Overcoming phobias in ASD - The Dog

Little Man has been developing a fear over recent months of dogs, which has now escalated into a full on phobia, to the extent he is trying to avoid going on walks incase we see any dogs and if we do, he is rooted to the ground, shaking and crying in fear and it can take up to an hour to calm him down. I am not even talking about the dog being anywhere near him, god forbid if it were to sniff him or approach him.

As we were unsure how to handle it and only seem to have friends with mad dogs, I spoke to both our GP (as we were there anyhow about continued tummy ache which he put down to anxiety), and rang the doctor at CAMHS. Both said the only way to sort it out and stop it developing into anything more major was to actually expose him to dogs and possibly get one, so the search began.

The other week we were told about a 15 month old Labrador apparently very calm, house trained, very good with children, he sounded perfect. The plan was I would go and visit the dog and see if I thought he was suitable, and then we would decide if we could have a trial. In reality it did not pan out like this, as I mentioned here, and basically I was handed the dog on a lead and told to get in touch with our decision.

Dog is lovely, he is very very sweet, I mean how can you not want to love this:

Little Man initially was crying hysterically when Dog came into the house, and then calmed down enough to stand on the table unless Dog was in the dog cage in the kitchen, then he would come down from the table if the lounge doors and the kitchen door were shut. As soon as he heard one open he was back stood on the table. 2 days in after school on Thursday I told him it wasn't really fair on Dog and earlier in the day I had discovered that Dog was fine off the lead and very good at coming back (thank god) and he loved playing fetch. Little Man is very fixated on a new club penguin toy and we are making him save his pocket money for it which will take ages considering it is £35.00 and he gets £2 a week. I decided to try a bit of good old fashioned bribery and told him if he could sit on a chair and not get on the table while Dog had a walk around he could earn £1.00. He began by sitting on the furthest chair he could with his feet under him, as soon as Dog appeared he was standing on it inches away from jumping back on the table, but a quick flash of the said gold coin soon had him stood stock still.

I left the doors open and Dog out of cage and gradually Little Man was relaxing. When Mini Man got the rope toy and began rolling on the floor playing tug with Dog, Little Man visibly relaxed and sat down, still on chair but sitting and next thing I know, Little Man is playing tug as well (from the safety of the chair) but Dog was pretty close for this to happen.

Since then Little Man has walked Dog and loves playing fetch with him and although still not wanting to walk by him unless Dog is being held or on the lead, he is happy for Dog to wonder round the house and not be in his cage. We are amazed and thought it would take much longer. It has been much faster progress than we ever imagined.

However I am now the one having doubts over whether we should keep Dog. For one I wonder if he is healthy, he is apparently pedigree and up to date in his inoculations but we have no paperwork and the way I was handed Dog, I don't think he will be going back there if we decide to keep him. I find it odd his owner who is apparently devastated about geting rid of him has not cotacted me once, it has corssed my mind we may never get in contact with her again.

He is also wormed and flea'd but seems very thin, smelly, and keeps scratching himself in the same place. I have bathed him and he does smell better but before we make a final decision will take him to the vets.

He has clearly never been walked on a lead and needs alot of work on that. He goes on long walks and doesn't do anything and as soon as we get home, asks to go in the garden and goes immediately. More over, I think it has just hit me what having a Dog means, it is like another child, and do we want that? I like the idea of having a Dog but the reality, I am not so sure. I can no longer sit on the beanbag on the floor and watch TV, he is on me. He disturbs us watching TV, we obviously need to walk him which is going to fall on me, do I really have time? I struggle to do anything I want to do in the time I have let alone walk a dog 2 or 3 times aday.

Argggh decisions. I know if we don't keep Dog Mini Man will be heartbroken and we would probably lose all the good work that Dog has done with Little Man. I am being selfish knowing it will all fall on me. I am also worried about when I am away with work - who will walk Dog, without his inoculation papers no dog walker will take him and I go away on Friday until Tuesday night.

