Autism As A Whole

My son is self injuring again. It didn't stop for long but he picks up something different after a while. It started with head banging, then biting himself as well as others, then pinching his skin and now he skin picks. There are other things he does as well but these actions were very constant. He will stick touch hot things and sharp nails. He also can go outside in the freezing cold half naked.(NO... I don't let him. He slipped onto the screened in porch once or twice LOL) I was really concerned in September because he had made marks all over his arms, legs, and back of neck, so I brought him to the doctor who discussed meds. I am really not sure how I feel about them. They talked about Tenex which is pretty safe from what I have read but I would rather not put him on meds.



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???

Welcome to my day. I shall invite you in but with fair warning that you might want to run the other way. You see this morning I was trying to get Charlie ready for school and he was not cooperating. He said me do school at home. I told him that wasn't an option today and he had to get dressed. He then said his belly hurt and I checked him, he seemed fine. I convinced him to go to school so I got him dressed and off to school he went. If you have read my previous posts you will understand why I was so willing to put him on the bus. Can we say desperation for some sanity time?

I then proceeded to follow this up with a call to the school notifying them of my son's stomach ache. In other words I had to cover up the fact that I was sending him to school with a belly ache, by showing concern calling the school. This was around nine o'clock. At around 10:30 the school called me to ask me to pick him up. He had vomited all over himself and, to make it worse, he didn't have a change of clothes. When he got home he seemed fine. He said he felt better after informing me that he had started puking on the bus but he drinked it. Can we say gross??? He then proceeded to describe his puke to me and how it splattered on the floor. While I should be ecstatic that my son was able to be so verbal about this incident, it was downright disgusting and I didn't need to know. Who wants to hear about puke??

Could it get worse than that? YES!!!! I answer that quickly and sincerely!! I can't remember how many times he has vomited today but other than the vomit he is active and happy. Just a hint, If your child says My stomach.... run the other way. At least that's how I feel about it. I think my feelings on this issue became even stronger today. I approached him to give him a bucket because he said his stomach hurt, and before he even got the words out of his mouth vomit flew through the air onto my foot.Yuck!!! OMG....

Might I add that I have a very weak stomach and well, that did not help. I was gagging trying to stop my stomach from overturning, while debating on how to approach this disaster.  The thought to bribe my twelve year old when she came home from school to clean it up, but figured this would end in a bigger mess. I even considered calling FEMA and having them clean it up. These ideas were not reasonable,so I covered my nose and mouth with my shirt and a towel held open away from me. I tossed it over the mess and stepped away to gag some more. Oh My!!! How is it that after four children I still cannot manage to clean up puke with out puking myself?  All this time my son was sitting in the living room cuddled over a bucket with droll dripping down his chin. What a mom I am, no loving patting his back and telling him he is ok, No wiping his chin. Just tossing him a cloth from a distance and staying as far away from it as possible. Puke to me is like garlic to a vampire.

I did manage to clean it up, light incense and mop with a lot of Pine Sol. These items, were my saviors and thank god I have a washing machine. Imagine all of the top repeated about five times like a record with a scratch in it.  Ooops, now I must sound old cause I don't know how many people even know what a record looks like any more. I hope you enjoyed my post more than I have enjoyed my day.