Regarding the 5-htp - I took it both at night and in the morning. If, as @Peterpan suggested, it can be genetically indicated, then maybe it just is not genetically indicated in my case. Regarding thinking patterns - I know I read somewhere before starting therapy that cognitive therapy can be as effective as medication and I went in determined to find out if I could really change my thinking patterns enough to not need meds. There were several things that I worked towards. First, I learned to identify what my stress thoughts/patterns were, and then find the fallacy in those thoughts and focus on positive thoughts or affirmations. So for example, when something would not go as I expected it to, I would instinctively think "I'm terrible at this. I screwed it up, (or I am going to mess it up!), I should never have tried this". Now I instinctively think *deep breath* "there is a solution to every problem." If I am working on something outside (garden, hanging clothes, whatever) I might have thought "what will the neighbors think, am I messing this up? I shouldn't have come outside wearing this..." now I block those thoughts and focus on RIGHT NOW. How does the air feel against my skin, the sunshine hitting my back/face, the sound of the bug coming to the nearby flower, The subtle colors on the developing squash plant, the slight movement of the bug burrowing in the dirt, the feel of my breath entering my nose and exiting as I breathe back out. Awareness of any tension in my back, neck, shoulders. Correct to proper posture, relax my jaw, find joy in the gentle sway of the pine trees in the breeze, notice the chickens clucking and not allow my thoughts to stress or worry about things that don't matter right now. A lot of what I do now is to bring my awareness back to stillness, quietness, my breath. Still the chatter in my brain. Quiet the worries and focus on now. Awareness of now, not of future or past. And I've taken favorite scripture verses and turned them into my favorite affirmations to focus my thoughts on during the day. A huge pattern in them is peace - and that is kind of my goal, to focus on the peace that can surround me if I just focus on this - this one thing - the next thing and not EVERYTHING. It's been a multi-month job of daily practice and effort to identify thoughts that need to be changed and then replace them with appropriate thought patterns but I've noticed a HUGE shift in my mental wellbeing. And for me it was not ADHD. It was pure anxiety.

I've taken 5-htp and saw no appreciable difference even at larger doses. I've also tried st. john's wort and had a nerve reaction to it (my nerve endings became hyper- a simple scratch would feel like it burned) I found the best thing for me personally was a prescription for more immediate (immediate in the sense that after several weeks they had kicked in and provided relief) relief of anxiety and then a really amazing counselor who has taught me how to change my thinking patterns. I'm not saying the brain squirrels don't ever try to bother me anymore (haha! I love the term brain squirrels! I never thought about it like that before!) but I know how to kick them out now and I throw their nuts out after them whenever I find one! And I am not on meds anymore either.

So I've reached out to the author of the book and as well to the founder of the National Institute for Play for more information, but all I can find right now is the negative impacts of lack of play. I can't even find anything on the older research mentioned that 30 minutes of play is a minimum amount of time for "magic" to happen in the brain. The thing I'm wondering, is, whether extended periods of uninterrupted imaginary play (how long is extended?) can be considered therapeutic for kids (and for what issues), and along the same lines, are these multiple 15 minute recesses that schools are trying to throw into the middle of their school days less helpful than originally intended?

Interesting - thanks, that's along the lines of what I was looking for ?

Question for you ladies. I am reading the book Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne, and it is suggested, near the end of chapter 1, that deep extended play periods provide the same brain benefits as the hours of meditation that monks practice. I wanted to see some research on this concept but there is no footnote on this comment and my attempts to find anything else about it online give me only benefits of meditation in kids or benefits of multiple brief periods of play, encouraging schools to provide more than one recess time. Neither one supporting the idea that a deep and lengthy period of imaginative play leads to the same specific brain changes that lengthy periods of meditation provides. Can anyone with stronger search skills than I have help me out? Thanks!!

This is where I will be in a few weeks. We dropped the psychologist in the spring, along with the chiropractor, and there are only 2 more OT sessions left on the books and then we're done with them too. The diet is the one constant that I will continue because when he gets something artificial he turns into a nightmare of a child and it lasts for days. Thanks for the encouragement and advice!

Thank you, I think the hardest part will be my own resilience because I tend to get my hopes up and come crashing down when I "fail" and can't get him to do something. But it will make us both stronger!

