Risperidone??

Post Reply New Topic

JMills, one thing that helps with transitions is to give him advance notices like "we are leaving in 1/2 hour", then "we are leaving in 15 minutes" etc. Even if he doesn't respond he is likely mentally processing the transition ahead of time. It really helped with my son.

We do give him warnings for transitions. We even use pictures to let him know what to expect. We have done social stories. If we are leaving in 2 hours I start warning him then. Before he goes to bed at night I tell him what we are doing the next day so he can start preparing for it. Even so, he will have a meltdown with a 2 hour notice being reminded of the upcoming transition every 15 minutes. In preschool that is an impossible task when every activity lasts anywhere between 10-30 minutes. He ends up on the floor screaming most of the day b/c he cannot keep up with the transitions. I pay close attention to the setting events of the meltdowns. There is no consistancy of the antecedent. It changes day to day and situation to situation. He is getting no instruction at school, PT, or OT due to his stimmng and meltdowns. His school uses weighted vests, yoga balls, and tramplines to help him regulate- with little or no sucess. He is such a sensory seeker so we try to address his needs with swings and heavy work. His chair at school has a seatbelt in order to keep him still. The boy can't stop moving. I have tried different diets, vitimins, and numerous amounts of intervention with little sucess. Medication is my last resort. I am pleased to hear that many of you have had positive expereince with it. My goal is to take the edge off him so he can get instruction and stay focused. There is no sense in sending him to school, ST, or OT if he is not getting instruction.

Ahhhhhh Your son reminds me of the good old days of playing the school district like a piano to pair me up with my old horrible special teachers so I could punch them in the face. At any rate hes not going to stop doing that until he matures some. *I'm thirteen, lied about my age, need to get it fixed by a mod.* (Which reminds me of my days of roaming the internet as a 8 year old troll gaining a vast amount of intelligence along the way as I learned the arts of spelling and arguing with idiots like I was.) Weather or not you want to keep him doped up until then is your choice but I know that If I was still doped up on stuff right now id have never made any of the progress I did in these last four years. I eventually acted better off my meds then on and rolled with it from there. I have no experience with the drug your doctor described to be perfectly honest with you. Just keep in mind that in some cases drugs may just be delaying the problems impact on life, in others it may not. At any rate your gonna have to play the waiting game I'm afraid. In the meantime may I suggest when he gets a bit older, about 7, thinking about getting him a compy of some sort? As long as you don't put any info on the computer worth stealing and you buy a used 2003 or so dell from a pawnshop cheap by virtue of checking out pawnshop websites and let him loose on the internet hes got nothing to lose really besides his innocence. And he might pick up some words you might not want him using. Though my first post on an internet forum was calling somebody out on prospect of being a "bich" *my exact spelling* so I guess by the time I got there that wasn't really an issue. Its a situational thing really. (Though depending on your parenting veiws, that could very well be too big a risk for your tastes.) I like to personally think my time on the webs unregulated was much preferable to sitting around moping on my bed because I had no friends. But then again I get the feeling that your special education teaching says otherwise......MUCH otherwise

Not a hero,
I hope you refrained from punching your teachers in the face . Thank you for your input. I really found it useful. I do have to remind myself that my son is only 4 years old and it is a waiting game. He still has a lot of growing to do. As I mentioned in my previous posts, my son cannot sit still. He eats his meals walking around the kitchen with food in his hand. He cannot sit with the family b/c his is always moving. Even when he is watching tv he is walking around the family room. My concern for him is that he is not getting the necessary instruction in school due to his hyper-activity and his meltdowns. Our goal is not to medicate him long-term, just enough to get him on track so he can learn in school. I love his personality and if I see it slipping away while he is on meds we would put an end to it immediately. It is funny that you mention computers b/c he LOVES the computer. He has learned all his numbers, letters, colors, and shapes thanks to computer games. He can spell like a champ (something his school age peers can’t do ). He can navigate through his favorite websites (noggin, starfall, and PBS) without assistance. So far he has not run into any questionable websites; I will cross that bridge when we get to it. Nonetheless, if he picks up a cuss word I will be impressed if he spells it correctly . I am more of a permissive type of parent which can be difficult raising a child with ASD. A “go-with-the-flow” mom and a child who is NOT a “go-with-the-flow” type of person can be challenging.
My special education background tells me to act as a behavioral theorist where all behaviors can be replaced with more desirable behaviors. My motherly instinct is to let him be a happy boy (friends or no friends or stimming or not stimming). You mentioned that you laid in bed moping b/c you had no friends. I would rather my son have an outlet to find happiness (right now it is his computer). My lifetime goal for my son is to be a happy and functional person. I will get him there, somehow.

sorry to interupt but your child can obviously sit still when something interests him and what is your worry when he already has all the preschool skills?

As a parent who had a child on this medication, I would recommend trying everything else first. I had to wean my daughter off these drugs without any medical support because once the doctor had her hooked, she would not even consider helping me take her off the drugs. These ARE dangerous drugs that can cause permanent changes in brain chemistry especially when given to a young child. My daughter, like your son, was extremely aggressive at that age. What did the trick for her was getting her out of the preschool that was "too much" for her to handle. In a preschool with 5 children and 2 special ed teachers she did MUCH better. Picture schedules outlining the whole day instead of just the next transition also helped. Another tactic we found that worked for attention and fidgetiness during lessons is a weighted lap pad. We also took her to a naturopath...megadoses of vitamin B6 and dietary changes have benefited her much more than the risperdal ever did. My daughter's stimming is oral, she chews hair, skin, anything she can get her mouth on, so we got her a chewy necklace and now she can stim to her heart's content without doing any damage to herself. I know that the public school system where I live provides support to preschool age children if they need special ed. This may be worth looking into. I know my brother put his child into a mixed autism/NT preschool and he has done well there because they have autism experts there that are trained to help the ones that need it. My mom is an RN and works at a daycare facility for special needs children. There are other options out there there for preschool and childcare. It takes some research and searching to find them, but they do exist.

I'm not one of those "never drug a child" fanatics, and my child does still take ADHD meds. I'm just a big proponent of no atypical antipsychotics for a child whose brain is still developing. To me, it's a matter of "do the benefits outweigh the risks?" and in our experience the answer was no.

I do give my son Superthura that has a large dose of B6. We did see some improvements with it. He currently is enrolled in our local school district preschool. There are 12 kids in his class. One special education teacher with two aids. 8 of the kids have been identified with some sort of disabilty in his class. They do the weighted vests and yoga balls. That seems to work sometimes. His teachers tell me he spends a great deal of his day on the floor crying. He will only engage in the computer at home or school. So yes, he can stay still when he is working on the computer. So those preschool skills he has learned, he only uses them when on the computer. He cannot generalize these skills in other situations. I have looked into sending him to a special school in my area that specializes in autism but unfortunitly the cost is too high.
I used to be one of those "never drug your child" fanatics. I don't even like giving my child tylenol unless they have a fever. I am scared of the side effects on this medication. But I have also spoke to parents who have used this medication who were able to help there child. Again, I have spoke with parents who have had bad expereinces with it. I guess it is one of those "your damned if you do and damned if you don't" situations.