Medications and sensory disturbances regarding my son

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This is Robin, again.

I will reply to two ideas that were brought up with a previous post from a couple of weeks ago. Sorry I've waited so long to address these, but I can only get on here during the weekends for the most part, giving my job and so forth.

First is medications. He used to be on Ritalin, and he was taken off. I and a couple of his teachers hated it, because it seemed to make it harder to teach him. It also seemed to make him tantrum much more violently, and I sometimes wonder if this particular drug did anything to his mind in some way. His tantrums, however, stayed the same when he was taken off the drug, and that was like three to four years ago. He was put on some antipsychotic when we took him to the hospital after a severe outburst about two years ago. That drug I hated, because it made him act like a zombie. Yeah, he was calmer with it, but he wanted to sleep all the time. I just don't see medications that work with him.

Second is sensory disturbances. This is a hard one, because I don't know. He doesn't seem to go out of control in regards to loud noise. I can vacuum with him around, however it does seem to annoy him. He says things like, "Do you need to do that now?" I can do it, but it seems to interfere with his concentration somewhat. He is also a very picky eater, so picky that I and my husband have expressed that his diet is relatively not as healthy as it should be. He refuses to eat a lot of things, and he doesn't like a lot of "gourmet" foods. He also refuses to eat anything on his plate that is mixed. The vegetables, meat and other stuff has to be seperate, and we've caught him feeding food to our dog if he doesn't like it behind our backs. If we feed him chili, he will spend like ten minutes just picking out the beans, lining them around his plate for some reason. He also seems to listen to music very loud, and I have on occasion had my next door neighbor called because of his loud music, so I don't know if there is anything with noise.

According to what some people have said about "stimming," I asked because he seems consistently agitated. He constantly stims, as some call it. He'll sit at a table and play with his silverware, appearing to gaze at the reflection of the kitchen lights off the shiny metal surface. He does acknowledge when we speak to him, tending to stop his stimming when speaking with someone. He also paces the house a lot, and usually runs instead of walks when getting up from the couch, yet he doesn't seem to hit anything when running, as I've heard some AS people do. I have seen him fidget with plastic objects a lot.

The thing with stimming is this: I tend to watch him. He stims much more before a rage event. He'll stim so hard with a plastic object, that he starts to rip it. I tend to know then that something is wrong, usually after he felt criticized or something. He also stims bizarelly during a rage and after, rocking back and forth and so forth. This rocking, though, is never seen at any other time, only during a rage or after, and it usually persists until he calms down.

Now, is this stimming, because it is almost constant, he even moves his legs about watching TV, due to sensory disturbances? He doesn't seem to me to be overly sensitive, and I have asked him if he feels overly sensitive. He says no. Loud noises don't cause him to go into a rage. It's usually something that offends him that causes this, some of which is so minor to us but feels so deep to him. He seems to have to his way or all hell breaks loose.

it's great that you notice his behavior patterns change when he's beginning to have difficulties...once in a tantrum, it's very hard to get son to stop and calm down. and typically for him, it's the little things that seem to disturb him more than the things that i think would bother him....as far as the food thing goes, with 3 aspies in the house i've gotten quite used to having foods not touch each other. i've found using those plastic divided plates helps. in the end, i'd rather just have them eat and not fuss about how the broccoli touched the potatoes.........meds are a difficult thing. you'd think that someone would come up with meds that worked for a great majority....son went through countless meds before we found a combination that works. his dr wanted to take him off one of the meds recently and i flatly refused~why mess with a good thing ? he's finally doing better, and the dr wants to take him off the meds ???

He might not even know what his triggers are or that he is reaching overload. Unless you know how your body is reacting to stimulus than you may not be able to figure out what is bothering you. Sounds silly, but until a doctor told me what I was experiencing were sensory overloads I didn't know what was happening. After that they I learned to look for triggers and how to recognize that I was starting to get agitated and what to do to about it to try and stop from going into overload.

Also - my husband can not figure why I get so crabby or moody over "nothing" sometimes. And when that happens it is not ONE particular thing per se - it is that the ONE thing may be on top of a cumulative sensory overloading. Like if you have alot of auditory sensitivity than you are constantly being barraged by sounds - or like a wall of noise. The doctor told me that most people have a filter to keep background noise in the background. Well - if that filter isn;t working properly than you can hear the refrigerator, the furnace, the TV and people talking all at the same competing level. Which means that it can be very difficult to follow a conversation if it is noisy. So if I need to hear something on the TV than I may have to really concentrate to understand what is being said. If my husband tried to talk to me while I am doing that I may not even notice he is there because I've had to focus all my effort into hearing the TV. We have had arguments over him feeling that I've ignored him and I remind him that he needs to make sure that I have actually heard him not just to talk at me. Also - if I am trying to concentrate and someone keeps interrupting me than that can be bothersome too.

