joybed

Thought I would fill you all in I spoke to my health visitor who said she thought he was just being a typical boy and was very rough and tumble and trying to get attention in any way he could. She also gave me tips for handling his behaviour which are all the things you would do anyway or I do. To begin with I felt reassured but the doubts are creaping back in. The tantrums are stilll very bad last night he screamed solidly for afull hour because i took of his socks and he wanted to keep them on for bed. I tried to put them back on but he was disgusted I had removed them in the first place and wanted another pair of socks of course I couldn,t find those and he screamed until i found a pair he would wear (they had to be green, stripey ones). He was sat on the toilet at the time and wouldnt let me near him every time I attempted to touch him he lashed out and kicked, bitm scratched anything to keep me away. Woke up this morning in the same mood and only came out of it early afternoon. He is waking at night again and Lydia cant cope with the stress of 2 brothers having tantrums and is crying most of the day. I am so stressed and tired and am about to start 3 early shifts in a row. God give me strength.

Sorry to hear about your bad week, hope it all picks up and the lump turns out to be nothing. I had a scare when i was 32 had a greenish discharge coming from my nipple and very tender breasts, my aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer at 32 so I totally freaked. It turned out to be an infection left over from the mastitis i had while breastfeeing 7 years previously and no treatment was needed. Unfortunately as a result I couldn,t breastfeed my twins as my ducts were wrecked but I think that is the better scenario. Anyway thinking of you.

The night after I wrote this my mum rang me to say she was fed up with the way DH treated Marcus and she had told Marcus to ring the police if he was mean to him again. Although I was alittle mad with her as I really don,t need social services involved I can,t say I blame her as it is difficult to sit back and see this happen. I decided to have a chat and tell him exactly how i was feeling and it all came out. I basically told him that if things didn,t change I would be leaving with all the children. I think he knew I meant it as he made no comments about taking the other 2. We have an agreement that I deal with Marcus and handle any disciline that is needed and he just needs to be civil to him. Not ideal but hopefully this will save our marriage and hopefuuly he will begin to like him again one day.

Dont know where to start really but I met my DH when Marcus was 4 and he never coped well with his ASD from the very beginning but things got slightly better as they got used to one another and Marcus settled into new school etc. Then 3 years ago we had twins which was wonderful obviously and Marcus adores them both. However as predicted Marcus behaviour deteriorated rapidly due to lack of routine in the house due to 2 small children and this has only got worse as thay have got older. This is made worse by husbands attitude towards my son, He is the type of man who believes that children shouldn,t interfere with life too much and should do exactly as they are told. As we all know this doesn,t work with any child let alone an ASD child. He constantly criticises Marcus when he isn,t doing things as he feels they should be done (he does this with me also but I tell him to get lost). HE is a bit of a control freak who likes things neat and tidy and organised and makes no allowance for anyone elses needs but his (he is an only child). Things have got really bad Miles and Marcus constantly bicker and when Miles is around his behaviour is dreadful, it is occasionally when he is with me but significantly worse when Miles is around. Marcus refuses to stay at home on a weekend when I am working. Miles openly admits he doesn,t like Marcus and has said this in front of him. I know you should maintain a united front in front of children but I find myself siding with Marcus as Miles is so unreasonable and makes no allowances for ASD at all saying he needs to be stricter as it is more important he learns how to behave appropriately. I am finding myself disliking my husband and have threatened to leave but he says he will just keep the twins and I can,t face that happening even thogh I do all the child care most of the cooking and cleaning. I can,t help but feel if Miles was more tolerant we would have happier children. Any tips for saving my marriage.

It took Marcus a long time to learn to wipe his own bottom althpugh i am not sure whether he cpould do it but found the idea repulsive or had genuine difficulties. He just suddenly started doing it one day don,t know what made him but thank goodness he did.

You might not know this answer but it is worth asking. Marcus is prscribed movicol paediatric for constipation. Does anyone know if this is suitable for gluten free diet. Anyone elses child on this also. If it has gluten this may be the end of us trying the diet as it is the only laxative that works for him that he will take. I am so hoping it is suitable. Thanks in advance.

