Undiagnosed Conditions

[mrs mcveigh]

hi i'm new to this and not completely sure how it works, but i'm increasingly concerned about my son's behaviour and have been for a few years now, mainly im going on mothers instinct as to knowing something is wrong but some of his symptoms are;

*poor memory, forgets things five minutes after
*lying continously
*rocking back and forth
*constant figgeting with hands
*seems to gaze or look through you
*no social bounderies/skills
*erratic movements
*screaming or crying in an instant for no reason
*ignoring what is said to him
*talking to himself as if talking to someone else

these are just a few of his ways, i may be an over protective mother but i'm sure something is not quite right, can anyone here please please give me some advice or an idea on what is going on?
please

[Circadiabsurdium]

All of those symptorms could be caused by sleep deprivation (SEVERE sleep deprivation, trust me, I've been there), except maybe the rocking and "screaming or crying for no apparent reason." Those are odd. And it's not clear from your posting whether your son is having sleep problems - but that's ok, lots of people post here with non-sleep stuff. Though I have made it my special quest to help people figure out their sleep problems, I couldn't help saying something here. It sounds like your son is very young, and those are all very serious symptoms - and my admittedly uninformed opinion is that it actually sounds a lot like autism. If it was me, I'd get him to a pediatrician ASAP in any case. Autism or not, early intervention is super important in most things involving kids - your son will be far better off the sooner he gets diagnosis and proper treatment. If you're concerned about money and want help finding a low-cost screening option - because I'm sure they exist - reply to this posting and I would be willing to help with that. Good luck.

[mrs mcveigh]

Thank you for your reply. I'd rather have 1 accurate reply than 106 unhelpful. I've posted on many forums to try to get an answer, and your reply has been the only one that has reflected exactly what I had been thinking after days of research. I've never mentioned his lack of sleep before because I hadn't seen it as part of the problem, but since you've mentioned it I must admit he's an extremely light sleeper who refuses to sleep until the early hours and also wakes up in the early hours, his hours of sleep are very few.
After reasearching I'm sure he shows signs of autism in some respects, but could his lack of sleep be causing these symptoms instead? He's nearly 6 years old, and as every year passes I get more concerned as his behaviour worsens. I've today managed to get him refered to a child psychologist. It will be a while before I hear anything but I'm interested in your reference to lack of sleep, can you please explain more? or could his possible autism be causing a lack of sleep?

thank you
Mrs McVeigh

[Circadiabsurdium]

Hello again, Mrs. McV

Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert on any of this! What I meant about the symptoms being consistent with severe sleep deprivation was that sleep deprivation can cause some pretty weird stuff. Personally I often experience a disconnect from reality, for instance the looking through people, as if they aren’t even there (sort of falling asleep with my eyes open), poor memory (that’s one of the first things to happen!), erratic behavior because my mind is unable to focus and concentrate. I personally have been so sleep deprived that I had hallucinations (visual and auditory both), talked to myself (I was aware of doing it, but didn’t seem to care that people thought I was nuts), even empathized with and spoke to plants and inanimate objects. But those symptoms were ALWAYS temporary; they went away when I caught up on sleep. It doesn’t sound like that’s the case with your son - which is really scary.

I poked around some on the PsycInfo database. (It’s fun to be a college student and have free online access to all these databases-it gives me an excuse to procrastinate from what I should be doing.) There are many recent studies that recognize a correlation of anywhere from 40-80% or more between autism and sleep problems of all types: sleep onset insomnia, premature awakening (though that one is disputed), apnea, night terrors, interrupted sleep patterns, you name it. One study (Shanti S. Thirumalai, et al. Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder in Children with Autism, Journal of Child Neurology, Vol. 17, Issue 3, 2002, pg. 173-78) found a strong correlation specifically between autism and REM Sleep Behavior Disorder [the sleep channel forum abbreviates it “RBD” and has a blurb on symptoms, but they don’t sound much like what you said about your son].

The Thirumalai study mentioned that there is also a correlation between RBD and “degenerative neuropathic diseases” in the elderly [which I assume means Alzheimer’s and similar ilk], and the authors seemed to anxious to study RBD more to help them understand the causes of at least some cases of autism, and also to confirm their suspicions that treating the RBD would improve the kids’ day-to-day functioning. There’s another study that talks about epilepsy, sleep, and autism. Just the overall correlation with sleep problems is fascinating - sleep, autism, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, it’s all stuff happening primarily in the brain. Maybe the same type of problem in the brain that wasn’t very bad for one person would manifest as a “minor” sleep disorder, but the same thing that was much worse in someone else would cause such a disruption in the brain that it manifests as epilepsy or autism.

I wish I could offer something more helpful, but I’m just a sleep deprived law student, and your son could very well have something relatively rare and complex, maybe something that even trained medical people don’t know much about (the brain: medicine’s final frontier). I think that the most important thing is that you are getting your son to a professional. Hopefully it is someone who gives a da*n and knows what they are doing (I think the kiddie doctors usually do). I hope they are able to get you some help and answers soon. And you should definitely keep posting here because people will read it and it might help another parent with their own child’s problems.