Did I step over the line on this?
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| Thu, 05-03-2007 - 4:46pm |
OK I belong to a few boards and the one board I am on is just a general kinda thing. Well I saw this post from a mom and I read it and gave my 2 cents. Well tell me if you can smell ASD or not...........BTW mom seem like she's in denial but you tell me...Thankx
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I was curious to know if anyone else has gone through severe behavioral problems with their toddler (my son is 2 1/2) and what advice any of you might have to cope. My son is so exhausting, I feel like I want to put him in day care just to get a break! he started to potty train and now he won't wear diapers at all even though he totally regressed and doesn't go on the potty. He poops and pees anywhere, all over the house. He doesn't play with his toys. Instead he does things that he knows gets him in trouble-for instance, he dumps houseplants, spits his juice all over himself, that sort of thing. He won't take naps and doesn't sleep well at night (he is always waking up and going downstairs to sleep on the couch in the middle of the night-he won't go to bed until after 9 pm and wakes up at 7 every morning so I have NO break from him, ever). He doesn't eat well. He never eats anything healthy that I give him and just wants pretzels and hersey's kisses (which i don't give him and then his behavior gets worse). I have heard other moms complain about picky eating, but when I say he eats nothing, I mean it. he won't touch hardly anything, even things he used to love. He does terrible things, like twice I found him with poop smeared around his mouth, he picks at his butt a lot, and even drank toilet water once before I could stop him. The tantrums never stop. All day long he is flipping out about something or other-usually that I won't give him treats or he is doing something that he shouldn't and I reprimand him. I take him to a daycare for an hour or two each morning while I work out but it doesn't help curb the nasty behavior. I don't know what to do. he doesn't respond to any discipline that I have tried. I am at my wit's end and I don't know if there is something wrong with him that he doesn't sleep or eat and acts up all the time? I know he is allergic to milk so we give him soy, but could this possibly have something to do with an allergy, an ailment? Or are some kids just this bad???? I mean, he is bad beyond bad. my friends actually comment about it and ask me how I can ever keep up and deal with it all the time-I have a young daughter too and she is nothing like this. I don't know if I can handle him on my own much longer. I hope that someone has some insight about him. He was also a really tough baby-cried all the time, grumpy, the works. So from birth he has been hard, hard, hard. Please help

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I think you did the right thing. I know it took me 6 months or more to really accept that Tom was on the spectrum, even though I worried about it for a long time before it was even mentioned professionally. Thank goodness he was already receiving ST and OT so by the time I was truly confronted with it he hadn't lost too much ground.
I think that hearing it once and even beginning to consider ASD is where most of us start out. And that post would have jumped out at me too. Of course I see alot of spectrum behaviors everywhere now. LOL. But seriously my DH's nephew has a son that trips my radar. He's getting PT and OT and ST but has no diagnosis (just turned 3).
When it's family (DH has cousins who are on the spectrum and I'm convinced my nephew is even though he never had an official diagnosis--he's 25 now) I just try to gently remind that that ASD seems to have a genetic component so they should be vigilant...goes over like a fart in church. Telling a stranger must be ever harder.
Still I think you have sent her down the right path...she has the seed that the kid isn't just bad and she isn't a bad mom. She can consider that something else might be at work and she can let that percolate and hopefully call EI and get that boy some help.
Heather
Bravo Nora!!!
You did the right thing. I might not have mentioned ASD per se, but at least this mom sounds open to an evaluatiuon of any sort. The poor thing sounds like she is at her wit's end! Wow. I saw red flags all over her post, at least for SID.
Just a year ago, I felt just as exasperated as this woman does,(although my DD had much milder symptoms). I knew something was wrong but I couldn't put my finger on it, KWIM?? I wasn't on these boards as of then, but I was lucky enough to have a good Ped to point me in the right direction. If I had reached out to other moms here at the time, maybe I would have acted a little sooner. A year later, I am amazed at how much I can recognize the red flags I had been so oblivious to in the first place.
No, you did not step over the line. There is proof in this mom's response. With your help, she can now investigate the avenues that will hopefully lead her to some answers. I know none of us here ever asked to be "Austism Moms" but I sometimes feel that with my situation comes a sort of responsibility to take what I have learned from my own experience and try to pass it along to others who are not in the know. How can I not?
Yes, the line is thin and it's easy to step over, but you handled it beautifully. Please keep us posted as to what happens.
Good Job,
Dizzy
For my family, there was only one person who ever suggested my kids might have a problem, and her input was so benign, that it was hardly worth following up on (tho' I did and was told "no problem"). My acquaintance is an OT, but I think she was afraid of stepping on toes or being wrong or something, so she didn't really encourage me to pursue it more even tho' her own kids were special needs. She had really only addressed it in terms of my dd lack of balance and coordination. Since the doc had told me "no problem," I assumed it was something dd was just slow on and would outgrow.
Because of dd bowel dysmotility, I've had people ask over the years whether dd had Asperger's. Many times I looked up the symptoms and rejected that dx because my dd doesn't fit the classic/stereotypical symptoms. It wasn't until I found this board and read about your kids' behaviors that I recognized my kids. Even after thinking my kids matched your kids in behavior and being happy to think we were on track to getting a dx, when I looked up the symptoms, my kids still didn't match the textbook info.
I would imagine that this mom is having a similar experience. It doesn't sound like she's unwilling to embrace the idea of problems but that she's reading a list of textbook symptoms, seeing that the textbook doesn't match her ds, and having no idea that there's so much more to ASD than the stereotype. On the other hand, if she's at least pursuing SID, sleep disorders, etc., perhaps she'll stumble into a good doctor who might guide her to a more complete dx.
I'm glad you spoke up, though. I'm becoming a fairly vocal individual, not because I want to call attention to my kids but because I want others to learn from my experience. I wish there'd been someone around me being vocal enough that we could have gotten help long before my kids were 8 & 12yo. Certainly there wasn't enough education that friends/family or even our pediatricians understood my concerns when they were raised. If someone else has to suffer needlessly around me, at least it won't be because I was too quiet to speak up.
I think you did the right thing.
I see your point, but of course the original poster on THIS thread was putting it up because she was worrying about having overstepped her bounds, and out of complete concern for the poster on the other board. And if something is posted on the Web, it is available for all to see. I guess I might feel a little upset if I found a entire post of mine somewhere else, but again ... I am posting on the Web.
Just my thoughts,
Sara
OK
I got that post from a different website not from IVilage.
I have been on this board for a year, these women are my rock/advisors/confidents....
I wanted to get their 2 cents to see if I owned that poster an apology for "trying" to help her get the answeres she has about her child.
It wasn't meant to be malice at all. I remember when I was that women, not knowing where to go. Thank GOD I found this board here. That board I got that from is a "general" generic board.
I ALSO didn't even post where I got such a post. SO---in my opinion, it's very anynomos(sp)?
Sorry if ANY of you didn't agree on HOW I posted it, BUT it was needed to share the WHOLE post. I wouldn't be getting my how response to her was achieved unless I had posted all of it.
Sorry
Nora
http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s225/irishwildrose/pp2.jpg
Hi, Nora. I didn't think your posting this was in malice at all. I just know that if someone had posted a post of mine somewhere from anywhere else, and I found out, it would make me uncomfortable knowing that I wasn't part of a discussion that is about me and my child.
In these types of situations, I would let the this board know about the other post by directing others to it rather than reposting it.
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