are his comfort zone, he has 1 good friend and spending time with him has helped Tyler alot.
I guess it is normal to have sad days but this morning I can feel the tears trying to come. I guess I needed a good vent to others who get it. I look forward to posting here. I am so happy to have found this board. Please ignore my typing. I am on my work computer trying to type faster than I can.

Jen

This is the sort of behavior that should definitely be reported to the prescribing doctor, particularly if it was not typical of your son prior to being on the Zoloft. Certainly, it could have been an accident, but it is important for the psychiatrist who prescribes the medication to determine whether there is an affective change going on, or whether there is any other change that could be attributable to the medication. Zoloft is a drug that has to be very closely monitored, particularly in young patients like your son.

I agree. There is a "black box" warning on zoloft that it should be used with extreme caution in children. I don't think this med is working for your child?

I'm sorry you're going through this. I hope you find something that helps stop the pattern. It sounds really heartbreaking, because you love your son so much but his behavior right now seems so horrible. I hope you get it worked out, with the help of your dr.

Welcome home, Tysmommy. Glad you are here!

Merle

Welcome to WP, Tysmommy.

Having never met your son, I can't offer any clues into his behavior. I can only describe what happened to me as a child when I was about your son's age. I do not have autism and am a pretty normal person (college educated, professional, etc.) but I also accidentally killed several animals as a child.

Once I found a robin's nest outside with several blue eggs in it but no mama. I thought the mama had abandoned the eggs and became worried because I knew eggs needed warmth to hatch. So I took the eggs and tried to warm them in my hands, but I squeezed too tight and they all broke. When my parents found out, they got extremely angry. I was punished, even though I never meant to kill the birds. I only had meant to help them.

Another time, our pet cat had kittens. I accidentally killed one when I jumped from the third step of our staircase without looking and landed on a kitten, breaking its neck. I cried for days.

Another time (yes, this was an unfortunate pattern in my youth) I was holding a baby rabbit while in a pet store. My dad was looking at tropical fish and the pet store owner let me hold the rabbit. As I wandered around the store with the rabbit, I got too close to a monkey that was in a cage hanging from the ceiling. The monkey reached out and snatched the rabbit from my arms, ripping out its fur and mangling it. The pet store owner screamed at me, accused me of giving the rabbit to the monkey, which I did not. I still felt awful about it and cried for days.

Finally, I used to torch bugs using a magnifying glass in the sunshine. All the neighborhood kids did it. I guess we didn't realize how cruel it was.

By the way, I'm a huge animal lover and support my local animal shelter, etc. I don't know why all that happened in my youth, but I think I turned out OK.

All that to say: Sometimes these things are just a normal part of growing up. I'm sure my parents were a bit worried, as you are. But I wonder if you would be as concerned about this incident and the bug fascination if your son was just a typical kid (without the other diagnoses). Granted, that might have something to do with it, but it might not.

Welcome to WP, Tysmommy. And Mom_of_Lucas, thank you for sharing your personal experience with animals while young.

I honestly have no idea what to make of the exact incident, but I will tell you that I've shed a lot of tears over or for my son over the years. And I also believe in my heart that he'll be just fine someday. It's just that everything with our kids seems to happen in extremes. Extremely wonderful, or extremely stressful. There isn't much even keel or "average" in their lives, it seems. So we're going to fly from one end to the other right along with them - or maybe for them, given that my son doesn't seem to be half as upset by some of the things as I am. And, also, well, it seems sometimes there is so little I can DO about any of it. His successes are failures really are all his, not mine, and the failures often seem so, well, unfair.

Let yourself cry when you need to. And let yourself burst with pride when your amazing child blows everyone away with something else. That will happen, too

Welcome Tysmommy. My son is 9 and has the same dxs as your son, his twin brother also has same except OCD. There are definitely sad days, and that is OK. There are wonderful days too. I agree with DW_a_mom about the extreme ups and downs. Some days it feels like I can hardly catch my breath!