I think I need to catch up with some sleep and then I might see a little more clearly.

Back to school woes

Over the past week or so I have red a number of posts from other bloggers with children on the autistic spectrum blogging about difficulties their children are experiencing with returning to school, after the summer holidays. Compared to some of the posts I have seen our troubles are not that big but they still worry me and leave me feeling a little hopeless and at a loss at what we can do.

Little Man has always cried during the holidays as he hates the break in the routine from school. The last few holidays he seems to have accepted them alot more easily and the tears have all but dried up. He was however very excited about going back to school.  We did the usual chatting about him being in a new part of the school, a new classroom, a new teacher and which of his friends would be in his class etc and the first morning back (Thursday 1st) he ran into school quite happily. On the Friday he even opted to go to his new classroom alone. This is one area I am struggling with - Mini man has started reception and this means taking him into his classroom which is on the other side of the school. Reception starts at 8.45, Little Man at 8.50 so I don't have time to settle Mini Man and get Little man to his class on time, so the fact he was happy to run over to his classroom by himself was great (he is year 3 now, so just into juniors and most of the others leave their parents in the playground).

Come Monday 5th though Little Man was clinging to me and refused to go instead coming to reception with me and waiting. I spoke with Little Man's teacher and explained he was wanting me to bring him to the classroom and the timing issues and she was fine about it. All week this continued, one morning he was happy to stand with some of the other children and another mum but the other 4 it had to be me. By Thursday he was very quiet, and the whole weekend he was a bit distant and removed.

Last Sunday my parents came down and helped with the gardening (taming of the jungle), we all mucked in, but Little Man decided to sit on the front drive with a hammer and hammer stones for 3 and a half hours. At Sunday dinner which my parents stayed for, he took 2 Yorkshire puddings, a tiny piece of lamb, 3 peas and 1 slice of carrot and placed the meat, peas and carrot in one Yorkshire pud, and placed the other on top then sat looking at it. I took one look at his plate and said he needed more food and reached for the meat to put more on his plate. Now Little Man eats like a horse, he has a larger dinner than me. So this measly amount of food was very unlike him. He was not happy about other food going on his plate, picking it up in his fingers and chucking into any surrounding dishes. As a compromise I said he could eat what was on his plate and then perhaps he could have some more. He then went to pick the Yorkshire pudding sandwich up with his hands. I asked him to cut it and use his cutlery. He said it was too big to cut so I reached for his cutlery and made to cut this 'sandwich'. He went mad saying he would not eat any food that was cut, and I could see him building to a melt down. He kind of does this thing with his face, and starts huffing and breathing deeply.

At this point I focused him on me and asked if he wanted to go into the kitchen with me for a little chat and cuddle. Off we trotted, and he just collapsed on the kitchen floor sobbing. I ended up on the kitchen floor with him, with him sat in my lap just sobbing. It took some doing but I eventually got out of him that he didn't want to go back to school, he didn't like it anymore, and he couldn't do it. This translated to now he is in juniors they are beginning to do proper school work and he can't understand it and 'just wants to screw his work up and throw it in the bin'. He is aware the others understand and he can't. He is aware the others can write and his words are meaningless, no-one else can read them. He is aware he goes out to have 1:1. He is aware he sits on a table at the back with one other little boy who is struggling as well. He is aware the books he is reading are not the same as the other children.

What do you say to a 7 year old sobbing about this? I felt so helpless. I tried to hit on the fact alot of his friends are girls and explain they love to read and write and are always ahead at this age. I tried to bolster him up saying not many in his class could tell us all about gravity and how things work like he can and that the most important thing is that he has the information in his head and putting onto paper will come with time. i tried to tell him how much he had come on and how well he was doing. I tried to tell him about how good he was at drawing.

