My son was terribly sick to his stomach yesterday (the runs) and with each successive diaper changing he was getting more and more tender and pained (even with Desitin).
It got really bad last night when he was so raw he was starting to bleed, and it was heart-wrenching to clean him knowing it hurt, but it would get worse if I didn’t. Well, it seemed to trigger an altogether new level of autistic cycle reaction. He started crying and screaming ‘Mother’ over and over and over…
Unlike normal, he wasn’t caught in just the word for a short period of time and easily distracted. He was caught in the word, the exact pronunciation sound, and the emotion. It was like listening to a record skipping – the exact same sound over and over. Said exactly the same way. Coupled with the exact same crying rhythm.
It scared the life out of my daughter, who subsequently burst out crying. To be honest, it scared me a bit too just because of how different and odd it was.
It also took quite a bit to get him out of that cycle, but as usual – distraction was the best tool, I just needed a really STRONG distraction to break him out of the cycle he was caught in.
Not a good day. Thankfully it seems the medicine has finally kicked in and his stomach problems aren’t showing up today.
Posted by Another Small Step « Lady Drake on May 14, 2008 at 11:50 am
[...] more of those times he’s getting stuck in word cycles. However, none have lasted as long as the one I wrote about previously, so I’m taking that in [...]