All Communities > Autism/Asperger's/PDD Awareness > 8 year old regressing....help please!

8 year old regressing....help please!

Teresa - posted on 02/17/2009 ( 2 moms have responded )

My very bright 8 year old autistic son is seemingly regressing. He has went from loving to go to school and learning everything he can to avoiding anything remotely related to school. For example, I received a phone call this morning from his teacher. "He is refusing to do any work. He isn't angry or even starting a meltdown, just simply refusing to do anything." She told me she is going to give him all 0's and fail him for refusing to do his work. She feels he is just being oppositional. He has gotten straight A's since he started school, and now he is failing. She feels he is just trying to control the situation by not doing his work. I feel very strongly that he is regressing very quickly. He has the same interests as other boys his age, pokemon, bakugan, dinosaurs, Ben 10 etc., however all of a sudden he wants the things he wanted when he was 3-4 years old, blues clues, backyardigans, etc. I don't know what to do to help him. Any suggestions?

Join Circle of Moms

2 Comments

View replies by

Melissa - posted on 09/06/2011

Teresa, I have an 8 year old son with Aspergers, ADHD and an anxiety disorder. He has been regressing over the summer and it seems to be getting worse. He is once again playing w/Thomas the Tank Engine and building w/Legos. What's more concerning is that he has started allowing BM's to begin in his pants. He doesn't seem to know when he needs to use the bathroom (#2) anymore. He has been completely potty trained except for some night time bed weting since he was four. We started biomedical intervention w/ a strict diet and supplementation when he was four, and it seemed to help him a great deal. However last year, he began to notice that he takes a lot more pills than everyone else in our fam. and he also started wanting to eat whatever he wanted. So, we allowed him to go off of his diet to see if we saw negative effects. We didn't see any immediately, but over the course of time, I think that this may have caused issues in his GI track, which explains some of our issues. I am having more trouble getting his homework done this school year. Thankfully his teachers are very understanding, but I just feel like I'm losing my son day by day, and I see that this post is a couple of years old, and I wondered if your son "came back." Was it just a phase as Sarah suggested? Sarah, thanks for your insight. I hope you are right. We redecorated Matt's room last April, and we changed churches in May. I know that this has been traumatic for Matt. I just thought that he seemed resigned about these changes (even happy about some aspects of them). It seems like we should stay the course with the decisions that we made, but if this is the problem, I'm wondering how long I should wait before I decide that it's affecting him too much and NOT teaching him anything in the process. Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Sarah - posted on 02/17/2009

Did something happen that maybe didn't seem that big of a deal to you but may have been a big change for your son. Sometimes something can happen that makes them feel vulnerable or confused and they seem to regress because it's their way of coping with the situation. Did someone maybe criticise his work at school or some kids maybe have said something to him (kids can be cruel), something like that is enough to make an autistic kid want to shut down and go back to a time in their head when they felt save which could explain him wanting to watch all the little kid programmes again. It doesn't mean he has regressed forever, it is probably just a phase. I hope he gets back to him normal self soon. Also, that teacher sounds as though she needs to be sent on an autism training course because she obviously isn't helping the situation. Maybe you should arrange a meeting at the school to try to figure out what's going on and make sure you have a professional there who knows about autism. Good luck.