Thanks, Marg!

klmno

Active Member
In reference to our Occupational Therapist (OT) discussion on a thread in the WC, I looked at the article you linked about naltrexone. This could be contributing to our problems. difficult child's violence appears to be impulsive and is definitely explosive and not in proportion to whatever made him mad.

I'm wondering if maybe naltrexone could be triggering that - like AD's and stims can trigger mania in a person with BiPolar (BP). We could have missed it as a cause because the previous higher dose of depakote can/did also cause aggression. We took the depkote out of the mix, but it never occurred to me that the naltrexone that had just been added could be contributing, too.

Thanks for bringing this up and posting that link!! Yes- it does block endorphins. I was told that difficult child was getting this medication added to block endorphins so he would quit cutting.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
THanks for your kind words, but sometimes we are just lucky, and in kicking around ideas and concepts we can stumble over something that can be useful.

Our kids are so very complex; we add this and take away that, but there are so many other factors we don't always know about.

I wish, with hindsight, we'd been able to do more about our own kids' cutting (difficult child 1 & easy child 2/difficult child 2). Both have permanent scars, white lines crisscrossing up their airms. But I doubt very much that a medication could have fixed it. Maybe mde it easier for them to cope and peraps made it easier for them to assert some self-control maybe... but difficult child 1 was already on medications to try to help his anxiety, and easy child 2/difficult child 2 simply refused to acknowledge what she was doing.

Our kids are amazing creatures, nevertheless. What we so often forget, as adults trying to force the child to behave more "normally", is that sometimes all the weirdness is their way of trying to cope. We see a stimulant that we feel is socially unacceptable and we try to stop it. Or some therapists try to stop ALL stims, forgetting that sometimes it soothes the child.
While a socially unacceptable stimulant does need to be modified or toned down, I think some stims need to be permitted.

Cutting is obviously not a good coping strategy, but it does need to be recognised - it IS how the child is trying to cope. You can't stop one coping strategy, without replacing it with an alternative that works at least as well from the child's point of view. It could be that the medications are interfering with coping strategy success in general, and this is causing his anger and anxiety to boil over.

It may also be that cutting isn't necessarily producing an endorphin rush - I don't think that was happening with my kids. It was much more complex than that. easy child 2/difficult child 2 was finally talking to us about it, she said that she needed to see on her arm, the physical evidence that her pain was present and valid. Seeing blood was a way of "justifying" the pain she felt inside. And in that situation - sometimes wearing a red elastic band or red string around the wrist can have the same effect. Or draw a red line with a felt pen. I have heard of therapists using a red pen as a substitute for cutting.

Hmm, maybe there's something in this that Madonna needs to think about...

Marg
 
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