Marcus hates cheese anyway but loves yoghurt and not sure if he will eat soya yoghurt will have to but some and see. Once tried him on soya milk he hated it with a passion but i can,t blame him on that one as so do I. I can tolerate rice milk but not tried M on it, feel certain he won,t (wrong colour) but he doesn,t drink much milk anyway. He does love ice cream though but as you have said there are alternatives. Will get the test done and keep you posted as to results. Thankyou for your advice.

We have recently gone through a bad stage of this with Ds who is 11. He used to regularly soil his pants or his bed every day until he was 8 and then stopped doing it, don,t know why but he just started using the toilet. He started soiling again a few months before he went to comprehensive school, I suppose it was stress. He used to say "My bottom is leaking again", and i used to calmly tell him to go and clean himself up, (we always have wipes in the bathroom). The first time he was reluctant and said it was disgusting but I explained to him that it was equally as disgusting for me and he cleaned himself. Didn,t stop the soiling at that time but it was less pressure on me. He isn,t soling as regularly now i suppose he is settling at school ( I hope anyway). He takes massive doses of laxatives and still tells me when he needs the toilet even if we have people in the house or it is the middle of the night, and he would never dream of having his bowels open at school or in a public toilet. I suppose he will always have toileting issues and to be honest I have come to accept these as part of him.

How much does the urine test cost and how quickly do you get the results. Had a look on the website and cant see a price listed.

Hi all I am considering putting my DS on a gluten free casein free diet. I am looking into getting urine analysis performed but I have a few concerns. Marcus is a very faddy eater eats a lot of bread and breaded fish, sausages etc. We also eat out a lot. DH isn,t convinced of the benefit of the diet and DS is also reluctant. However I feel he would benefit and really want to give it a go. Is it really difficult to implement. I feel I could adapt a lot of his foods but holidays are what is really worrying me as we eat out all the time whilst away. My parents look after him a lot and I have discussed this with my mum and she is willing to implement the diet. How do I go about it. Have read Luke Jackson,s books and feel very inspired but need more practical help.

Hi everyone my son has just started comprehensive school, we were very anxious about this and not sure mainstream comp was appropriate but after much soul searching we decided to give it a go. To begin with it was Ok he enjoyed school, coped well with the routine, the transport was not a problem for him at all and he joined a couple of out of school clubs. However his biggest problem is organising himself to have the necessary equipment for each lesson. He manages this by me packing his bag every night and making sure he has everything he needs as he leaves for school. The other problem is he keeps losing things so far in the past 5 weeks he has lost a rugby shirt (never worn cost �20), a pair of shorts, 2 rulers, a packed lunch box, his wallet (this turned up in his bag but in a different pocket), a coat, a library book, and his sponsored walk form. He remembered to inform me tonight that he will be home after sponsored walk tomorrow at 12, I am on nights so will probably get little sleep as he will keep coming into my room. He also regularly forgets to bring home his coat despite me repeatedly reminding him and then complains that he is cold in amorning but still forgets again that night. Homework isn,t a problem as most of the time as long as it does on the computer and i nag him to get on with it. Had an incident last week where he left it till 20.30 and then realised he had 4 lots to do. Tonight computer wasn,t working so we had lots of tears and tantrums and it took me 2 hours to get him to do homework, just what i need before a night shift, but I refuse to let him of as he is a bright boy and more than capable of doing his homework. We have put him back on packed lunches as he wasn,t eating and he is happy with this. So my question is to those of you with ASD kids in mainstream comp. How do you teach them organisation skills, how do i make sure he brings everything home, i am going to need a loan soon to replace all the lost things. Are there any visual supports I can use and if so wher do i get them. Sorry for long post.

Our son has just gone to comprehensive . We had many doubts about whether he would cope, fit in, be able to deal with "big school" and we still do on off days. On the whole though he is doing quite well and is enjoying school most of the time and does his homework most of the time. Our main problems is his very poor organisational skills and he keeps losing everything( I have asked for advice regarding this). Ironically my biggest fear was school transport and he seems to cope with this very well. I think you just need to go with your gut instinct, we sent DS to this school as this was where all the others from his class were going and we felt it would help him settle, but in reality he only has about 5 of his original class in his tutor and most of them he had little to do with. so it appears he is just on his own most of the time but is also happy with this.