She does type very well but she really wanted to do more hand-writing instead of typing everything...I Think she is self-conscious of her handwriting compared to her peers and wanted to get better. Maybe I need to ensure she's comfortable with writing the lower case letters to ensure that's not holding her back. I like the idea of highlighting every other line! I use graph paper with her for math and have had to teach her how to use the grids but it helps her tremendously.

Oh and he is 5, turns 6 in January. So it sounds like maybe I should work on confidence building and reduction of anxiety at home before I consider putting him in anything (which financially is good for us anyway). He does go to his Sunday school class and enjoys it in-spite of a particular troublesome kid in his class. We've talked through types of issues that come up, labeling them as small, medium, or big problems and a clear understanding of how he can handle each type of problem. We explained this all to his teacher and then from that point on he has had no problems with that class.

I love this idea - I have a couple of things made from his social group at OT, I think this needs to be part of his "calm down" corner too!

This is great info, thank you so much!! I love the way you explain some of the ideas, because it makes them feel manageable even to me! lol Kind of wish we had spent all that psychological $$ on you instead of the person we did go to.......he has come a long way with sensory processing - he used to avoid all unexpected touch or any "comfort touches" and we had a play date a couple weeks a go where the mom had a ton of water balloons and water guns for the kids to play with and he had so much fun with no meltdowns or other sensory overload issues afterwards! I will take a look at where I can add some of those exposure steps to our days, starting very small and realizing, I'm sure, that it will take time.

The thing is - he was never diagnosed with autism. The psychologist said that he didn't have enough markers for it initially, and only wanted to revisit the topic when we decided to pull out from her services. Like she could scare us into coming back just because of the idea of the "autism" label. His primary care dr. has a child who was diagnosed with autism and feels it was a misdiagnosis based on changes she made and his current behavioral status. She did not feel our son has autism. So officially all we have is "anxiety disorder" and I am inclined to agree based on what I see. His behavior at VBS was classic panic attack. Another trusted adult familiar with him also said it was a panic attack. He displays classic symptoms of a generalized anxiety disorder and I am working with him on that through the lessons in the social group therapy sessions with the OT. The OT suggested a team sport, not sure if I mentioned that before. But all the leagues around here are starting at age 6 and the YMCA is out of our price range. Just looking for confidence builder ideas.

Yes, the OT looked at these for us.

So we've been on a long journey with our son - and spent a lot of money on therapy and dr's over the past year. We've made huge strides in behavioral changes and have gone from an almost sure autism diagnosis to an almost new kid. The big thing that still remains is anxiety. True, unable to do things type anxiety. He has had panic attacks the last two nights when we tried to take him to VBS at our church because of how chaotic it is. He responds the same way if we try to get him to watch a kid-friendly movie, like veggie tales. We've eliminated a ton of allergy triggers (dog, etc.), utilized chiropractic adjustments, participated in social groups, undergone a ton of OT sessions, had individual psychological therapy sessions (she was a waste of time and took a lot of money, I was very disappointed in her), and under the guidance of a natural minded primary dr. we manage so much of his behavior with diet it's kind of miraculous. But we are still experiencing this huge anxiety. Our insurance has changed and we cannot afford the new copays for continued therapy treatments, so I need to find some new ideas for boosting confidence and reducing anxiety.

True, the line isn't super tactile, just enough of a bump to give a bit of feedback. I might try your idea of stacking sheets together and tracing the line with a butter knife edge. It's worth a shot anyway! The OT also wants us to be strict about practicing proper capitol letters in proper places (she'll put random capitols in the middle of words) but she's 10 and this is something I've been onto her about ever since she started writing, it's not like I've "let it slide" so anyone have any great ideas how to get her to improve in this area other than continuing to do copywork and make her fix the mistakes like we have been doing?

Yes, my daughter said she could feel the lines through the pencil while she was writing and that she didn't feel like her pencil was floating on the page anymore.

At my daughter's vision therapy today she was writing on paper with raised lines and it helped her handwriting tremendously. I'm on a super tight budget right now because of paying for therapy and was wondering if anyone knew of a way to make paper with raised lines?

