The Decision To Medicate

At some point most of us parents who have children on the spectrum will be faced with the decision rather or not to medicate our children.  I've always felt like to many parents choose to medicate their children without putting forth the effort to explore other avenues first to see if there are other options that might work for their child. 

We have worked hard with our son, and have spent countless hours doing research on things that could possibly help him.  Sometimes we were successful and sometimes we were not.  As he has gotten older we are having a harder time helping him, and finally broke down and got more outside help.  He has a great therapist who has really helped us and has given us some great tools to help him when he gets frustrated and angry.  

Sammy has always been an anxious child and seems to be wound very tightly.  He gets easily frustrated and has always had a hard time handling his emotions appropriately.  We have exhausted every avenue possible to help him that didn't involve medication.  As he has gotten older it has become increasingly harder to help him with his anxiety and the doctor who is involved with his therapy program suggested medicating him to help with his anxiety.  We thought long and hard about it and watching Sammy struggle with his anxiety seemed cruel to us if there were medications that could help him.  So we decided to try the medication.

The decision to medicate is ultimately the decision of the parents or caregiver and for us it has been the right decision.  Sammy's anxiety is so much better, he's not as easily frustrated as he has been and even his OCD has eased up a bit.  We have not had to threaten him with the consequences of his behavior chart in weeks and he is much more relaxed and easy going.  Things that annoyed him before seems to annoy him much less and he's trying new things that in the past he would freak out about.  His body language is more relaxed and less tense.  His movements aren't as stiff and rigid as they have been and he's loosened up a LOT.  We were worried about medicating him up I'm so happy that we decided to.  It may not be right for every child and every family but it has been absolutely the right choice for our son.