Thankyou so much for all your opinions. my only problem now is my husband who refuses to accept that there is a problem with his son. My oldest son is his stepson and he has a difficult time dealing with his ASd and the challenging behaviour and I am sorry to say finds him very difficult to like. This obviously causes difficulty in our relationship and working together as a family. We have just come back from a disastrous family holiday where all DH and DS1 did was argue and frankly DS1 felt very unloved by his dad and dh is reluctant to have a family holiday again. The possibility of another child on the spectrum is too much for him to deal with and while I would rather have a diagnosis and all the support he would rather bury his head in the sand. He says that even if he is diagnosed as ASd he will refuse to believe it. Any tips on helping him come to terms with this, i have tried to encourage him to go to support groups and various professionals have offered to speak to him but he won,t listen and it is now affecting our marriage.

My son also appears to have no shame regarding his clothing or being naked. He wears all his clothes pulled really low so they are under his tummy and no amount of persuading will get him to pull them up. He therefore has a builders bum most of the time. He will grab anything out of his wardrobe, it doesn,t matter if the colours clash or they don,t match and once he is dressed it is a major fight to get him to change again, therefore even though he is 11 i find it easier to set out his clothes the night before and leave them in a designated place but if i forget to put out underwear he just won,t wear any. When he comes home from school he refuses to get out of his uniform, he just hates getting changed, he starts a new school in september so hoping this will change if I introduce it as a new rule. He also doesn,t notice if clothes are too small and he will put outgrown clothes on and not understand why we won,t let him go out, his attitude is it will do. He has even attempted to squeeze himself into his 3 year old brothers jumper because it was the same colour as one of his, ( how we laughed about that one). He still gets dressed on the landing if he can get away with it, the only trouble with this is we live at the end of a cul de sac and have a full length window on the landing so you can see straight down the entire estate and you have guessed correctly he stands straight in front of this window. This drives his dad to ditraction. He has answered the door before in his boxer shorts and wasn,t embarassed but yet is reluctant to take his tshirt of on the beach. It is sometimes hard to understand why our children behave as they do but when we eventually figure it out it is generally something very simple, but it would help if they could tell us, but then if they could they probably wouldnt have ASD. It just makes for a more interesting life (feeling positve today as all children at nurserry or grandparents so have a day to myself, yippee. <'>

I know you cant comment and that i need the advice of a professional but i am realy struggling with my 3 year old. DS1 has an autistic spectrum disorder he is now 11 and i can see some similarities betweeen him and his brother as a toddler the impulsive behaviour, frustration, aggression and obsessive routines but Piers has much better speach and does appear to have some imagination. The problems we have are that he has lots of temper tantrums every day, i am talking at least a dozen. When he has a tantrum you cannot get through to him and you may as well not bother to speak to him, he will not be consoled and lashes out, punches, kicks, bites, pulls hair and sometimes seems as of he is deliberatleey trying to hurt. This is generally accompanied by the words " don,t like mummy go away". He is very distructive and breaks all his siblings and our things as well as his own. He prefers to throw toys around than play with them most of the time although pther times plays appropriately. His speach is very good and and when I say he is imaginative I mean he will sit in a washing basket and play boats or get an aeroplane and zoom it around the room, but I am not sure if this is copied as he is a twin and goes to day nursery. Nursery say that although he is hyperactive they have known worse and are not concerned. His eyecontact is at times appropriate but sometimes he can have a full conversation and not look at you. He also drags you to things he wants and gets his use of pronouns muddled. I recently spoke to a mum of a child with aspergers and she said i was discribing her son as atoddler. i also have a friend who is a health visitor and she has suggested he has Aspergers. It has also been suggested he may have ADHD but he will sit and watch his current favourite DVd for a long time. He is also controlling in that if he wants to watch his favourite thing he will have a tantrum so his twin sister gives in to him. As a baby he was very colicky cried all the time and was generally unconsolable throughout his first year. He has a lactose intolerance and frequently gets diarrhoea. His toilet training isn,t bad just the odd accident but not yet dry at night althoguh at just 3 i am not worried about this. The problems have become more noticeable since our recent family holiday this is also what happened with his brother at the same age.the health visitor is coming to see us soon but I just wanted your opinion on this matter do you think he is too young to worry and this is an extension of the terrible 2s. Although I know instinctively that something is wrong. Thanks in advance