We have not had an incident like the one you mentioned, but I can imagine it happening all to easily given our sons' impulsiveness and poor coordination. Was he remorseful afterwards?

I would agree with the people who suggested giving this info to the prescribing dr.

Welcome to our forum

I hope you can find a little space here to talk, to discuss and have fun.

Kaleido

I appreciate everyones honest repsonses. I am going to call his doctor Monday. He is very upset about what happend but I am not sure it if is because he got caught, my 5 year old told on him.It is hard to tell if he even really understands that what he did was wrong. There are times that he seens so bright and he amazes and other days it amazes me that he has so little concept of other things. He is still very impulsive but that is mostly verbal, he is very animated and has to share any thing new with everyone, no matter who it is. It is just so hard sometimes. I guess that is why I am having my ups and downs too. I guess on the good days I can forget for a little while but really I still see the little things that others may see as quirks. I just love him so much and there are times that we have issues and I honestly have no idea if the way that we handle them are huritng or helping him, we try to explain things to him, some times he gets it other times he just looks lost. My husband is very upset over the bird incident, he is a Deputy so he see's things in a differant light sometimes. I haft to remind him that Tyler is just a 7 year old little boy who may not understand that it was wrong to do what he did, we were at the beach the day before and a guy had live bait fish that he had been cutting up and no one made a big deal of that so I wonder in Tylers mind if that may have confused him. I am just so glad that I found others to talk to, this has been a very lonley process. We have a group here in Pensacola but they meet here in the mornigs and I work nights so that doesnt work for me. I have very little time for friends so this about as close as it gets for me right now.

Hello Tysmommy!

In your last post you mentioned if the bait being cut up confused your son in reference to the bird incident. I can tell you that my son is VERY specific. Example: He leaves the milk out of the fridge after pouring a glass. Naturally as parents we say "Put that milk away". But the next time he does it again. So u explain that u must put the milk away every single time u use it. Then he even puts it away if its empty. He also gets out other things from the fridge and doesn't put them away. It can drive a person insane at times, but I have to be very specific when I give him a rule, and learn when not to sweat the small stuff because if u say "Always put things u get out of the fridge away unless they are empty", this is a two part command and it can possibly confuse him. So the fact that it is ok to kill and disect things sometimes but not others just may confuse him, or maybe not. Every person is different. Its trial and error with every child, just remember to never assume that they understand any 'implied' lesson in life.

My son is now 15 yrs old and is a smart kid. We recently moved to a large city from a small town. He knew that he shouldn't go into the street without looking for cars, but several times I have caught him walking right on the curb of a street that is narrow and busy and the cars were wizzing by him just a few inches away! He was following the rule, but didn't understand the meaning behind the rule: You stay out of the street because cars are dangerous and can kill you! I just assumed that he understood that part!

i agree with the other posters about monitoring his behaviors on the meds. other than that, i am a very harmless nt adult and i used to love taking ants and pulling off their legs and heads and seeing how they move around without it. sounds crazy but i was very curious. im pretty sure the bird thing was an accident. sometimes kids with as can't tell how strong they are or how much force they are really putting on something. i understand your concern but i don't think you have to worry.

I would be concerned regarding your sons incident with the bird as any parent should be when they show cruelty to animals but if it never happens again then you could dismiss it as a one off incident. I would discuss it with his Dr and keep a close eye on him. Hopefully it's nothing but it's too much of a risk to ignore this kind of behaviour which you already know otherwise you wouldn't be here asking questions. I know it's not going to cheer you up but unfortunately having people tell you not to worry it;s normal etc isn't constructive and doesn't take the problem away. (I've had 13yrs of hearing it's normal when I no fullwell that its not regarding my son).

Isn't that how an aeroplane takes off? Runs along the ground, then takes off up flying in the air?

Is that how he thought birds take off too?

Just a thought, welcome by the way xx

Wow...not sure if you are supporting what I posted, or contradicting me!! !

Too much info for me.......It went waaaaay over my head, sorry xx