A slightly magic bullet
Many of the things we've done have had a great impact on Bright Eyes' life. Let me list some of the key things:
Relationship Development Intervention therapy (for relationship and thinking skills)
Listening Therapy (for auditory processing disorder)
GF-CF diet and specific food intolerance avoiding (for gut healing)
Supplements (for body chemistry)
Now I'd like to add another one.
I recently discovered Young Living Essential Oils through an RDI consultant I follow online, who's had great success dealing with tics and OCD behaviours in her ASD child. I read a bit about it, fairly cautiously to begin with. I mean, there are so many different things out there that people swear by, and many of them are extremely complicated, very expensive or quite out of reach for regular people (camel's milk, anyone?). After seeing quite a few helpful testimonies from other parents with similar children, I thought, "Well, I could just try one of them. Just to see."
So I bought an oil called Vetiver. It's supposed to be calming and grounding. Quite frankly, we can do with all the calming and grounding we can get around here. In the two months before I bought it, Bright Eyes had a number of fairly extreme meltdowns and tantrums, including several serious standoffs during our last school holidays.
The Vetiver arrived. I put it on his toes every day for two weeks. No meltdowns. Coincidence? Maybe. I forgot about it for a day. And then another day. And then he had the biggest blowup he'd had in a month. I put the Vetiver on again, every day for another three weeks and we haven't had a big meltdown since.
Not only that, but it seems to help calm him down if he's beginning to get a little upset about something. One night I could see him getting upset about broccoli or some other equally DISGUSTING and INEDIBLE vegetable I had RUDELY put on his plate, like a MOTHER WHO DIDN'T CARE ABOUT HIM AT ALL (his words, not mine). It was going to be a big one. I could see it coming. I grabbed the Vetiver, swiped some on his neck and said nothing for two minutes. After three minutes, he sighed and said, "Okay, let's do this," and I helped him eat his broccoli.
Yesterday it worked on my second son who has also been known to have a meltdown or two in his life. Five minutes after I put it on his neck he was quiet, calm and apologising.
I've also bought an oil called 'Stress Away' and I plan to buy other oils too, specifically to deal with Bright Eyes' tics. I'm also greedily looking at a particular oil blend called 'Reconnect' which other parents of ASD kids have reported great success with. In fact, I'm just pretty excited about the whole thing.
Apparently, the Young Living oils are guaranteed to be 100% pure, in comparison to other brands of oils which may or may not dilute them. That's got to be good in my book.