I managed to bring him down and avoid the meltdown by simply promising to talk to his teacher the next day and also to the special needs teacher.  I did this and his teacher was really upset, nearly in tears infact

I am amazed he is so aware of all these things but what is the answer? He is nowhere near even being considered for a statement, we will struggle to get him anymore help, from what I can gather in all my research and reading the school are actually providing above and beyond what they have to provide, so I don't want to bang on too much about it as they are clearly doing so much already.

I just feel so frustrated. I hate walking to school with him seeing him become more and more quiet and withdrawn the closer we get. Dropping him at his class and seeing him look so lost still and unsure of himself. Where has the little boy gone who use to love school, who use to literally skip through the gates.

I want to do more to help him at home but he is tired after school and doesn't want to do it, he gets upset as he has done it already in school, Mini Man interrupts and demands attention all the time and now we have a dog to throw into the mix.

On a plus side CAMHS have organised a meeting for the 19th October to discuss the ASD with the school, and the school have contacted the autistic advisory board to see if they can access any further support for Little Man, but this will more than likely be social help rather than academic, but they are due in to see him in the next 2 weeks.

I wish I could do more.

Fears and Phobias - help please

This is a post asking for help and advice please.

Little Man has been developing a fear of dogs for a while now. We are unsure what has sparked it, but it is steadily getting worse to the extent that today we were out in the woods on the bikes and stopped for breather and drink. Now being in the woods we kept meeting people out walking dogs, and both t'husband and me had noted as soon as we saw one in the distance Little Man was shooting off on his bike and taking a very long winded route round through the trees to avoid the said dog.

Just before we stopped for a drink, we had been going along a path and a dog had walked by Little Man's bike and he had stopped dead through what we now know was fear. He was rooted to the spot and it was pure fear, he was crying and squealing and took a while to calm down. The poor woman with the dog didn't quite know what to do and was desperately trying to get the poor dog on a lead, and apologising.  All the while Mini Man who is shaping up to be bloody Dr Doolittle, was all over this dog.

As a way to calm him down we got over the a grassy bit, and sat down with a biscuit and drink. He was just settling when 2 very old, very slow cocker spaniels ambled up to see what we were doing. They were lovely but Little Man went mental. Afterwards t'husband admitted he thought Little Man had been so scared he had wet himself (he hadn't). The more upset poor Little Man got, the more the dog tried to stick his nose near him.

Thing is he is now saying he doesn't want to go out as he doesn't want to see any dogs.

Its not just dogs though, he is the same with cats. If there is a cat in a driveway he will cross the road and walk glancing over his shoulder until we round a corner.

We simply don;t know what to do? What can we do to help him? We are a very active family and do a lot of cycling and walking and try not to drive places that we can walk to but dogs and cats are an inevitable part of each journey/activity.

We have tried talking and going through pictures before setting off and some days he is just wary and seems to cope a little better, but other days it has no affect.

When he was about 3 a dog did nip him, he was bothering the dog and was removed about 5 times, and told off, and I explained the dog would get cross. Little man didn't listen though and it ended in the dog growling and nipping his hand - it didn't even mark. Now he seemed fine about the nip and has been around loads of dogs since and never shown any fear. We have talked to him about this minute nip he got and he says he remember it and he knows it was because he was pulling the dog's ears and poking its face, and like I say suddenly at the age of 7 he has gone from being fine around dogs to being petrified. My brother nearly lost half his face as a 3 year old and he doesn't especially like dogs but ever since that day has always shown a dislike to them, and just been wary but it's nothing like this.

His fear is like something I have not encountered before, he is pure and simply petrified.

I feel so helpless and useless, I don't know what I can do to help?

My mind keeps running away and saying should I contact the doctor, CAMHS, a hypnotist?

I am gob smacked!