We got mental health benefits in the fall, called to get on the waiting list for a behavioral eval for our then 4 year old son. Had trouble finding a place that took our insurance so ended up at a private psychologist that was recommended by our family dr. Filled out a boatload of paperwork, got on the schedule for January 2018, right as he was turning 5. In January we had 2 visits, an initial visit where she got to see some of his "shutdown" behavior, and she sent home another parent and teacher standardized evaluation for us and one of his Sunday school teachers to fill out. The second visit we turned in those evals and at a glance she told us "he obviously has a lot of things going on" and began going over some of the initial paperwork with us. When I asked about autism, she said there were signs of it on paper, but she preferred to refer out for that diagnosis. I explained the insurance issue and she said that we would see what she could do because they do have a multi-disciplinary team at her office, but that for now, his official diagnosis would be "anxiety". She mentioned OCD at that appointment too. She wanted 3 more appointments before we went any further, one with him and mom, one with him and dad, and one with him alone. Then we would meet again. In the meantime we were to start OT with him. Then she got the flu, we had several weeks of bad weather, we had a traumatic death in the family, and finally, 3 months later, we were able to get back on her schedule. Got those 3 requested visits in, then a parent meeting. That parent meeting was very frustrating for us - she wanted to know how we felt about our experiences with him during those individual sessions, asked for general updates on how things were going, reiterated again that we needed to go on dates to have a break from him, and told us her observations were that he fidgeted and wasn't 100% focused on the games we played, which caused him to make mistakes or miss some of the directions. Literally nothing else. When I asked for copies of her evaluations because our insurance is changing in July and she'll be out of network, she told me rather condescendingly that she never did any "official" evaluations, and a conversation with a new psychologist would be more helpful to us than any papers. I talked to the OT about it and she told us to request a written report of her findings. So I called and left a message explaining nicely that we must have miscommunicated our desired request for a behavioral evaluation, apologized for any confusion, and stated that we would like a written report of her findings and to cancel our next 2 meetings. I just got a voicemail from her explaining that she had missed her note to herself at the bottom of the back of his file to finish going over the behavioral categories, and that we should use one of the next scheduled meetings to go over that and talk about "the rest of it and what it looks like in regards to an autism diagnosis and how that impacts other treatments that we seek out for him". She said she can do a written report for us too, and to call back and let her know how we would like to proceed. I feel like we've waste so much money on her already and we are seeing HUGE improvements in behavior with diet change and OT (where he's in a social group) and that she was unprofessional and unprepared and I don't really want to spend more money on another visit with her... and all the complication that goes along with finding a babysitter for all the kids (the last time we had to do that, my in-laws kept them and they broke his special diet and we had a week's fallout from it in his behavior...) An autism diagnosis at this point isn't going to be very hugely helpful because we've been able to solve the majority of the behaviors ourselves. For example - he's now eating well, his "fits" last mere minutes and he is able to talk about them and take responsibility for cleaning up any messes, and these fits are not even every day (as compared to multiple 20+ minute fits daily before). I'm able to pick more battles and start over with teaching him appropriate behavior even if he's not happy by my request. He rarely truly melts down anymore (less than once a week if that) He rarely shuts down unless we are leaving somewhere and he doesn't want to go. He's sleeping in his bed more than 1/2 the time now (instead of never) he wears jeans without a problem. He's fully day-trained now, has been going to his classes at church without a parent for several weeks. He's not displaying the autistic-like repetitive behaviors anymore, his sensory sensitivities are drastically reduced (now he only doesn't "like" getting dirty or sprayed with a hose... but is willing to take baths, brush teeth, wear all kinds of clothes, walk barefoot outside, etc) He's made several friends his own age, and while he's overwhelmed by large groups still, he is able to manage without a behavioral issue so long as he's well rested and not hungry. So what do I do about the psych??

Oh that's brilliant! I didn't think about adding pictures to it too! I love it!

This is basically what I ended up with and my husband loves it ?

I've been sitting on a project on a collection of states that we visited that my daughter completed last year and want to "finish" it or publish it somehow. Right now it's a stack of papers, some printed, some hand written, and a stack of tracings done on tracing paper. Ideas for the best way to nicely finish the project?

well yes - that's true I did indicate that. and if I can't find a style we both like I'd probably just stick with the messy bun/something up type of thing. So go in a new direction and talk about cuts, then in the end I have both options to consider!

But really - if I'm constantly putting it up to stay cool, what benefit is it to have long hair? seems like a lot of product and time in the shower just to put it up in a messy bun ...

Yeah, bobby pins have trouble sliding INTO my hair, but will stay once there! I wonder if there's a way to style it so that it's shorter and not so tightly curly but more wavy?

That's probably a bit much - my husband really likes it curly and long - it's just crazy hot in the summer!