Some people may have understimulated sensory systems too. So stimming maybe from both - but if it seems like it is occuring in great frequency before a meltdown than it could be a coping mechanism. Same for the rocking after the meltdown.

Hi,
Suggestion, have an occupational therapist complete a sensory profile....this information will be very helpful and they should help develop interventions that will help your child. Also, have a psychiatrist that has a background in ASP evaluate your child. Just some thoughts.

Sounds like he's focusing on one thing to try and block out the rest...I do this, especially when I've just had too much. I'd stand in a crowded store and look at a shelf of batteries for 2 hours if you'd let me...just trying to block out my surroundings. Basically something minor can set me off at times...but it's really the cumlative effect of the entire day I've come to realize...not really that trival "minor thing" that sets me off...

I like loud music also at times...it drowns out everything else, and I find I can focus on it and nothing else .

Don't like my food to mix too much either...but not as picky as I was when I was younger. With me I would find one food that I liked and didn't want anything else for 2 months.

Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight: What to Do If You Are Sensory Defensive in an Overstimulating World by Sharon Heller...check it out at the library if you can find a copy...helped me understand it much better.

'He seems to have to his way or all hell breaks loose.'

that sentence sums me up as a kid!!
i never even thought playing with my food wasnt usual! i thougth every body did that

the biggest example is when i eat a packet of nestle Smarties... - i still do this even today as almost 22.. its just a habit i have!
that is- to empty the tube out onto a table oron the floor, and sort them all out into their respective colours, then i put them in lines, like a bar graph, in colour order of - red orange yellow green purple brown. has to be in these order before i eat them, ! and eating them consists of eating them one at a time, going through the colours from right to left

i pick out the kidney beans from my chilli and line them up on theside, and the same with mushrooms.. because i dont like to eat either of these Yuck!!


oi also quit my last job becuase the lights bothered me too much. they were too bright for me

...I've always thought sorting candy by color and arranging it was completely normal.

I'm 39 and I still eat smarties by color, yellow first, orange second, etc...the colors I like I always save for last.

Just a little advice, which is at his age I think he should be involved in deciding what meds he goes on if at all, hes old enough to understand what they do and there are risks involved with most any med so I think he should be able to help decide it as hes the one whos going to use it.

The reason why they haven't been able to come up with a drug that works on all people is that human neurochemistry is extremely complex. Whats more, the drugs themselves aren't exactly a very exact science either.

I do not trust drugs at all. In many cases it seems like using a hammer to kill a fly. That metaphor works on another level too because the approach can often do a lot of damage.

I think a lot of problems, even that seem like they are caused by a chemical imbalance could be solved with good therapy.

I even talk to someone who claims to have cured their own Schizophrenia (I take that with a grain of salt, but for the most part it seems plausible.)



That being said, drugs probably are an appropriate solution more often then I'd believe.

Hi Robin - my son was initially dx with ADHD and was on a Ritalin-type drug for years. We've successfully removed him from the drug based on some of my opinions and observations. IMO, the stimulant was also stimulating the violence, rage and aggression. He still has tantrums, but they are triggered by his environment more than anything else. As some have noted, it's not just any one sensory/anxiety issue, but for my child it seemed like it was an accumulation. Eventually, the overload caused him to explode and the drugs made the explosion far worse.



The difference, IMO, is that it's an expected noise - whether vaccuuming or music. My son seems to think better when he's thinking on what seems to me like two levels. He can focus on a task with music (as loud as I can stand it) going in the background. If I turn the music off, his focus will fall apart.

In classrooms, grocery stores, anything outside the known home environment, suddenly the noise can't be anticipated. At home, you get out the vaccuum and he knows what will happen next. In a classroom, he sits down to do a math paper when the kid in the front row suddenly, accidentally drops his book or the class looks different today than it did yesterday - suddenly there are new posters on the walls or a substitute teacher with a different voice. My son can trigger off auditory noise and also what I call visual noise - like the grocery store. He can handle small stores, but to suddenly put him in a grocery store where the displays are constantly changing and customers are different and the checkers are different will cause him to go hyperactive.

He loves to go out to eat, but restaurants also present a new, unfamiliar environment. We now take a book - yeah, we know it's rude to read while sitting at the table, but it sure beats having everybody watching our loud monkey-boy.

In our case, it's the way he is and we can't medicate him to change his mind any more than we can give him a pill to change his hair color. Instead we're constantly working on the triggers and trying to teach him coping mechanisms for those times when he does encounter new environments.

i agree that meds will not solve all of your son's problems~they won't solve all of my son's problems either...they do, however, reduce the amount of anxiety he feels. his lows are also not as extreme.