My Son Hits Himself!!! Help - Edinburg,TX

HI honey, I'm sorry for your pain. I don't have a similiar problem with my kids, but I can tell you a few things I've learned from watching and reading. Exposure to substances like fluoride, particularly in combination with aluminum (can be environmental or administered in anesthesia or vaccine), can cause feelings of frustration and aggression. He may be showing it only to you because you are his mom, he feels safe and feels like you should somehow understand--even if that's a superhuman feat.

My single best piece of advice is to find a Dr. who specializes is environmental issues and/or naturopathic medicine. If you add medication to an existing problem, it's probably not going to get better--only worse.

You can also think back to where you were when you were pregant with him, where were you when he was born. Has he been exposed to anything? Was there a certain time when this began? What was happening then in your life.

I would be happy to help figure it out if you contact me.

Best wishes and blessings to you and your son.

I am surprised that your therapist didn't give you instructions on the best way to handle this behavior. Regardless of whether they can or can't recreate the behavior, this is pretty common when children are frustrated and I would think that they would have given you some info on how to handle it.

You didn't mention his age. If he is not able to verbally communicate how he is feeling, that is where a lot of frustration stems from with toddlers. I would definitely suggest to talk to the therapist on how to handle this at home. I don't want to give you advice that may conflict with what you are already doing and learning for his therapist. There are ways to prevent and handle it but it really depends on your specific situation. The good news is that it's probably a phase he will outgrow as he becomes more verbal.

Good luck and hang in there!

Give him magnesium malate, 500 mg daily. Cod liver oil 1 spoonful 1 or 2 x a day, and vit b complex liquid drops under his tounge daily.

All three of these affect mood and will increase well being and calm. Magnesium deficiency allows to much adrenaline in the body.

Also he "might" be suffering from low blood sugar. Watch for these things to happen when he hasnt eaten in a while or needs to eat? Reducing grains/carbs/sugars and increasing protien is a must with this type of behavior. Give him a protien meal , cubes of cheese or chicken breast, some nuts, and a SMALLportion of complex carb (make sure the carb is AT THE END of the meal), 10 minutes before you are going to give him a command. Truly, organ meats do wonders to correct mineral deficiencies but people dont eat them anymore. Liver, kidney, etc....

Many people dont know that Autism has the very same symptoms of heavy metal poisoning- line item per line item! NCD Zeolite is useful in ridding metals, also the magnesium I mentioned earlier, and also alpha lipoic acid.

Body toxicity is at the heart of autism. Beyond heavy metals , sometimes there is also a yeast overgrowth- the toxin put out by the yeast acts as a poison to our system. Head banging is a sign of yeast. Any child that has been on antibiotics or born with thrush has yeast. Olive leaf extract can help with that, and also RAW milk. Raw milk has a yeast killer in it that gets destroyed when it is pasturized . Conversly, pasturized milk should be severely limited as it causes a magnesium imbalance, can cause hypercalcemia, and grows yeast. Pasturized milk from huge dairy lots has millions of "dead" bacterias. When the milk was heated, these alive oranisms were killed. When they die they loose theior bowel control and release their excrement, which becomes a toxin burden for us that we have to eliminate. Raw milk grown from local farmers with their few head of cows on grass do not have that high percentage of bacteria like that.

My son was a bit of late talker. He never hit himself, but would get very frustrated. I would verbalize what he wanted or how he felt. He understood me, but had trouble communicating. Knowing that I cared about what he feeling or what he wanted helped. I would also suggest that you teach your son some sign language to help him communicate. There are lots of books and videos at the library that will help you and your son learn some basic signs.

It sounds like maybe you need to change the way you approach or speak to your son in order to decrease the chances of a fit. There is some good information in the book The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child With No Pills, No Therapy, No Contest of Wills by Alan Kazdin. It is a great book for learning how to modify a child's unwanted behavior. It helped me in dealing with my children fighting in the car on the way to and from school and cleaning up around the house without an argument. Good luck! And hang in there.

I am sorry, I don't have an advice but I do have 2 kids and other kind of problems and wanted to share what have I learn.
-No every solution will work in every kid, even if they seem to have the same behaver.
-Whatever you pick, you should stick with it long enough for you to decide if it works or not other way it will be very confusing for your child and very frustrating for you and you may pass a good system just because you didn't follow up enough or you keep coming back to the same systems because you think maybe I didn't try enough over and over.
-Because you should stick with something long enough to see results or be sure it doesn't work and stop trying. You need to feel confident about what you are going to do. Look around, read books, ask doctors and friends.
-Don't try to counterattack hitting with hitting, does that even make since to you? It doesn't to me.

So far what have work for me and my 2 year old (maybe it doesn't help you but I want to share) is to get to her level, look disappointed and cross my arms. I say it once that is not ok what she does and I don't talk anymore or move until she stops.
I use to try the say it once and walk away but I am not to sure if my kid knew I was mad or I just didn't care, so I opt for stay and look right to her eyes and say no. However I know people that have try that and work for them, maybe my kid was just too young for that, it seems to work with my 12 year old.

Last thing, I don'.t think that he does that to you because you are cousing the problem, maybe is that something bothers him and he doesn't know how to express it and he get's frustrated.
have you see if there is a pattern? This happen more before he eats, or he doesn't sleep well, haven't go out for long, etc?

