Sadness once again haunts our world

January 18, 2006

Well, we had a stretch of happiness or at least not hating life but once Winter break was over and our son went back to school he once again became sad, sullen, despondent, at times indifferent, not always actively unhappy but not happy either.

His second day back to school he wrote on a school paper about thinking about committing suicide...

The school counselor called me the following week about it when the teacher came across it and I reminded the counselor that I had called her that week to let her know that our son wasn't "in the best place" right then, that he was unhappy, despondent, pretty much everything I said above.

I had foolishly, or "wishingly", believed that the Prozac and our newly acquired knowledge of his AS was what made the difference in his mood but now I think I was wrong.

Yes I'm sure that taking the Prozac and knowing what he's dealing with has helped but I'm starting to think that what makes the biggest difference for our son is his being able to flat-out stop in his tracks, quit whatever he's doing and lay down or sit or come get a hug or go to his room for a bit of quiet, that sort of thing.

Although routine is great for him and his school daily schedule is a solid routine, he still desperately needs to be able to s-t-o-p when he becomes overwhelmed by sound, be it the sound of talking, laughing, yelling, noise or whatever.

I'll write more about all of this but I wanted to take a quick moment to let other parents of AS children know that the "fix", if we can call it that, of medication and knowledge didn't last long. The meds and knowledge are definitely helping, but they don't take the place of our son being able to just plain stop when he needs to.

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