Background:
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Son has pretty severe autism. He's a twin, but my other son is NT.
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He doesn't speak other than maybe a dozen words, and only when prompted.
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Still uses a diaper, as he won't go on the potty. We've tried every method under the sun.
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An eloper. He's escaped school and ran home, which is about two blocks away.
We started to think about giving him meds about a year or so ago. The catalyst is he was getting incredibly violent (hitting us, his brother, the dog, et al), wouldn't settle down to sleep even though we have been giving him Melatonin. No amount of ABA or behavioral therapy seemed to work. So we met with an autism psychologist, and put him on anti-psycotic meds. I don't remember what he's gone through, but his currently on Rispradol (sp?). The effects have ranged from manic hyperness, to violent outbursts, etc.
The Rispradol works...ok. It mellowed him out a little bit, but not much. The possible side-effects are intense. He can grow boobs, his tongue can swell and affect his speech, etc. Triglycerides, prolactin can both go to unsafe levels without monitoring.
Basically, we were at our wits end. We wanted to help him and just give him the calm he needed, without the crazy side-effects of prescription meds. We did a TON of research, and thought it was the best option considering the circumstances. There is a doctor in Berkley (natch. ;) ) that specialized in children cannabis therapy for autism and epilepsy. He thought it could help, so we went for it. This was a couple weeks ago, and the results have been pretty profound.
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The first night we gave it to him, he went right to sleep. He usually spends about 30-45minutes yelling and hitting the wall. He's gone right to sleep every night since.
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He says some things unprompted! Today he came up to me to get my attention, and said my name! This is a absolute first.
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He's just..happy. He has very few outbursts/fits, and when he does their fairly benign and end quickly.
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He's taken to peeing on the patio..but that's good! Usually he'd just go in his diaper. But now he knows to stand and pee. Now we need to work on the right place to pee, but it's a start!
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He looks in peoples eyes MUCH more.
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He can actually sit and attend to a task. The other day he tolerated a haircut for 15-20 minutes. I can't express how amazing this part is. This kid couldn't sit still for 2 minutes, but now he's tolerating a haircut? Which he HATES? We were flabbergasted.
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My wife dropped him off at ABA the other day. He grabbed the therapist's hand, turned to my wife and said "Bye!", turned to the lady and said "Let's go." and off he went. Usually ABA visits devolve into some sort of fit tantrum.
I know some of you might not agree with this treatment, especially a child, but I'm here to tell you it's working. I don't know how far it will take us, but I'm happy he's getting some relief from whatever anxiety was robbing him of his ability to just..take it down a notch. My wife is SUPER anti-drug of any sort, so to know that she was willing to go down this path say a lot to the struggles we faced daily.
Either way, I just wanted to share my story. Answer any questions I can to anyone interested.
CLICK HERE to get YOUR FREE SAMPLES!
Disclaimer: This information is not intended to diagnose any medical condition or to replace your healthcare professional. Consult with your healthcare professional to design an appropriate treatment for your medical condition.
Original Article: Reddit
This is amazing! I am so happy for your family as my husband and I are in same situation with our little one, which oil did you give him (any particular company) and how did you give it to him (gummy or humidifier) ? I would love to try this on my child as well. Thank you for sharing.
Blessings your way!
We have an almost 9yr old, who is also autistic, he has many similar struggles with his autism as your son does. We also have been through many different prescription medications some of which has caused horrible side effects such as hallucinations, night terrors, a complete new fear of heights that caused our poor baby to wet himself when we were living on a second floor apartment which he had never had issues with before of course that medicine was discontinued that same day. His doctor(behavioural specialist) currently has him taking 300 mg of Trazodone at night just to try and help him calm down enough to go to sleep and that doesn’t even work which I don’t know how much you know about trazodone but that is an extremely high dosage of a sedative and without that he would literally stay awake for days until he would finally fall out from exhaustion. Our son is very Echo tonic and mostly Works off of being prompted much like your son. We are to the point now that we don’t want him to be on these prescription medications any longer because we truly are afraid that the longer he takes them and the older he gets that his body may become dependent on them and we do not want to breed an addict by any means. We are at our wits end and just want relief for our baby he is such an amazing little boy and it breaks her heart to see him suffer so much and if you don’t mind our asking what strain of CBD worked best for your son, because we live in South Carolina and CBD oils were just recently legalized here so we are new to the whole thing and would not even know where to begin as far as what strains to try with him so instead of going through a trial-and-error process that could cause more harm than good if you could point us in the right direction as far as what strain works best for your son that would at least give us a starting point. Thank you so much for sharing your story!
Would you please let me know where you get this? How do you know how much to give him?