Children with autism

I have to say ... during roughly 15 years on a vegetarian and gluten-free diet in my 30s and 40s my symptoms improved. And therapy helped. I'm still a round peg trying to fit in a square hole but it's better.
But what is the general physical, emotional and general feeling when you do not eat meat and the whole animal? I just have a bad idea of how to live without meat
 
Not recommended by anyone. I've been a Buddhist since I was a teen and during several years of intensive practice in various temples I just fell into lacto-ovo. And info on wheat was already around back then. Many temples were already using almond flour and other wheat alternatives. It was about the same time I was 'officially' diagnosed and began therapy.

But I have always believed the diet helped, as well. Because it was obvious during periods of intensive lifting (tried powerlifting for a while) and I was off the diet, it seemed I took a step backwards. The aspergers, ADHD, and impulse control issues kinda resurfaced, even though still in therapy.

Of course ... it coulda been the steroids. :D
You seem to live your life to the full extent, good for you. Too many people lock themselves up with their diagnosis and try not to show themselves to the world. I hope the therapy and diet will go on helping you!
 
You seem to live your life to the full extent, good for you. Too many people lock themselves up with their diagnosis and try not to show themselves to the world. I hope the therapy and diet will go on helping you!
It seems to me in such a situation to live a full life is important and allows you not to concentrate on diseases and look at life in a more positive way.
 
Yeah ... I never allowed autism to define me after I was finally diagnosed. I just plowed ahead with therapy and lived to the fullest.

Oddly enough, the ADHD component actually has an upside to people who tend to be interested in a lot of different things. Hyperfocus. I would be bouncing off the walls and suddenly latch on to something I could sink my teeth into, and I'd spend hours and hours exploring that ONE thing. Sometimes for a year or more I'd do nothing but play guitar ... talk about guitars ... read about guitar and music theory. Then I'd latch onto something else for a year or so before coming back to guitar and bass. Total immersion in whatever I'm interested in at the time. Same thing happened with Zen and later, Vipassana meditation. With motocross and motorcycle road racing. Body building. Aviation (flew Corp and charter part-time). Drawing and painting. So now I'm old enough to have fully developed several hobbies into almost an avocation. I just drove people around me nuts when going thru these 'discovery phases'. Couldn't talk about anything else. Oh, It also made me a damn good software developer and tester cuz I could sit in front of a screen for 10 hours and never get up. Lol.

So in some ways being autistic actually enriched my life compared to family and friends. It hasn't been an easy 59 years ... but it's workable. :D
 
Is this thread still active? I have a son who is 10 and has ADHD to the extreme. However, I think he is on the spectrum because he has a lot of the traits mentioned. Very well spoken with a high vocabulary, has certain interest where he appears to be the SME. Does not like change at all, and if you say what you say, you better mean it. Sports have been a challenge for us. We have tried baseball, basketball, and Ju-Jitsu. We feel he needs to do something. He usually bugs the kids on the teams because he cannot stop talking about random thing.
 
Is this thread still active? I have a son who is 10 and has ADHD to the extreme. However, I think he is on the spectrum because he has a lot of the traits mentioned. Very well spoken with a high vocabulary, has certain interest where he appears to be the SME. Does not like change at all, and if you say what you say, you better mean it. Sports have been a challenge for us. We have tried baseball, basketball, and Ju-Jitsu. We feel he needs to do something. He usually bugs the kids on the teams because he cannot stop talking about random thing.
Hey buddy, I had a 20 year old son on the spectrum and my 7 year old boy is on the spectrum too. My oldest was quite mellow but my youngest is very high strung haha. Gotta keep him busy. He isn't so verbal and not very emotional. Kinda fits the autism stereotype. Can play on his own forever and all that. He is very intelligent but just doesn't share his thoughts in words nearly as much as most kids. Sounds like you have the opposite issue with the constant taking lol. For me, I found taking my boy outside works best to wear him down. And by that I mean taking him into the woods and just letting him go, pretty much wherever he wants and I just follow along. I don't know how your boy is but mine is very adventurous and loves to explore and get into stuff. So he loves this but every kid is different. He could be on the spectrum. Or just have some traits with ADHD etc. Have you had psychological evaluation for him?
 
