Without medication, what do I do to ensure that he does not self injure? I have tried using stickers to encourage him not to pick and I have tried giving him alternate ideas to satisfy his sensory needs but I think it is the feeling that he perceives when he is picking. I am going to try redirecting him to a positive alternative. Not so sure what that may be but there has to be something. He used to have a pacifier and we stopped that because of his speech therapist which is when the biting started. Eventually he was biting his pillow case and now that that stopped he was pinching himself. I would honestly rather give him a pacifier again. I know that won't work now though.
Questions remain and answers are hard to find. When parents talk to the doctors they are so quick to put the child on medication without looking into the root of the problem. I am looking for more natural remedies to resolve this. Last night he was playing with a rubber band. I thought it was okay because he wasnt making himself bleed. That's an improvement, right? Wrong.... instead he left a welt on his arm. He didn't even react to it as if he were in pain. I found this concerning. Although I don't like to make a big deal of these situations to my son I did feel it would make a great awareness video for others to see first hand how a child on the spectrum's words, and facial expressions can mean two different things. Here is the video of my son when I asked him how it felt when he flicked himself.
I told him that it wasn't nice to hurt his skin and that it makes mommy sad to see him hurt himself. I am not sure that he understood and I am sure that I will have more situations like this in the future but at the moment I will continue to encourage him to engage in positive ways to stim. I think this is a stim. Any thoughts on this???
1 comment:
Have you tried a stress ball?
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