Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all
I have a 11 year old autistic daughter. She has been amazing in everything , happy and managed well in school and life in generally. Within the last month she has started to become very obsessed with at first food allergies she has peanut and sesame allergy so this is understandable. But now this seems to have switched to germs and not being clean. She is refusing to touch things, open doors. Instead she is always wanting to wash her hands, crying that she is not clean.
She is transitioning from primary to high school and I understand that there is lots of change in her life. She seems to have coped well at the high school days. But the leavers assembly of primary has just made this germ / cleaning fear off the scale. It feels like its gone for 10 -100 overnight. Hysterically crying, fear of germs going to kill her and us .
She had a school residential and I feel that was the catalyst for this reaction.
Its heart breaking, she has gone from a happy caring girl to sad and isolating herself who cannot be consoled
Really I am look for anyone who has any experience with this , and how they managed. She isn't open to talk about it or rational advice. I really don't want to stress her more with the wrong approaches, It feels I am getting it wrong.
Thank you in advance , any suggestions welcome
There's more to food allergies than this. But yes, we need to be in the dirt more. However, findings include certain genetics lacking an enzyme to properly break a certain food type down. The immune system is connected to gut-health. And while I'm still exploring what I can, I'm beginning to wonder if forcing children to eat brassicas (broccoli) before their immune system needs the extra sulphur is actually contributing to something like aggressively building the secondary immune system too soon, and playing a role in this.
Our immune system evolved to cope with grubbing around for roots and tubers, eating fruits and seeds directly from the wild and eating rather dubious meat that spoilt quickly. Additionally our ancestors had a heavy internal parasite load of worms (tapeworms roundworms and flukes) and protozoa (Giardia, Entamoeba etc). Giving it very little to do, in our sanitised urban life, is the cause of the rise of allergies, especially food allergies.
Loads of glitches are happening online. Probably the Microsoft issues...
WTAF?!
I am fascinated to see my reply here.....TWICE?!
I'm find myself here because of one of my special interests. Perhaps I should not be. It feels like I am getting it/life wrong.....although I have ALWAYS felt that way.....despite always being led by the evidence before me.
I'm with Martin. Autistics can often be overwhelmed by not having enough knowledge on a matter. First, there is the communication difference. So, we may have understood just enough for things to be deadly, but not enough to understand HOW to function, how the thing works and how to find the cure. Sometimes this can align with things we don't even realise we're interested in.
When I was young, I was deeply troubled over matters of infinite space-time. It was beyond frightening. As I've gotten older, I've found myself buying books on these subjects because it does strike something in me it's just when too young to understand these concepts, they are incredibly overwhelming. I've found most of my youthful fears to be things I simply had a great deal of Awe/Respect for, but prior to the fundamental groundwork to be able to engage with these concepts properly, I was misunderstanding my own emotional state with them.
Gut-health which is related to our immune system, is an exploding topic right now. And it's terribly interesting! once she can understand a microcosm of organisms who are working with her biology in many ways, it might change her state to one of feeling more in control of her being and grounding within the microscopic world around :)
I think this is very common fear - and is often categorised as OCD. I think for children that experienced the pandemic at a young age this sort of fear is very unsurprising and totally understandable. Your daughter has lived through a time when not washing hands etc literally could kill people. it’s difficult if she won’t talk to you about it - so I think it’s important to see if you can find ways to make that possible. If I was in your shoes I would do all my research about germ phobia and ocd so that you are familiar with the advice from experts regarding this problem. I think it’s important for your daughter to know that her fears are very normal and very common, and that the pandemic might have influenced her thinking (ie ‘it’s not your ‘fault’ - you’ve experienced a very intense time with the pandemic and for autistic people many aspects of life are experienced more intensely). She’s probably very frightened that this fear of germs is totally overwhelming her - so it’s important for her to know that ocd is highly treatable. If she’s willing you could get a referral from your GP for CBT. If she’s not it’s definitely possible to get books etc and attempt self help - generally this will be slow, graded exposure to the things she fears. Most of all though give her as much reassurance as you can that her fears are common and highly treatable, and that you understand how hard this is for her, but that you are going to be there for 100% while she learns good coping strategies for dealing with her fears. Good luck!
Perhaps explaining the science might help? There are more bacteria in her body than she has body cells, and many of them are beneficial. Also, seeing that she has allergies it may be useful to explain that a human being has an immune system to tackle 'germs' - I hate that word, bacteria, viruses and fungi (like thrush) are better terms. If the immune system is not challenged by contact with a variety of micro-organisms it becomes both less able to deal with the actual pathogenic ones and more liable to target things that are not microbes, like peanut proteins, giving rise to allergies.
Being 'too clean' is in fact a health problem.
Did anything happen whilst she was away to make her feel unclean? Has she recently started her periods, some women feel very dirty because of them?
I've got no real help to offer, just a couple of suggestions.
To add to the first point, looking back a lot of it was about control- not in a malicious way, but if she’s used to coping a lot with stress and not necessarily showing it, this can be a way her brain is trying to regulate. Things like a schedule she can have control over or ’her own’ cleaning supplies can help this and means you can start to address the problem without having to actually talk about it (which she likely just isn’t able to cope with/communicate her feelings well enough for- even if she seems good at communicating most of the time).
I think I was about her age or a bit younger when I suddenly got very obsessive about a specific disease/worm as well. My sister also went through a similar thing but more extreme/about different things.We both still struggle, but it affects our lives a lot less now. What helped us:
A problem like this is multifaceted- is your daughters worry about getting sick? That might be a part of a wider issue surrounding energy levels/coping skills/body awareness. It can also be a sensory issue- I categorise door knobs as ‘germy’ but this is more because of the feeling they leave on your hands (I HATE the feeling of metal, so metal doorknobs = bad feeling on hands = same feeling as doing something germy [therefore] doorknobs = germy). I’ll ask my sister if there’s anything else she can think of to help. Good luck to you both.