Hey buddy, I had a 20 year old son on the spectrum and my 7 year old boy is on the spectrum too. My oldest was quite mellow but my youngest is very high strung haha. Gotta keep him busy. He isn't so verbal and not very emotional. Kinda fits the autism stereotype. Can play on his own forever and all that. He is very intelligent but just doesn't share his thoughts in words nearly as much as most kids. Sounds like you have the opposite issue with the constant taking lol. For me, I found taking my boy outside works best to wear him down. And by that I mean taking him into the woods and just letting him go, pretty much wherever he wants and I just follow along. I don't know how your boy is but mine is very adventurous and loves to explore and get into stuff. So he loves this but every kid is different. He could be on the spectrum. Or just have some traits with ADHD etc. Have you had psychological evaluation for him?
We do have a psyche eval scheduled for later this month as he has issues controlling his emotions if they get out of hand. He does love to fish and build, so fishing season is coming up and I guess we can do that together. He has decided he wants to try his hand at soccer this spring as well. He's a builder for sure, it's just I am not.
 
Friend of mine has an autistic child that does not speak at all and they have pretty much tried every possible treatment and drug out there. Next they are gonna try stem cell therapy. Their friend autistic kid was able to start speaking after that.
 
Is this thread still active? I have a son who is 10 and has ADHD to the extreme. However, I think he is on the spectrum because he has a lot of the traits mentioned. Very well spoken with a high vocabulary, has certain interest where he appears to be the SME. Does not like change at all, and if you say what you say, you better mean it. Sports have been a challenge for us. We have tried baseball, basketball, and Ju-Jitsu. We feel he needs to do something. He usually bugs the kids on the teams because he cannot stop talking about random thing.

Sounds like normal ADHD to me. I'm exactly the same, lol. I highly recommend you to watch this.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSfCdBBqNXY

as he has issues controlling his emotions if they get out of hand.

That is actually the biggest problem with ADHD. You should try Atomoxetine. In my experience it helps better with emotional control than any other ADHD medication. Dosage: 2 x 18 mg per day, should be enough for his age. Morning and afternoon. You can try to add a stimulant later, if he struggles in school. But Atomoxetine would always be my first choice for behavioral problems and impulsivity.
 
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My 12 year old son has autism. He’s high functioning and very intelligent, but is the most literal person I’ve ever came across. He can’t pick up on a bit of sarcasm, but he can remember dates and everything that happened on that day and the weather on that date from around the time he was two. He has obsessive tendencies and limited interests. It’s hard to get him to try new things and I worry about his health.

It’s very frustrating at times, but he can’t help the way he is. I just give thanks that he is verbal, and, while still socially awkward, he has adapted to interact with others very well. There’s just so much that is different in how he and I see the world that neither one of us will understand. We just have to love them and I’ve found the best strategy for me it to not show him pith of he doesn’t get something and I treat him like a normal boy. Kids like my son don’t need that, “I’m special and I need extra help” mindset. They just need men to show them how to be men and roll with the punches and not take themselves too seriously.

Finding a worthwhile hobby for them to do to, get them outside, being physical with them from an early age will help them so much to desensitize them to a lot of the sensory stuff, if you can ease them into it and progressively make the rough play even tougher, it’s amazing for them. After years of trying, we finally found an outlet for him in Brazilian Ju Jitsu. He loves it. He’s rolling, learning to be aggressive, and it gets most of that pinned up energy he has to release out in a constructive way.

I know it’s not easy and you’ll have days where you want to pull your hair out, but push your boy in the right direction even if it’s something he doesn’t like it at first. Come at it from a place of love and make sure he knows that.

This is totally my experience, by the way. I said for “you” to do something many times, but it’s mostly stuff I’m sure you already knew. Just push him. He can take it and he’ll adapt with some work. I’m so proud of what my boy has overcome in two years and its because we forced him out of his routine and comfort zone, which is something you’re gonna have to make a kid with autism do. Keep being a good dad, bro. Keep your head up, and don’t get down on the bad days. Take a break if you need it and go back and try again. Much love.
 
My son is an extremely picky eater. We're constantly trying new things and he'll go through fazes where he loves a certain thing for awhile but then won't even touch it. One thing that is helpful is that he loves chocolate milk lol (and he says " chocolate milk") but it's really whole milk with carnation breakfast. He's on the smaller side and this thankfully supplements some nutrition, protein and calories he needs.
Same here. We haven’t figured the food thing out yet. I’m worried about his weight and health, but textures of food are something that fucks with him. Not sure what we are gonna do except what we have been doing. Took away the sweets and make him eat what mama cooks whether it takes him 30 minutes or two hours. I’m at a loss.
 
