ASD & Anxiety

Junebug060609 · September 2014

It clicked for me that the diarrhea DS has been having periodically the past few weeks is likely anxiety driven. He had it bad today when DH and I had to leave him with a sitter. He had it the first few days of school. He had it the day we traveled to get here. He had it a couple weeks ago when we visited my cousin.

I think it's mainly that he has more bandwidth now, and is more aware of things. I've been talking to him, telling him what's coming up...both days in advance and again as we go. Is there anything else that I could do to help him out?

hopecounts · September 2014

Since it seems to be travel and separation related could you do some social stories/books about those things to help him get more comfortable? When DD was struggling with sep. Anxiety we did a social story about school/church nursery and how we'd be back. We also watched Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood Daniel goes to schoolDaniel has a babysitter a good bit. I downloaded the 'grown ups come back' song and we sang/played it a lot. It seemed to help.

Junebug060609 · September 2014

I do think it's a "being unfamiliar with things" thing, and somewhat a mommy separation thing. He didn't give a lick when DH walked in the door but ran to me smiling and flapping the whole way.

Daniel Tiger is a good call. I'd talked to him about it, but still.

Unknown · September 2014

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honeyloveca · September 2014

I used my iphone and took videos/photos of the places we were going and showed him several times days before. The day of I would show him again and then tell him "first we are going to … and then you get (reinforcer) …." and would have a photo of his favorite toy. Also, if you can is there something your child can have that is comforting when he goes to these places? In my case, my son had a blanket that he loved that seemed to soothed him. Little by little his diarrhea anxiety went away.

Junebug060609 · September 2014

Before he went to school I took him to meet his teacher and to play on the playground (2 separate trips). I talked a bunch about school, the airplane and how he'd be staying with his aunt. He rides the bus with his blankie peeking out of his bag and he's had Thomas with him 24/7 of this trip.

Keeptruckin · September 2014

I was just going to ask about this lol! Does he show other signs of anxiety as well? Just going through all my daughter's report and the bASC 2 test shows a 95 percentile of being at risk for anxiety. I know I am personally a very socially anxious person, where in I will go over and over in my mind how certain social interactions went. I am sad for my child to go through this. My kid seems to show anxiety by wanting to rehearse situations, ie, when travelling she repeatedly says things like, "I will have to take off my shoes, I will put them in the bin, they will be x-rayed, I will get them back" over and over again. Like maybe 50 times in the week leading up to travelling. I never correlated the anxiety with her bowel issues as she has numerous allergies and Celiacs disease. We always assume she got exposed to gluten, etc while travelling but now I have to rethink that. Like pp said, is it the chicken or the egg?