Autism, Mania and My Sanity

Have any of you folks ever had to deal with a manic child?  I don’t believe it’s very common.

Having asked that question,  I want to vent about what is going on in the Lost and Tired house right now.

Gavin is manic,  very,  very manic.  When he goes manic,  we experience a myriad of symptoms.  For starters, he kicks into extremely scattered mode.

When he becomes extremely scattered,  he talks constantly,  about random and often incoherent things.  When I say constantly,  I mean constantly.  He never stops talking and it drives me crazy,  as it’s doing now.

He will walk into a room and just start talking,  and he doesn’t seem to care about who he interrupts.  This is very likely do to his lack of impulse control,  which believe it or not,  is far,  far worse when he’s manic.  It’s so frustrating because,  on one hand, I know he has little if any control over this,  but on the other hand this behavior is so incredibly disruptive?

One of the other things that happens is that Gavin kicks into super high speed mode.  Everything he does,  he does at a very high rate of speed and in an extremely uncoordinated fashion. What typically happens,  is that he falls,  slams into or trips over just about anything. 

I mentioned impulse control earlier,  or rather,  lack there of.  Tonight,  Gavin was laying in bed and thought it would be a good idea to try and balance his filled,  metal water bottle on one finger,  directly above his face. It didn’t end well for him.  The water bottle came crashing down and hit him in the face.

This is on top of all the other behavioral issues we normally deal with.

The truth is,  I can’t take anymore.  He is driving me insane.  To say this is exhausting,  would be a horribly gross understatement. 

What makes it so exhausting is that I try so incredibly hard to remain patient with him.  All I can do is attempt to phase out the annoying behaviors and address them when needed. 

At this point,  there is very little that can be done as his Lithium levels are at the top side of where they should be.  All we can do is wait this cycle out and try desparetly to survive it.

Rob Gorski

Full time, work from home single Dad to my 3 amazing boys. Oh...and creator fo this blog. :-)
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Diane

We’re in the same boat.  In fact, I came across the blog solely because I was looking for help because my son is going through -another- period of mania.  I’ve only just recently correlated what he’s going through to the term mania.. it’s the only way to describe it.  You’re right.. the only way to get out of it is to just wait (til it’s out of their system?).  No outside coaxing/help/ignoring/punishment/influence helps.  No advice, but the possible comfort that you are not alone.  Good luck, Rob.

Jesse

I really have no experience myself with dealing with a different kid who has problems. I will flat out admit that at 26 years old I still live at home with my parents, rely on my mom to do a lot of even simple stuff for me such as cook anything advanced (things like Ramen noodles, rice, hamburgers, hot dogs, cheese tortillas, anything simple I can make) but she does stuff like laundry which I have been taught how to do before, but I have a lot of trouble remembering how to wash certain things, and due to motor functions or just general not sure how to do it I can't fold clothes. I can drive, have a car, in fact have a nice 2004 Mustang. How I got a Mustang I'll also tell you cause it's relative. A few years ago I worked for the Red Cross and drove a truck delivering blood. Things went great, bought the car and I liked my job, and I was promptly offered a position upgrade to packing, shipping, and delivering blood in addition to reconciling, responding to alarms throughout dozens or more temp gauges throughout the building and a lot of other job functions I learned that they trained me on (6 months of training!). I was only a processing specialist for less than a year before I got frustrated over some little thing and promptly quit (without notice either BAD!!!!). At the time I quit I was making somewhere between 40K and 50K per year, which having gone to the largest all autistic school in the nation I know a LOT of other autistic kids that are friends still and while most of them don't work, the ones who do never made 40 grand a year. So point I'm making is would I love to change the fact that I have Asperger's, BiPolar, Borderline Personality, ADHD, OCD and severe Anxiety? Of course! I would not like this b.s. I have to deal with every day but I can't change it. If I was only Asperger's then I wouldn't be AS bad off, like for example I wouldn't have tried to commit suicide by taking a bunch of Xanax one year. I take a Xanax every once in a while. I have Xanax prescription, but I never use them. My mom tries to get me to take them to "chill out" or "calm down", but I don't like them cause they're addictive. I know Lost and Tired that things can be difficult, but my mom always says to doctors "I know how hard it is for me and how difficult this is, but I always think of how his life is affected and how much worse it is for him since it's all going through him and we may not even each all see everything that goes through his head!" I feel bad that my mom has to deal with my behavior problems since I was little, but I did not want to have a difficult life either. If you ever do want to ask me anything feel free, I function at an extremely high level and am a tech geek so I'm not classic autism and I would understand almost anything you throw at me, which I've noticed even high functioning autistic kids sometimes don't function as high as myself. I guess their gain on me is that they might have more social skills than me as my social IQ is lacking, mainly (as you can see from the length of this) I go into too much detail and repeat things sometimes several times in more than one specific way. Good luck to all of you with your dual diagnosis kids. I know from a personal level how hard it is!

Allyson

My daughter (10, Aspergers) gets manic when she eats gluten (she has diagnosed Celiac disease) and it is a lot like you describe with a bit of anger and explosion thrown in.

Exhausting? Yes. I have a lot of trouble since the stress of it tends to flare my fibro, but I'm pretty much the only one who can manage her, so … yeah.

Lost_and_Tired

Wow… SMALL world. My mother has Celiac…bad. She was diagnosed in her late 40\’s. It almost killed her. It hits different people differently.

Thanks for sharing. 🙂

angie

my luke is the same. he has aspergers and adhd and his incessant talking and clumsy quick motor skills are just a symptom of his aspergers. does gavin take medicine for the aspergers? luke has been on risperdal which has been very successful for aspergers patients. it helps control his impulses and helps him so much. before the risperdal and when we took him off because of the urination side effect, he was incredibly different! we had to put him back on it despite the side effects. i think you should check into it!!

Lost_and_Tired

Gavin was on that for a long time. Never had the side effects. He was on it for different reasons though. The incessant talking……oh it just never stops. 🙁