Finding a worthwhile hobby for them to do to,
Well, yeah, but that's the problem. Because many people on the autism spectrum have constrained interests, figuring out what is going to capture them, and especially what it going to stick is a real challenge. And the real hell is that you can put YEARS into something, really love it, and then... It's like a light switch flips, you're just done, and you can't force yourself to do that thing any more. The self-awareness that it's an executive function dysfunction doesn't help you to do the thing.

I guess what I'm saying is, be prepared for a lot of false starts. It's going to be frustrating to buy equipment for a hobby or avocation, and then have a kid very suddenly lose interest, but that's--unfortunately--pretty common. And they're not doing it on purpose.
 
I guess what I'm saying is, be prepared for a lot of false starts. It's going to be frustrating to buy equipment for a hobby or avocation, and then have a kid very suddenly lose interest, but that's--unfortunately--pretty common. And they're not doing it on purpose.

Everything you said is spot on, and is very frustrating at times to say the least. It’s definitely not his fault, because it’s a neurological problem, but the wife and I have basically made the decision that whatever he is doing, we are making him stick with it until he is old enough to make a proper decision on what his hobbies are. If we don’t make that decision for him, he’d be sitting in his room all day not doing anything productive for himself.

Flip-flopping and meandering through hobbies seems to be a problem for a lot of youth today, not just kids with autism or adhd. It’s a lack of discipline, and if we are all being home at with ourselves, is mostly at the fault of the parents giving their children too much freedom to make big decisions too early in life without any consequence if they decide that something is too hard, uncomfortable, or uninteresting and want to give up. We can’t allow that as parents because that’s why kids are so damn soft today…no consequence.

Like i said above, we have my son in BJJ now. Some days he doesn’t want to go, but we make him go anyway and he’s just fine and is glad we made him go by the end of class. We’ve spent a lot of money on those false starts you were referring to, but we have learned that we just can’t do that anymore and have to be more aggressive in our approach to parenting him with his condition and he is thriving because of it.
 
Everything you said is spot on, and is very frustrating at times to say the least. It’s definitely not his fault, because it’s a neurological problem, but the wife and I have basically made the decision that whatever he is doing, we are making him stick with it until he is old enough to make a proper decision on what his hobbies are. If we don’t make that decision for him, he’d be sitting in his room all day not doing anything productive for himself.

Flip-flopping and meandering through hobbies seems to be a problem for a lot of youth today, not just kids with autism or adhd. It’s a lack of discipline, and if we are all being home at with ourselves, is mostly at the fault of the parents giving their children too much freedom to make big decisions too early in life without any consequence if they decide that something is too hard, uncomfortable, or uninteresting and want to give up. We can’t allow that as parents because that’s why kids are so damn soft today…no consequence.

Like i said above, we have my son in BJJ now. Some days he doesn’t want to go, but we make him go anyway and he’s just fine and is glad we made him go by the end of class. We’ve spent a lot of money on those false starts you were referring to, but we have learned that we just can’t do that anymore and have to be more aggressive in our approach to parenting him with his condition and he is thriving because of it.
FWIW, I'm nearly 50, and was diagnosed when I was in my very late 40s. Aspergers wasn't even a potential diagnosis until after I'd graduated from high school, and it's now called Autism Spectrum Disorder. My parents were very concerned about me from a very young age; they took me to a specialty learning psychologist when I was about 6 (I still remember that he had neat lava lamps in his waiting area), and he was stumped. He said that it looked a lot like ADHD to him, but he was pretty sure that it wasn't ADHD.

I've gone through things like this all my life, where I'll get extremely focused on one thing for a while, and then suddenly lose all interest, and I can't force myself to care anymore. Sometimes I'll hit some kind of roadblock on something, and my the time I'll have cleared the roadblock, my ability to care is gone. I guess it's true to say that I don't have discipline, but it's true in the same way that a man with no arms has shitty grip strength; that 'muscle' just doesn't seem to exist for me.

That's where I am right now with hitting the gym. I'm trying to get back into it the way I was from 2013 - 2020. It's hard; the way I felt before just isn't there, and finding the motivation ever day is a challenge. Even things that should be habits, like showering every day, or brushing my teeth, take constant focus to do. Cutting firewood? Sure, I can do that until my back give out, I can no longer lift the chainsaw above my shoulders, and I can't grip the maul. But getting the motivation up to get started, even though I know that I'm going to need that firewood in nine months, is so brutally hard, and it seems like most people don't struggle with that.

