Please settle this for me once and for all - is it possible for an autistic child to deliberately induce petit mal seizures at will by stimming?

[Greensleeves]

For personal, family/history reasons I would be really grateful if all you knowledgeable posters of children with autism/epilepsy could help me understand whether or not this is possible, and if so, how likely is it that a child would do, it, WHY they would, and how it should best be handled

sorry if it pisses anyone off!

.

Hmmm. Ds3 is in for 24 hour EEG next week so intrguing.

My guess would be that usually the child isn;t inducing an epileptic absence but an autistic absence which according to my Paed is pretty much impossible to differnetiate except by emans of EEG. But in every case I would advocate an EEG on a JIC basis.

they definitely were petit mal seizures, the child was under a consultant and his epilepsy was medicated, and did also involve the occasional grand mal

what sancti said !
Id get the child checked out if any seizures happened regardless of whether you think its self induced or not...its better to be on the safe side.

In that case I would say the stims were caused either by the seizure or the impending seizure (and friends tell me they can sense them coming) was causing a stim reaction.

well am no expect, but that sounds like bollocks to me. as sancti says it is possible for a child with ASD to have an non-epileptic absence, but I would imagine that would be due to overload, i.e. wouldn't be deliberate, more a defense mechanism.

I have seen DS once have a semi-absence during a boring SALT assessment - it was like I could see his eyes glaze over, and he became unresponsive to SALT questions. But as it was a complete one off, I never bothered considering it further. I didn't considerate it as deliberate in a conscious premeditated way.

ah crossed posted - in this case if it's a definite history of epilepsy I wouldnt see it as deliberate or caused bty the stimming in any shape or form.

Well, I suppose there's a theoretical possibility that a child with the sort of epilepsy set off by flashing lights could wave their fingers in front of their faces in a bright room and trigger something. But if flickering isn't generally a trigger, then I don't see how. Seems more likely that the stimming is response to eg an aura, so the two are connected, but the other way round iyswim.

For me personally, it goes thus:

In a room with horrific sensory overload.
Brain starts to really hurt from the overload of its wiring.
I stim to try to cope with the pain.
If I don't remove myself to somewhere very quiet and low-sensory...
...eventually the brain just shorts out altogether.

I don't see how the stimming causes the short-out, (though I'm not any sort of expert on this so I could be wrong). I think both can be from external causes.

jesus

it's my little adopted brother I was remembering

severe autism and additional learning needs

his epilepsy became very severe when he hit puberty

but when he was little he had lots of petit mals, several a day

my mother was convinced they were deliberate, part of his campaign of "resistence" and that they were "another way of saying No"

she used to scream at him and smack him for it

I worked with a child who would wave his hand in front of his face whilst looking at the sun. This would cause seizures if left to do it for long enough. But if distracted he was fine.

I think it can be really hard to tell the difference. I sometimes wonder whether ds1 has some petit mal seizures but really have no way of knowing.

Some odd stims he had looked like seizures.

But the point about seizures is that you have no control over them.

I had "absences" as a kid, sort of, but they weren't seizures, and they could be at will or not

I do remember being able to tune out vision and sound and just not experience what was happening - a primary teacher used to snap her fingers in my face and say "oh no you don't" if she saw me drifting away while she was bollocking me

ds1 does this as well

and sometimes he glazes over and can't hear me, and I know he isn't doing it on purpose then

interesting area I think