I have not blogged much about Little Man and his ADHD/Aspergers or daily life with him. I have begun to document our journey, the start of our concerns and have reached the first contact we had with CAMHS which was not a good start all told, as she told us the problems were due to a new baby, me spending a vast majority of the latter stages of pregnancy confined to a hospital bed some 20 miles away, and us being over anxious parents - totally missing the fact we had requested the referral due to our concerns before I was even pregnant. Either that or she thinks I am some scientific miracle who had sustained the longest human pregnancy in the world.

Anyhow without going into too much detail as I will continue with blogging about our journey, we eventually got referred to CAMHS, got seen by a lovely lady who actually listened and worked with us. Despite this CAMHS appointments were slow to come through, being booked months in advance, each thing our lovely Dr C did then had to be reviewed by a board which took a couple more months and in short it took up to a year to get one thing in place. The school he was at also seemed very keen to work with us, and the ed physc had Little Man's number.

I was concerned about the move back North as finally after 4 years I felt we were making progress and at the stage of getting the right assessments and help. But I have been nothing but impressed. We were seen by the CAMHS dept here within 4 weeks of moving, we were also seen by a paediatrican at the Children's Development Centre, the ed pysch came in within 5 months of him being in the school (took over 2 years previously) and so far since October we have had 5 appointments with CAMHS. The school SENCO is also brilliant and even without the say so of the ed psych, they have implemented 1:1 support on a daily basis for reading and writing, a teaching assistant every morning to over see him and bring him back to focus, and support in the playground.

All of the above has had me thinking that infact our old town and school were pretty rubbish.

Tonight however has taken the biscuit and I am bowing down to whoever needs to be thanked. 3 weeks ago Little man was given the proper Aspergers assessments, as to date everyone just cites 'strong aspergers traits' which in laymans terms means jackshit if you want to use it to get extra support.

Tomorrow we are going in to discuss the results - yes within 3 weeks of the assessment, that in itself is amazing. Last week I asked the school SENCO if she had heard anything about the Ed Pyschs report as I want to take it with us, so it was chased. Today I was stopped in school and told the ed pysch sent her apologies and would try and get something over to me today, and had asked for my contact details to save time - WHAT! I can't beleive it hasn't had to go via bloody Dubai to reach us.

TO cap it off though at 7.41 my mobile rings and it is the ed pysch herself explaining what the delay has been, apologising, checking my email address, asking me to proof her report and let her know my feedback before she cc's everyone else tomorrow, and to tell me she had tried to ring CAMHS to speak with the team today but had no success but would try again tomorrow morning before we went for the meeting.

Lets just say I needed a rather large glass of wine, and a sit down to comprehend what had just happened.

Do you know this is proof that some local authorities do actually want to help your child, and do really care, you child is not just another number in the system. As far as I am concerned this was above and beyond what I would ever expect.

And just to say I think her report is very fair and makes some brilliant points about Little Man and how he should be managed.

Little Man - Part 2 The terrible twos

Part 2 has been a while in coming following Part 1 which I posted back in May, things have just been hectic, but as they say better late than never and so our journey continues...... By the way this is a VERY long one!

At the age of 2 Little Man seemed to have every bad behaviour on his agenda, the biting, kicking, hair pulling, knocking children over, pinching etc just continued. We tried everything, we tried time out, yes we even tried tapping the back of his hand or bum, we tried taking away favourite toys, although he didn't really have any, we tried leaving places because of his behaviour, and the complete reverse of over praising for the rare good days we had and making a huge fuss of his behaviour and rewarding him. At 2, he was too young to understand the time out and the sticker charts but we still tried them.  Everyone who knew him though all said the same, his behaviour was a little odd, it was very clear there was never any malice behind what he did, he simply did it as though there was a connection missing that told him it was inappropriate. He also didn't play like the other children, he would latch onto one thing, quite often a strange thing and just sit and stare at it or fiddle with it. It was the same with TV, he would watch the same episode back to back and if allowed would of done so all day and he would not of been bored.
Sleeping was still a major issue, I began keeping a sleep diary and was shocked to see that some nights he was up over 46 times. At 18 months we put him in a bed as a last ditch attempt incase it was his cot keeping him awake but it made no difference. We tried night lights, teddies, music, low radio to keep him company, baths, and we had always been very strict on bedtime routine and stuck to it rigorously but again nothing had an effect. I was working 4 days a week and got to the stage of driving through red lights through sheer tiredness. 
The doctor was as useful as a chocolate teapot telling us to do the things we had been trying for over a year. The health visitor was even worse and just responded to anything I said with 'ohh that's sounds a good idea, let me know how he goes'. In the end I rung his consultant and he agreed to give sedatives again but again there was no difference, he was one of the rare cases where he over-rode them.

