help with my 4yr with hurting himself

[Guest guest]

HI! Anyone who can help me with my 4yr son hurts himself bad with his tantrums.He scratches his face takes out blood,bangs his head on the wall,roll on the floor i'm getting really concerned.I need some help on how i can stop him from hurting himself.THANKS! ZAHRA!

[Guest guest]

Wow, I had a headbanger at that age!! he is 21 yo now (hfa, dyslexia) but I still can feel how awful it was to deal with. Hang in there!

I had no clue why he was doing it back then. What I did was hold him down so he couldn't smack his head into anything. Yes, I got hurt doing it all the time, too. I realize now, I had no training in "how" to restrain a person either. That probably would have been handy! I was just operating on motherly instinct and I felt like I had to protect his head. So I would hold him until he calmed down. I felt like his tantrums ended more and more quickly as time went on after I started holding him. But he could have just been outgrowing them at last. I don't know really.

Does your ds have language yet? My ds, at that time, had about 5 words total. So I think a lot of the problem was that he couldn't communicate any other way except to scream and bang his head.

He was very sensitive to many things in his environment - sounds, smells, visual stimuli. I had no clue back then why he was doing it! But I started paying attention and I learned things like, "Whenever that tv show comes on, he starts headbanging and screaming." or "Whenever we go into that particular store, he has a meltdown almost as soon as we enter." I started to see patterns in his behavior and learned to avoid exposing him to things whenever possible. Long before I learned about sensory integration theories, I learned about his personal needs the hard way!

Some of the things he had trouble with: He was later dx'd with "capd" or central auditory processing delay. If he were 4 yo again today and I knew this, I would have him seeing an audiologist or a ST (probably both) to work on auditory processing. He had a severe speech delay as well, obviously. If I had it to do again, I would have gotten him more ST from the school (he got the standard one ST per week that all kids got). I would have also gotten books on sign language and worked to teach him some signs to have a some basic communication. Or I would have put together a picture exchange system (pecs) - probably both. If you feel communication is a problem for him, I highly recommend using a picture communication system to help him communicate and getting him into the school pre-k program so he can get ST and OT as well. My ds had a ton of problems with sensory issues. He was overly sensitive to smell, visual stimuli and sounds. He was under sensitive to pain (why the headbanging never hurt - he didn't feel pain when he once got his hand smashed in the car door - the pain was all mine! and I even eventually realized that he couldn't tell hot from cold in water, for instance.) So he could have used a lot of OT to work on a lot of these things. This was not very common back then when he was 4 yo so he never got OT for this stuff. But today, it is VERY common. So if you feel this is an area worth exploring, there are tons of books on "sensory integration" and a good OT can evaluate him in many areas to see if he needs therapy and then, help you learn things to do to work on it.

So I recommend you contact your local school system and ask about their pre-k program for special needs - assuming you are in the USA. Request a full educational evaluation in writing and hopefully get him into a program and he can get the therapies and help he needs. If you are not in the USA, search for whatever therapies you can afford and find in your area and go see these people. They will be able to help and help you figure out how to manage him.

For what it's worth, my ds is 21 yo now and has no memory of his screaming and headbanging days. He walks upright, lol, and no dents in his head, although he has a few faint scars here and there (and traces of stitches for one episode gone bad.) His headbanging slowly stopped over time - seems like the last time he did it was around age 6. I don't know if that was thanks to the medication he started at that time or just because it was ending. They had slowed a lot up to that point. His speech suddenly started one day and that probably really helped as well - he was about 4 1/2 yo when speech started coming in for him. Teaching him to use his words was helpful. And of course, we learned to avoid things that usually set him off whenever possible. Hang in there!!

Roxanna

"I

predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Jefferson

( ) help with my 4yr with hurting himself

HI! Anyone who can help me with my 4yr son hurts himself bad with his tantrums.He scratches his face takes out blood,bangs his head on the wall,roll on the floor i'm getting really concerned.I need some help on how i can stop him from hurting himself.THANKS!

ZAHRA!

[Guest guest]

Hi,

your posting remind me of the emotional pain I get when my daughter wants to hurt herself and the fear of she ever killing herself.

I will tell you my finding regarding this issue. I realized that she was hurting herself since she was two year old, later on at eight I found out that:

1. She felt bad with herself and did not like herself.

2. Depression

3. Sensorial issues.

Because of an increase of children and teenagers that are commiting suicide I would take this problem very serious and recomend you to take your child to a good child psyquitriast that especializes on this issue. Then he will give you a referal to an occupational therapist and other doctors if needed.

Because you child is so young it is going to be hard to diagnose the cause, but at he gets older to diagnose and treat him would get easier.

..

I am so sorry you are dealing with this...It is so painful for the parents to see a child doing that... I wish you good luck from the button of my heart.

( ) help with my 4yr with hurting himselfHI! Anyone who can help me with my 4yr son hurts himself bad with his tantrums.He scratches his face takes out blood,bangs his head on the wall,roll on the floor i'm getting really concerned.I need some help on how i can stop him from hurting himself.THANKS! ZAHRA!