Anxiety, dealing with things,

[reuby2]

I was wondering if anyone had any experience of dealing with the acute anxiety that my son feels. He's 8 and often repeats questions, feels frightened that something will happen if he doesn't do certain things, has rituals etc.However today in the car he mentioned he thought he heard a voice and when i tried to talk to him he kept saying shush (if he is doing one of his coping things, he won't communicate untill he has finished whatever the "ritual" is), he then said he thought he had heard a voice telling him to build a cloning machine and said "I don't have to do that do I?". Sometimes certain sounds make him think he can hear someone saying things (the wind through the trees etc).After he asks me and I reassure him he seems okay, but needs constant reassuring throught he day even about small things like the game he wants to play or the food he eats etc. Any ideas or anyone elses kids have difficulty in this area (I got a bit spooked about the "voices" thing).

[florrie]

asd kids often have sensory processing difficulties or extra sensory perception, ie tate smell sound etc which is a possiblity as to why the wind in the trees may be making him feel like this. if it is causing him distress then that is something to worry about, I relate to this kind of thing and sometimes wonder whether i' have some degree of psychosis or whether i might sound psychotic to someone else who doesn't perceive what I do.

 

I've often wondered about the voices thing or whether it is just thoughts from innerself.

Edited January 7, 2007 by florrie

[Cat]

Autism at one point was labelled childhood Schizophrenia until it was realised that it was not. I often wonder if this was because they thought that the children were hearing voices - I think maybe they do. But I also think that it is their own voice that they hear in their mind. It took my eldest son a long time to realise that he was actually hearing his own thoughts - does that make sense? My youngest tells me he has things in his head that wont go away. Often he will say that his head is singing. When we go though it it's actually the words of a song that keep going through his mind. Part of the problem with our children is that they do have a communication disorder and so it's not easy for them to verbalise what they actually are or are not hearing.

 

As for the wind in the trees the noise that they are making my sound like words to him - heck my washing machine actually says 'Showlin Show-Down' words from a Cartoon Network when it is pumping out the water. DS3 and I stand in the kitchen having a good lough when ever it begins the cycle. You can hear words from many things that can't actually speak if you tune it. My DS3 swears that his Guniea Pigs often say words

 

I would monitor things and see how they go if he starts talking about the voices saying troublsome things to him that he has to do then I would seek advice.

 

Cat

[reuby2]

Thanks for the replies, i have just laughed my socks off at the shialin showdown washing machine

 

 

He hasn't mentioned it since but his thoughts do bother him, he often asks if he has to do something when he is anxious. e.g he counts the clouds on the way to school when we reach a certain point on the way, if for some reason he is distracted by his friends etc, he will ask as we are about to go into school....do we have to count the clouds today? . It's as if he thinks he has to do something and when he does his anxiety things he thinks if he doesn't that bad things may happen, e.g In year 2 he was constantly running around the playground because he was frightened to stop because he thought he had bombs in his hands that would explode if he did

 

He has grown a lot in confidence over the last year and sometimes we don't see much of this anxiety, but when he comes across something at school, he starts it up again.

 

Thanks again for your replies, I often overlook the sensory issues with him as a lot of the time he seems okay. <'>