I have worked with several children that have been diagnosed with PDD or other Autism Spectrum Disorders and I have seen this behavior before. I know it is hard to control. One thing we would always suggest is the blanket hold. It's literally wrapping your arms and body around your child and holding them tightly in a hug. While you do this, you can also rock back and forth slightly and talk to them in a claming manner. We have found that this not only disperses the hitting because you are not allowing that to happen but the body contact often diffuses the situation and calms the child so that they can re-focus themselves and cool down. Sometimes these episodes can get quite escalated and violent....or at least they look this way. Just know that we have had success by using this technique and for the kids we have used this with, they seem to calm much faster and are 100% back to normal when the outburst is over. Then we just re-direct them to something that they like to do or sometimes we just sit and hold them in a rocking hug for a few more minutes and speak to them calmly and gently until they are ready to move on. It really does work like a charm. Try this....I'm hoping it will work for you. The alternative to letting him carry on and hurt himself or someone else is not a good one.

Self injurous behaviros (SIB) are an issue with children on the spectrum and require medical attention from a Board Certified Child Psychiatrist. Therapists and psychologists are valuable team members for therapy and behavior modifications, but not for medical manifestations. Call a psychiatrist.

M.

It sounds like he does it out of frustration. My son used to bang his head out of frustration. It got better with time, especially once he started talking.
Here are a few ideas you might try. Have you thought about video taping the behavior? It would be a way for the therapists to see the behavior in action. Another thing you might try is a picture board w/various choices on it. If he is nonverbal, or has a hard time expressing himself it might give him options and let him feel more in control.
Hope this helps.

Your child is with you more than anyone else, and you're the one giving the most supportive, loving care (resulting in happy responses), and the most frequent controlling demands (resulting in unhappy reactions).

With the latter, your son learns to expect your demands to be frequent and frustrating, so he has become very sensitive to that dynamic, and his reactions are quick and strong. Particularly with the PDD-NOS: The children with PDD-NOS "are able to show joy, fear, or anger, but they may only show the extreme of emotions." (from http://autism.wikia.com/wiki/PDD-NOS).

So you probably get unhappiness, magnified, when your son reaches his emotional tipping point. And when you and your son are with others in a clinical setting, you probably behave toward him in a somewhat different manner – many of your expectations have been suspended in favor of the professionals' agenda. It sounds like he just doesn't reach the same degree of repetitive frustration as he does at home.

Even without that diagnosis, a child hitting himself (or others) is not an uncommon behavior. My grandson did this occasionally between the ages of about 1 and 3 – either when he was feeling wildy frustrated or unfairly corrected. In his case, the theme of "unfairness" was the common thread, and I expect this is probably true of other kids as well, since fairness and justice are HUGE features in a child's inner landscape.

If you'd really like your child to have fewer of these breakdowns, which are a form of tantrum directed against himself, there are two things that are known to be helpful.

First, don't add any emotional reaction or upset of your own to the situation. Make him safe and perhaps hold him gently but firmly until the spell passes, but don't act upset or alarmed. He needs your steadiness when he's lost his. If you don't hold him (hug him firmly but not punitively), you might try this, and find out whether his episodes end faster. Sometimes kids who are wrapped up in a hug seem to feel safer, and surrender to the caretaker's love more easily.

Second, train yourself to be sensitive to the circumstances that trigger his reaction, and to whatever degree possible, establish a more positive approach. Toddlers (particularly with nervous deficits) have little impulse control or ability to draw working conclusions from alert observations, but presumably, adults do.

So changes from your end might include things like adjusting your expectations if they're not totally age-appropriate, giving him advance notice of upcoming changes ("bath-time in five minutes, so finish up what you're doing, okay?"), easing his schedule, and your own, as much as possible so he doesn't feel rushed, manipulated or controlled as often, moderating your tone of voice (giving polite information rather than an impatient command), breaking your expectations into smaller, more concrete orders (instead of "Pick up your toys!", perhaps he needs, "First, put all the little things in this basket…").

For yourself, I also suggest learning to pay attention to your own breathing when his episodes are loud and long, remembering that he gets through them and is cheerful again, and knowing that he really can't help a great deal of what he does. His self-harming behaviors are, to some extent, just part of being a toddler, and his may be exacerbated by his neurological deficits. It's good that you want to find the healthiest possible way to deal with this.

I'd video tape it so you can bring that to his therapy and they can witness the problem and give insight. Maybe it's the tone of your voice, or how you phrase your requests to him. You may be able to get more tools on how to interact with him if they have a video of the episodes.

Try to record his behavior on video tape, and show it to your therapist. Is he autistic? I have worked with children with autism, and when they get upset/frustrated, they would hit themselves. I would redirect them, to do something they enjoy. At times, I had to restrain them, so they would stop hurting themselves or others.

Good Luck.

I don't have a cure, but I thought it might make you feel better to know you aren't alone. My daughter bites herself hard enough to leave marks whenever she gets upset. It seems to happen fairly often. She does not have PDD-NOS, but she DOES have some developmental delays, and it seems to be her way of expressing her frustration when she can't get the words out. Like I said, that doesn't necessarily help your situation, but you are not alone.