Our decision to add medications to Brycen's therapy plan

We knew this day would come...the day we realized we don't have a choice but to start medications for Brycen. It's terrifying to know that you will be putting a different thing in your child's body! But we have also come to the realization that we may be hindering Brycen's progress by not using medication to help with some of his symptoms.

While medication does not cure Autism, it can help to treat some of the symptoms. Brycen's main symptoms that we will be addressing with medication are the sleeping at night (or should I say, not sleeping!), the aggression, lack of attention span, OCD behavior, and impulsiveness. While all kids experience many of these things, the extent of Brycen's symptoms in these areas is huge.

Brycen's aggression is getting worse and what we are doing to address it is not helping, so we need to look at this avenue before he really does harm to Aubree or another child at his school. The last thing I want to hear is that a child is scared of him and they went home to tell their parents that Brycen is hitting them every day. That is not fair to those children, nor is it to Brycen. Since Brycen has very little attention span for many things, this makes it very difficult to teach him new things or work on daily skills such as getting dressed, taking turns, listening to an entire book, etc. We are hoping if we can increase his attention span, that we will have more luck with teaching him new things and his focus will be better on learning. We are also thinking if we can minimize his stimming behavior, we can bring out some more language. It seems his flapping, scratching, lining up toys is interfering into so many daily things, including his ability to work on speech and sign language.

We have set up an appointment at the medical clinic here to have them evaluate Brycen and see if they feel comfortable working with us on starting these. I really feel it would be easier if a local doctor will help since if there is an interaction or side effect, it can be addressed right away without us having to make a trip or navigate the phone calls to U of I.

The thing that scares me about medications with him, is studies have shown that children with Autism sometimes have very odd side effects of the medication. While a medication that is prescribed to calm someone down may work in a neurotypical child and adult, it may do the opposite and make a child with autism more hyper.

The other things that scare me is a lot of medications for these symptoms have not been studied in children with autism, or even any child for that matter. The common medication for sleeping in children with autism is called Clonidine. This is an adult medication for high blood pressure. Interesting, huh? But that just shows that medications do different things to people with other developmental issues.

I'm realizing that every thing we start, whether it is medication or a new therapy, I am always going to be scared. It's human nature to be scared of the unknown, but we aren't going to know if there are also positive benefits unless we try. Right now is the time to try. Brycen has adjusted well to all of the change in his life these last couple weeks. We feel we have great support right now from our families being much closer to us, a school that seems to be on our side with helping him learn, therapists that want to help him, a Case manager that has so many resources to share...what better time than now!