Diagnosis awaiting with no support..

My son is 7, he is the most beautiful , kindest little boy I know .. we have been waiting for a diagnosis for such a long time and I really need support, maybe advice would help me not feel so alone..

among many things he has a tendency to let situations wether this be social or just general things frustrate him , so I’m new to the whole autism traits thing but he self harms , he will scratch his face till it bleeds and rock back and forth, I’m not really sure why this happens , google isn’t the most reliable source and wondered if anyone had any advice for me to help him stop or try and find alternatives to help him .. it makes me so upset for him because I can’t imagine how it feels to be him , but after it happens he doesn’t really show any thought for the pain it may cause himself.. he has quite a few scars from where he has done it in the past , he does it with fingernails only .. I mean does anyone have any experience in this .. the help we ask for is just school putting him on his own to calm down, which I don’t think makes it better. Hoping someone here can shed some light .. desperate mum !

Parents
  • Hi

    The scratching and rocking are stimming. Self regulation when everything gets to much. 

    Try to look for triggers, like what happened beforehand is there a pattern or something he is really struggling with? Have you tried introducing a safe space with sensory toys so when he starts to feel overwhelmed he can get the sensory release without hurting himself.

    We started using a visual scale for emotions with our daughter as she struggles to identify the smaller ones like frustration and jumps straight to anger, being able to see the scale has kind of put what she feels into something she can see and understand. 

    We also looked at her behaviour before a meltdown and noticed several very small tells so most of the time we can see it coming and can give her options to calm herself. 

    This helped massively during the day, night time is still a work in progress! 

Reply
  • Hi

    The scratching and rocking are stimming. Self regulation when everything gets to much. 

    Try to look for triggers, like what happened beforehand is there a pattern or something he is really struggling with? Have you tried introducing a safe space with sensory toys so when he starts to feel overwhelmed he can get the sensory release without hurting himself.

    We started using a visual scale for emotions with our daughter as she struggles to identify the smaller ones like frustration and jumps straight to anger, being able to see the scale has kind of put what she feels into something she can see and understand. 

    We also looked at her behaviour before a meltdown and noticed several very small tells so most of the time we can see it coming and can give her options to calm herself. 

    This helped massively during the day, night time is still a work in progress! 

Children
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