Behavior – When to Worry and When to Investigate Further
I think having a child with special needs makes me, at least, hyper-aware of behavior changes. I am guessing this is the same for other parents of children with special needs. This hyper-awareness identifies a change; however, it does not necessarily result in an understanding of the change. It probably makes us more paranoid and triggers the ‘how do I fix this’ response. It is hard to know when the change is just a typical phase that will correct itself on its own or the result of some bodily issue like a bacterial infection, head pressure, or stomach problems or a social problem at school or home or some other external or identifiable internal source.You don’t want to over-react and spend too much of your time worrying about and researching something that is really just a phase. However, you don’t want to just let it go if there is something you can do to help your child change the behavior.
For CB, lately, he has really been expressing most things with strong emotion. For example, a question like “what would you like for snack?” could trigger “I WANT A BANANA.” with him yelling and sounding harsh or it could even trigger “Your are NOT NICE.” If we ask him to reply again, he will say his response calmly and many times more polite. Other things are triggering full on tantrums like “It’s time to go to bed.” or “Let’s change clothes.” My gut tells me there is something going on gut-wise. We have performed so many tests and it kinda bites to have to follow-up some of those with more tests but that is probably what we will need to do.
I think first steps are to move forward with the enzymes we purchased about a month ago and see if that helps with his high fecal fat content, tooting, and maybe even behavior.