The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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I hope that having a label helps things to improve, and that things do continue to improve. That's interesting about the supplements helping.
I have three children, and my older daughter (Z, 6) is spectrum-y. It doesn't currently seem to matter all that much -- she's extremely verbal and likes stereotypical girl things, so doesn't stand out all that much. There was a highly verbal child in the intensive autism program I sometimes teach, and I though "wow, he sounds exactly like Z!" It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly why. It's also hard to describe why without myself sounding like a bad mother, and using term like "blathering." I thought that maybe kids are just like that, but my other kids are not like that.
I teach art professionally, so I thought that maybe I would teach her art. Mostly she wants me to give her a piece of paper and a pen, and then cuts it up into hundreds of tiny shapes, and draws things for her dolls on them, and leaves piles of tiny bits of paper all over the place, over and over again. Sometimes I try to teach her something specific, and she just kind of turns away and goes to work on the snipping and drawing, in a way that feels more like how I experience teaching the autism groups. If I give her a little handmade blank booklet, she'll replicate a Disney storybook, then another, then another, until I refuse to give any more paper. Sometimes she does things at school like hiding under a table rather than putting on her coat, or refusing to leave with us because the teacher is otherwise occupied and unable to dismiss her officially.
When Z was a baby, she had a terrible time with bottles, and my husband had to drive her to my job on my lunch break to breastfeed her in the car. She screamed and screamed, and had a terrible time learning to sleep. I wondered how the human race had managed to endure up to the present day. If she woke up, she would be up for two hours, and shriek at top volume if put back to bed.
Z likes to run in circles around the center of the house for over half an hour at a time, up to hours sometimes, especially when she was younger.
My other children are not like this. My second child is getting near four and can't talk properly, but is very socially warm.
I dunno, children are confusing.
Oh, yeah. A does this. And when she does art, unless she's told to do something specific for an assignment, she will draw a heart with the word "Love" on it every time. Thousands of hearts with "Love" on them and I try to treat each one as special as the first. Thousands of hearts on shreds of paper no larger than an inch across. Scattered around her bedroom.
I think there are probably lots of kids who are "on the specturm" in a sense. But they don't necessarily need to be diagnosed, treated, etc unless it's hampering their life in some way. With A, she wasn't learning in school because she was spending about 20% of instructional time in the school office freaking out. She's someone who needed a diagnosis, support, etc.
I see a lot of A's traits in myself, but I got through school ok because it was easy for me. I didn't make friends though. I could see a case for young-me getting diagnosed and in some kind of therapy to learn how to form human friendships. But I personally was fine without friends? I felt weird and different, which aren't great feelings to have as a kid. But I don't think I honestly craved friendship the way most kids do.
It's only really a disorder if it's hampering your ability to live a normal life. Given Z's age, it's really up to you to decide if Z is happy or if Z needs help and to pursue a diagnosis.
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