In my experience, my parents forcing me to do things once I lost interest in them--or if I had no real interest in the first place--wasn't helpful. It didn't make me feel more disciplined, it just made me feel like a failure because I didn't have the enthusiasm that everyone else had.

Oh, and after 3 years of Little League, I can still say that I hate baseball.
 
FWIW, I'm nearly 50, and was diagnosed when I was in my very late 40s. Aspergers wasn't even a potential diagnosis until after I'd graduated from high school, and it's now called Autism Spectrum Disorder. My parents were very concerned about me from a very young age; they took me to a specialty learning psychologist when I was about 6 (I still remember that he had neat lava lamps in his waiting area), and he was stumped. He said that it looked a lot like ADHD to him, but he was pretty sure that it wasn't ADHD.

I've gone through things like this all my life, where I'll get extremely focused on one thing for a while, and then suddenly lose all interest, and I can't force myself to care anymore. Sometimes I'll hit some kind of roadblock on something, and my the time I'll have cleared the roadblock, my ability to care is gone. I guess it's true to say that I don't have discipline, but it's true in the same way that a man with no arms has shitty grip strength; that 'muscle' just doesn't seem to exist for me.

That's where I am right now with hitting the gym. I'm trying to get back into it the way I was from 2013 - 2020. It's hard; the way I felt before just isn't there, and finding the motivation ever day is a challenge. Even things that should be habits, like showering every day, or brushing my teeth, take constant focus to do. Cutting firewood? Sure, I can do that until my back give out, I can no longer lift the chainsaw above my shoulders, and I can't grip the maul. But getting the motivation up to get started, even though I know that I'm going to need that firewood in nine months, is so brutally hard, and it seems like most people don't struggle with that.

In my experience, my parents forcing me to do things once I lost interest in them--or if I had no real interest in the first place--wasn't helpful. It didn't make me feel more disciplined, it just made me feel like a failure because I didn't have the enthusiasm that everyone else had.

Oh, and after 3 years of Little League, I can still say that I hate baseball.

First off, I appreciate your insight on this matter. You articulate it in a helpful way. The wife and I don’t really get to hear any insight from older individuals that are on the autism spectrum, so I’m cataloging the nuggets of wisdom you’re dropping. Hindsight from others is a powerful tool for parents In our position.

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was younger and have had 3 TBI’s as an adult that have exacerbated the ADHD symptoms, so I can relate to some extent with what you’re saying concerning being extremely focused on something then losing interest. Luckily, the past few years have yielded some improvement with this somehow. I believe the brain is more resilient than we think.

Bro, I sure hope you get the feeling you once had back in your life. I don’t know you at all, but just by reading your reply to me, you seem to really want and need this in your life again. You’re on this forum, so I can only assume you are interested in beginning an AAS journey or are already on some sort of protocol. I wouldn’t say this to a younger guy, but it has definitely helped with all things concerning being a man with me. Testosterone alone helped me tremendously with confidence, drive, motivation, discipline.

Considering your age, low T could be a major factor in quite a few of the things going on with you. If you don’t mind me asking, are you currently on some type of AAS protocol?
 
Quick response since I just got to the gym - I've been on TRT for about a decade. Blood levels are quite a bit higher than I expected (>1500ng/dl) on a UGL supplier. I used to be fully on the juice, and, if i can get back into some kind of shape and find my passion again, I want to go back to homebrewing. I'm working on it. It's just all so hard after losing 2+ years to the pandemic.

TBIS are rough; I worked with a guy briefly that had gotten a TBI in the service. With the very little I knew about his experiences, I do not envy you. That's a really hard recovery.

Anyway, I don't think there's only one "right" way to raise a kid on the spectrum; lots of wrong ways, but not one singular right way. It sounds like you're doing what you can, and that's kind of a big deal.
 
Anyway, I don't think there's only one "right" way to raise a kid on the spectrum; lots of wrong ways, but not one singular right way. It sounds like you're doing what you can, and that's kind of a big deal.

Thank, bro. I appreciate that encouragement. Take care of yourself.
 
I read the title out loud in my head and felt like yall were making fun of me.. lol! Jk but on a serious note I have a brother with "high" functioning autism. Its a thing and it needs taken into the equation when dealing with them or the relationship and the kid suffer. He's doing well now. Bout to graduate college and make more a year than I have the last 6 lol
 
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