Strange Behavior....What does it mean?

Those of you who have children in the autism spectrum are quite familiar with the odd behavior and outright insanity of some of the things your kids do. This post was to share some of those experiences and hopefully shed some light as to why they do those things.

When my #2 was a toddler he had an obsession with poop. It was so gross! I thought I would never get rid of the smell in the house, on the bed, or on ME. I remember how horrible I was to him. I would spank him on a regular basis. I thought I was going to lose my mind. The worst day was when my husband and I were downstairs watching television and we smelled the poop from his room upstairs. I was afraid to open the door to his room because I could smell the concentrated aroma. When I opened the door it looked like a horror show. There was poop all over. I looked up and there was even some on the ceiling. The worst part of it all was the poop all over his face and hair. The smell of poop came out of his mouth in his breath so I believe he even ate some of it. Needless to say, I cried a lot that night.

Why did he do this? Well...I know very well that a lot of "normal" kids go through this as well. However, I read that in some children with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) they have low zinc. Zinc evidently plays an important role in a person's sense of smell and taste. Unfortunately, we had no clue at this point that anything was wrong with him and so we didn't know to test him for it. Hindsight is always 20/20 isn't it? Zinc supplements may have helped. We had to endure his poop fetish for months!!! To this day, we still have issues with him. I need to get his zinc tested. It is like he doesn't smell it. He will have poop in his underwear and it will dry up and smell like something died in his pants. It doesn't even bother him! Unfortunately, I have a smelling deficit myself due to a viral infection I acquired years ago that damaged my olfactory nerves. That means that the smell has to be VERY strong for me to smell it. Lucky me! :)

OCD tendencies are also a big challenge to deal with. My #2 has had some very interesting ones. At one time he had to "check his privates" every chance he got. His hand was always inside his pants. I thought perhaps his underwear was too tight so I changed it. That didn't do the trick. It was embarrassing when he did it in public because he was a seven year-old boy and I could only imagine what people were thinking. There was nothing sexual in nature about his actions. As a matter of fact, I asked him why he was doing it and he said he just had to check it. He didn't even realize he was doing it half the time. I had to constantly remind him to take his hands out of his pants. He finally stopped doing it recently and I am so thankful. Of course, it was short-lived because right now he is doing a weird thing. He will touch his tongue and then smell his fingers. He does it all the time. I try and remind him that his hands are dirty and he doesn't need to be putting them into his mouth. I hope this one passes soon.

I have done research on OCD and it is due to the heightened senses in these children. Their senses are overwhelmed most of the time. However, you often see children immerse themselves in their environment. For example, it's not rare for my child who is eight now to not only smell something but also try and taste it. It's a primal behavior and kind of a survival mechanism. He still has issues with noise and/or sounds. At church he will often have to leave during singing time. It is getting better, but I can tell he gets very restless when the children get loud. It is overwhelming for him at times. I never noticed it until his teacher told me. The one thing that has helped is his ability to communicate. He can actually tell me when something is bothering him. That is truly priceless.

Things start to make sense when you think about the behavior as a reaction to a stimulus. This is when it becomes critical to find out which stimuli cause the behavior problems. In some children it might be smells. In other children it might be noise. Either way, it is important to realize that these children see, feel, and experience the world in a total different way than we do. We can't even begin to comprehend what it must be like. However, if we are lucky we will find ourselves looking at the world through their eyes. We might even find beauty in something that is often overlooked. There is definitely nothing "strange" about that.
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The truth is sometimes stranger
than fiction.
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