We then went down the diet route, and went on the FeniGold diet and removed everything and anything from his diet, and also took him for food tolerance testing.  All the usual suspects came up, even though the test was a huge struggle as he wouldn't sit still for it, but we preserved and got some results.  However, the main culprits we had removed from his diet long ago such as monosodium glutamate, colourings, tartrazine. Nothing was working and I was a wreak. I was fed up to the back teeth of being told he was going through the terrible two's - it seemed to me, no-one elses child was as bad as mine.  I dreaded all social occasions and around his second birthday social invites began to get few and far between.
Around the time Little Man was 18 months old we had decided to start trying for number 2, however after 8 months of me still having no periods after coming off the pill, we were worried and made the appropriate appointments, after all I had fallen pregnant with Little Man in the space of 10 days! Long story short, they told us I was not ovulating at all and started doing tests. In hind sight, I think my body had shut down through simple sleep deprivation and stress. As well as the fertility appointments, I also went to my doctors and asked to be referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and the Children's Development Centre as I was convinced there was more to Little Man than being a 'spirited child'.
This is where out fight began.  I am in the science side of things and had access to lots of information and papers and had done my reading. I was convinced Little Man had ADHD even at 2 (I also think, no, know my husband would be diagnosed as an ADHD adult if he was ever tested, but that is by the by).I was also concerend that he was displaying autistic traits. It took countless numbers of going to see the doctor and getting the consultant from his prematurity days involved to get an appointment, after all what would I know, I was only his mother, and the fact I actually understood what I was talking about due to my scientific background didn't get recognised.  Just as they agreed to refer us, and sent the letter off for which I asked for a copy, I eventually fell pregnant. This was April/May time, the appointment eventually come through for November due to it being 'lost' apparently. 
The appointment at CAMHS was a disaster. The lady had a very heavy foreign accent which was difficult to understand, and at times we had to ask her to repeat things, Little Man just ignored her, even when she questioned him, and refused to look at her which she said was normal when a child meet someone new, he wouldnt engage with her. We were all asked to go as a family, and then shown into a room the size of a broom cupboard, with a wooden dolls house in it, and a few books and that was it. Little Man began to try and rip all the clothes off the wooden dolls (the clothes were stuck on with glue). He then emptied the whole house of furniture and placed each it back where it should of been, not higgledy, piggeldy, and got very angry with her when she stuck a chair in a bedroom.  She read the letter, asked us lots of questions, asked why we hadn't chased the appointment if we were so concerned so we explained about the last few months - see next post about Mini Man's arrival. She asked us the same question a couple of times, and then said she would be in touch. We walked out feeling like we had not gained anything.
2 months later her report landed on our doorstep - her valid opinion stated 'we were over anxious parents with a highly active child who was just pushing his boundaries and reacting to the arrival of a new baby and the fact mother had had a difficult pregnancy and there were no areas of concern. She also recommended that we didn't need to be seen by CDC'. Her report was also largely inaccurate, and she clearly had not listened to answers we had given her. She had also paid no attention to the date of first referral, that is before I even got pregnant, so failed to see that we had raised concerns before Mini Man was even concieved. To say we were devastated was an understatement.
I will continue our journey on the quest for a diagnosis for ADHD and / or autism as I populate my blog which is a work in progress.