I think one of the reasons I am so worried is that both my sister and I had a long journey to school on school bus when we were teenagers as we lived in the middle of nowhere and were the first pick up. We were both badly bullied by other children on the bus the usual name calling, being hit by other children, calling our family names, (it was at the time of the miners strike and our father is a miner and all the other kids parents voted conservative so we were a prime target). It made the journey to and from school a misery and I was so glad to leave school. My sister reacted in a different way by becoming a rebel and making herself a nuisance to become accepted but she now has agoraphobia and depression and I seriously don,t think the bullying helped. Although DS1 will only be on the bus for 15 minutes as opposed to our 1 hour journey we didn,t have ASD and found it hard so how would he find it. My sister also had an issue with a bus driver who sexually harassed her at the age of 13 until she told me and I told the headmaster and he was fired. thankfully it was just verbalising what he would like to do to her as opposed to doing it but still bad enough for her. These incidents have naturally made me very cautios as to where my children go and who with as both my sister and myself have very low self esteem and want my children to be happy and confident, not frightened and cautious.

Thanks for all above advice it is so good to know there are other people in the same situation who can offer knowleagable advice. However i am even more unsure as to what to do as Marcus states he wants to go on the school bus like everyone else evn though he has admitted that he finds the bus too busy and has a lot of concerns regarding this. Dh thinks i should allow him to grow up and gain some independence and stop being so overprotective. The school have suggested i see him onto the bus every morning and collect him from the bus every night, but there a number of problems with this, A, I work shifts and will frequently not be at home to do this, B, I have 2 other young children and C I don,t want to be made to look more different by having his Mum collect him every night, it is saying i don,t trust him to walk down the road (which I have to admit i don,t, but he will get an hard enough time at school without this). It has been suggested that we do lots of practic e which he is getting anyway because he is being taken to transition visits on the bus and see how it goes. Any fyrther advice greatly recieved.

My son has high functioning Autism and is currently in mainstream school, he is 11. He goes to a very caring, small primary school at the moment which is a CofE school and they are very keen on treating one another as equals, no bullying, help one another etc. Needless to say Marcus has coped reasonably well in this school but has had some problems, such as not able to pay attention in class, being rude and cheeky to teachers etc, classic Autism stuff. He is due to go to Comprehensive in September which will obviously be a very big school with lots of changes. The Autism team have put together a very good transition package, and the SENCO of the school appears very knowledgable and caring. However my biggest concern is how he will get to school. It is a 15 minute bus ride away (we currently walk to school), to catch the bus he has to cross avery busy road where HGVs drive past regularly. He has no road/ traffic awareness at all and is worrying about various scenarios, he has said he will run out into the road in front of traffic rather than miss the bus, I have tried to explain how dangerous this is but he just doesn,t understand and says he can,t face being in trouble for being late. I have explained this to the Autism services and have asked for transport but they won,t fund it saying they are trying to increase his independence. This I understand, but equally don,t want a knock on the door telling me is dead. I am also concerned about bullying. DH tells me I have to let him grow up, but I can see how much this is worrying him. We have had a deterioration in his behaviuor already and he is back to soiling. Have I got a right to push for transport. They have told me that what other parents do is get the bus with their ASD child for the first few weeks to make sure they are OK, but I have 2 3 year olds and work so this is not possible. Sorry for the long post but i want to know what my rights are.

Hi my name is Joy I was told about this site from someone on Uk parents. I have a son Marcus 11 years who has high functioning Autism, and twins Piers and Lydia who are just 3. I am a busy working mum to the above and Wife to Miles who is a biomedical scientist. I am a midwife working 30 hours a week and in my spare time I am a cloth nappy advisor for team Lollipop. I live in a crazy, busy house and currently feel as if I am cracking up, being pulled between everyone here and work, but that is life as they say. We also have 3 cats, 1 guinea pig and 2 goldfish. Marcus was diagnosed at 4 goes to mainstream school and is having a bit of a tough time at the moment as he goes to comprehensive in September and is also a little bit hormonal. Hope to gets lots of helpful advice on here.