11 yo showing more symtoms

Post Reply New Topic

Our son ,who is diagnosed with aspergers, has been showing symptoms of OCD and other symptoms. He ,today, used the bathroom and as he flushed the bowl-he started to reach into the toilet until I said NO. I then asked him what he was doing, he said "I thought Maysey (our cat) was in the toilet. Further questioned he said " I pictured Maysey being in there. I continued to pursue the what was going on and asked him (trying to understand if it was was a hallucination) when he became very angry with me for my questions. He is also showing symptoms of paranoia by asking if he's going to be arrested for this and that all being just ordinary behaviors. We have further testing scheduled and I really fear he is pre schizophrenic. God, I hope not!! Paul

If anyone with an an autistic child has any insight into this behavior- please chime in!! Paul

The only thing I can think-of, is he's having a negative side-effect to a NEW medication, or a couple of meds are no longer "playing nice"----or, an allergic reaction to a food?

Also, you're 70 and have an 11-year-old? There's nothing wrong with that, just: "Wow, that's interesting".

My wife had multiple miscarriages in her previous marriage and had 2 with me. I thought she would give up but said "one more try" after some acupuncture. She finally got her boy and has been the most wonderful mother EVER. I thought when we had KK it might have been a mistake- but when I see KK and his mother together, I know it wasn't. They are so happy together it melts my heart. I love our son very much as well. Paul

^^ Awww, that's so WONDERFUL----such a heartwarming story!!

Please keep us abreast of his further testing, and how he's doing!!

God bless you and yours!!

Cat

I don't have any knowledge of pre-schizophrenia but I am not sure what you are describing is hallucinations and paranoia.

If I am understanding what you are saying, your son imagined your cat was in the toilet and tried to rescue him--but was afraid he was in trouble?

The bit about the cat could be pretend play/imagination as opposed to a hallucination and worrying about getting in trouble doesn't mean paranoia. I could see having trouble differentiating between house rules and criminal laws. If he is not allowed to stick his hand in the toilet (b/c obvs) he might worry that there would be criminal penalties without it being paranoia so much as a social cognitive issues concerning rules and how they are executed and by whom.

I'm not sure what to make of the cat/toilet story. Asking whether things are against the law is not paranoia, though. It isn't always obvious to kids what types of behaviors are illegal and what types are just "not allowed". If anything, I'd say your kid's questions might indicate anxiety, but maybe not even that.

I'm more concerned with his increasing OCD than with the cat story. If he is developing more slowly than typical, he might still be playing with real vs. imaginary. It's more a problem if he continues to be reacting to things that no-one else sees over and over again, or if they start telling him to do harmful things.

An increase in OCD means your kiddo is stressed out. It could be a neurochemical change. 11 is pre-puberty and he could be started to experience some of those changes. He might even be clueing into what other people think, which if you think about it, can be very stressful, especially when you are figuring out that you are different than the other kids. Or it could be a stressor in school or in his personal life, like bullying or something. It's worth checking out.

We would all like to think that a child who doesn't pick up on social cues wouldn't hear the fear and distress in your voice when you question him about this cat thing. But the sad truth is that a lot of autistic kids will hear it, and react with fear. We're just really tuned into parental fear/anger/distress as a sign of whether or not everything is OK. The world is chaotic, but Mom and Dad are relatively predictable. No offense, but he likely was trying to say anything he thought you wanted him to say at that point. I wouldn't expect that to be logical. And I'm not overly concerned that it didn't come out sounding logical. We are often terrible in these situations. (meaning unskilled in reassuring parents)

This sounds more like invasive thoughts than OCD. I clearly remember having them at age 11. I think the cause of them was being forced to grow up too fast without getting any benefits of growing up. Namely, I already had 90% of adult responsibilities, but maybe 5% of adult rights. Which resulted in me feeling suicidal and actively planning to end my life. Since it's already been drilled into my head that suicide is wrong, I tried to convert my suicidal thoughts into something else. Unfortunately, it ended up being violent fantasies of sorts, that I picked up from TV and movies. (PG-13 stuff, like "Terminator".) They consisted of me actively doing it, me causing it somehow, having it happen in front of me and not being able to stop it, or having it happen behind my back and not knowing about it until it's too late. The targets were people in my life I had conflicts with. Of course, I felt intense guilt for having those thoughts in the first place, which couldn't have been good for my self-esteem.

By that age, I already "knew" that I "wasn't supposed to" have those thoughts. So I didn't dare tell anybody: not my family, not my friends (if I had any), not my classmates, not my teachers, not my therapist (she'd only grill me about "feelings"), and not my religious leader (if I had one). I just let these thoughts fester in my head, with the only remedies for it being playing video games and sneaking alcohol from the liquor cabinet. The thoughts gradually faded out over the next 4 years, ceasing completely by age 15.

I'm sure therapy came a long way over the past 22 years. So perhaps the OP's son will get more from it than I ever did.

Both of my aspies were also diagnosed with OCD. My oldest, who is now 10, at age 9, was convinced he was covered in poison.. thought he was dying and that we were all dying, too. At a certain point, he thought he had walked through a puddle of gasoline and was covered in it (there wasn't any kind of puddle at all where we were walking). He was distressed, crying and almost non functional until we got him on meds. WE did a lot of therapy that made a small dent, but he was having such a rough time, medications were our only option to get him through. It worked beautifully. I also had worries about schizophrenia, because it seemed like he might be hallucinating or delusional. One day he was convinced that while we were out on a bike ride, he may have been bitten by a rabid animal and then forgot about it. It's VERy intense! when we described what had been going on with him, the Psychologist said it was "Text book OCD symptoms."

My daughter's OCD flared up very recently and we got her on some medication, too. Her's was really different... like, she was worried that she was going to do something wrong. "Mom, I'm afraid I'm going to push the aquarium over. I'm afraid I might throw myself down the stairs. I'm afraid I'm goign to say a cuss word...etc."And these thoughts and worries were just a constant... going from one, directly to the next without even a chance for me to respond. I tried using techniques we had learned for helping kids with anxiety and OCD, but again, medication was the only thing that really helped her.

I don't know what is going on with your son, but I do know that if it is Anxiety/OCD related, the book "Freeing your Child from Axiety" by Tamar Chansky is a good place to start. Good luck. I totally know the feelings you are having.

I understand being concerned, but this is not the right attitude...he may not be, but if he was then it is an obstacle but not the end of all hope. If that is the case he may need some help with it, but with the right support and a family who cares and just doesn't write him off as hopeless over a potential diagnoses he could receive its possible to overcome some of it. But also keep in mind its pretty rare for schizophrenia to develop before adolecence, and is not all that unusual for children to perceive things that don't make sense. I remember when me and year younger sister were kids we thought we saw all kinds of unusual things like we both were convinced some kind of being would be standing in our door way every night when we went to sleep. Also I know times when I was sick I would have some weird dreams and wake up upset and confused and had a hard time determining if it was a dream or real.

Also people on the spectrum can take things too litterally, so it is also possible when he was asking about getting arrested he thought doing something wrong was the same as committing a crime or something like that, more than baseless paranoia.