DS1's ADHD is official.

[ouryve]

After months of assessments, we finally got to see the Wizard of Oz CAMHS Psychiatrist, today and he confirmed that DS1 did present as having ADHD in addition to his autism. He agreed with me that any flavour of methylphenidate might not be a good fit for DS1, given his anxiety issues, so he's going to be on a trial of Strattera, starting off with 10mg, each morning.

The "mental health worker" who we'd been seeing said DS1 was definitely one of his more interesting cases. Not half!

Well done you! I hope the meds work well for masterouryve.

I do hope so. He's back in school almost full time, now and then there's the looming summer holidays... If the Strattera works for him, we should hopefully be seeing an effect by then and, hopefully, he'll be so much easier to keep busy and engaged and I'll have more time to spend keeping DS2 from tearing the place up.

Hope this works for you and things get more settled. Incidently did CAMHS do anything for anxiety issues? Was forwarded this today www.autism.org.uk/en-gb/get-involved/campaign-for-change/our-campaigns/you-need-to-know/the-facts.as px I for one will be writing to our MP as we are following that yellow brick road just now.

A lot of his anxiety tends to be related to specific situations, so we're still at the point of dealing with that as it arises, in relation to the actual situation (transitions, special days, changes in routine, DS2 dismantling the toilet seat etc!). The most we've had from CAMHS, so far, is a nod that it can't be ignored, hence starting on strattera, instead of ritalin or equivalent. When I originally asked for a re-referral to CAMHS, it was possible ADHD I was concerned about and I didn't specifically ask them for help with the anxiety, as I think it is secondary to everything else.

CAMHS, here don't deal specifically with ASD, either, btw (saw your other thread). DS2 has never had any involvement with them and they were only involved with DS1's original autism diagnosis because of his extreme hyperactivity and impulsiveness.

Where we've had the most useful help has been from the autism advisor who has been involved with his school for the past couple of years. She helped them implement a visual timetable, first...then strategies etc to help him adjust to routines and changes in routine when he was in reception (simple things like the lollipop lady being off ill would completely throw his day, back then). She then encouraged them to throw away the ASD rule book when it became very clear, this year, that he despised routine as much as he needed it and that too much building up to events would increase his anxiety about them to boiling point.

'he despised routine as much as he needed it'
There you have our DS in a nutshell, and we can never tell in advance whether he is in a needing it or not phase.

We are seeking some input though because of level of withdrawal from others, talk of death (hate saying that bit), difficulty attending school at all and some OCD-ish traits (although these come and go very much).

In our case the anxiety seems to get in the way of everything else but it is hard to tell what comes first really - another complex case!!

'he despised routine as much as he needed it'

We find that with DD1!! She needs to know exactly where she is going, what she is doing, what the place looks like, etc (to the point of saying "what church look like? What in it?" - we have to go into great detail, saying it has people, and chairs, and walls, and, and, and...), but equally, she gets so incredibly anxious about the whole thing that we almost daren't tell her about events more than 5 minutes before we go because she absolutely melts down with anxiety about how we will get there, aren't we late, we must go now, etc.

Ampersand - it's hard isn't it? We can't jus spring things on DS1, but if we don't at least prepare him a little bit, he wants nothing to do with whatever it is. But if we tell him too soon, he either goes into complete denial, insisting it's not going to happen or ties himself in knots, like lou's DD1, asking endless questions - and the same questions over and over again. DH is going to slope off and have his hair cut while we go shopping in the morning and I have alluded to the fact to DS1 and told him it's time for us to buy some father's day cards, in secret, but it hasn't really sunk in. I don't want to go into too much detail and make sure he understands what's going to happen before the event, or else he'll obsess about it to the point that he'll not want to go out. If I don't at least sow the seed of the idea, then he'll be extremely upset when it comes to be time for daddy to leave us for a few minutes.

Leonie, I bet you find Christmas Eve, Easter Saturday and the day leading up to any public "different" day pretty tough, too, since it's not like it's possible to avoid the build up unless you stay holed up at home with no TV for the whole of December/March or whatever!