Oh Poop!

Ethan, who is afraid of animals – except for Nibbles the guinea pig – began crying this morning when I told him he would have to wait his turn to take home his first grade classroom’s chicks. Yesterday he told me he was terrified of the little balls of yellow fuzz. So I knew…

“Ethan, you’re going to have to sit on the potty.” (Ugh.)

Without going into too much detail, going “potty” is a BIG deal when it comes to my seven-year-old, high-functioning autistic son. (And apparently this is common in persons with autism because it is a disorder that affects the guts as well as the nerves and the brain.) He has been on an adult dose of Miralax daily since he was two, but we have stages where he refuses to cooperate, such as this past week. He will purposely spill his medicated water out of spite. Then the cycle begins.

When he gets out of sorts, he begins talking gibberish. He starts to cry over unusual things. He starts to misbehave. And he starts to say things like, “I want to do bad things,” “I want to tell lies,” “I want to break the law.” And he will lay on his tummy and tells me he’s cold or tired, even it’s 90 degrees in the house and well before his bedtime.

When a similar situation happened last week, I eventually had to force the issue and ended up with an Ethan meltdown, including a slap across my face and a kick to the gut.

“WHAT?!?! I would not put up with that!” I can just hear my friends who have “typical” children respond.

But many parents of autistic children simply nod in agreement because they’ve been there. Afterward, he told me he was “so, so very sorry” for doing that.

Meltdowns were what led us to a child psychologist when Ethan was 3 years old. These are not simply tantrums. They are totally out-of-control, violent episodes that the child honestly cannot stop just by sheer will.

We learned that hitting at that age generally indicated a language issue. Even though Ethan was progressing “normally” with the number of words he used, we had him tested and found he had significant problems in the use of receptive and expressive language.

Sure enough, as Ethan’s language progressed, the meltdowns lessened. Fortunately these events are very rare nowadays, and usually caused by, well, see the above... . It’s a good thing they don't happen often now because my little man is getting heavy and strong!

This morning, however, things went well. A few little tears, 10 minutes tardy to school, then all was good. He went back to his sweet, funny self, had a great day, and in turn, so did I.