Aspbergers syndrome

[karen1961]

My son who is 12, was diagnosed when he was four. Through the years we have coped with his problems with as many additive free foods and sweets as possible, and have always had an honest and open communication with his schools.

He is now in a realtively small church comprehensive school and to be honest they are brilliant with him, he has limited homework and lots of support from the teachers, obviously his social skills are nil and he still has no friends despite being in th school for a year. Our problem, which we dont seem to be able to get over is his anxiety and phobia regarding school. Has anyone else come across this and any ideas as to how we could over come it?

Thank you for your help

I think most of us are suffering with this.

Definately no easy answers. But here are a list of things we do which are all helping with our son's anxiety:

• Omega3 fish oil
• Epsom Bath Salts
• Reflexology
• Retained Reflexes Therapy
• Support from the ASD team at school
• Auditory Integration Treatment

While these things do all help him, his anxiety is still very high.

I'm not sure what to do with him next.

Things that haven't helped at all:

• Suport from the Behaviour Support Therapist
• Clinical Psychologist

dd1 (AS) suffers from anxiety, she's only 6 but i'm guessing it will get worse for her as she gets older. I started therapy for myself toda y for anxiety and phobia (this is the 3rd lot of therapy), the therapist thinks i may have AS(or autistic traits), she said if that is the case its very hard to get rid of anxiety and phobias but there are ways of learning to cope/live with it.

CBT therapy can help.

This book Asperger Syndrome and Anxiety: A Guide to Successful Stress Management was OK.

Gave me some ideas.

I have no answers but I can really relate to what you are saying.

DD aged 11 (AS) has incredible levels of anxiety at the moment having just started secondary school.

We have found activities relating to her special interests seem to give her a break from herself. She gets absorbed completely and it calms her.

I don't put any pressure on her at home on school days as dealing with school is as much as she can cope with in a day. I give her lots of support with homework.

I have read that sometimes AS people need a few days break from school as a 6 week run between holidays is too much. I am seriously considering this myself at the moment as DD is pushed to her coping threshold.

We did prozac a while ago with dd and it worked amazingly. She came off well, lacked a bit of confidence but nothing compared to how anxious she was prior to the prozac.

Thank you all, Im just happy we are not the only ones going throught this. I am just taking my son off the Fluoxetine as it doesn't seem to do much now, he has been on it for about 5 months and at first, was great, but his anxiety level is even greater now. He lives for lego and gets lost in that for hours. He's had this week off school from it again, so we start again on Monday.

We have had this too. Our son is on Risperidone and at 15 is just coming off it (slowly).
I don't think there are any easy answers to be honest. Anxiety is something they all suffer from to a greater or lesser degree but our DS has learnt to manage better as he has got older.

karen did your son change brands of Fluoxetine. My dd did and it sent her into terrible anxiety. We put her back on the origina,l brand Prozac rather than the generic, and it worked really well. The Drs don't want to pay for the brand so prescribe the generic and I looked it up and the change can cause problems. Just a thought.

Hi Karen,
Have they done an autism environment check?
I'm on the autism spectrum and help schools to understand us a little better. If I go into a standard school for the day, I can rarely get through it even as an adult. The noise levels, the flickering lighting and the other sensory issues are (for me) so exhausting that I end up panicking, even if the people are lovely.

Thank you all,

Amberlight, they have close connection with a school specially for autistic children. One of the outreach team regularly visits, but I will ask the question tomorrow.

Like Embracing - we find the odd day off help to reduce tension for our 12yr old DS. I just let him indulge himself in his current obsession 4 a whole day.

Also lots of excersise makes a huge difference

retained reflexes really good, also look at www.treatingautism.org.uk - investigate getting rid of casein and gluten and see if that helps.

Karen, well worth asking, yes - often the outreach people are very skilled, but don't have our sensory system... so literally can't see and experience the world as we do, and miss some things that are causing the anxiety.