Medication for Autism Spectrum Disorder?

Today we're talking about autism spectrum disorder and medication. And I want to give a quick disclaimer. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a physician, I'm not medically trained, I'm a speech therapist. And this is my own opinion and my own experiences teaching and treating autistic children who are under medication. Alright? So let's just talk about this first. My opinion about this is I do not agree on giving young children medication. And the reason why. And you might be scratching your head, you're like, ming, dude, I've never seen an autistic child who is on medication, right. The reason why I'm talking about this is because I've been working in Southeast Asia and I've been astounded by the number of children who are under medication, right. Who doctors prescribe certain types of drugs that I have never heard of. I don't know, I don't have enough training to give an opinion, but I can only give opinions based on my work. Right? So let's talk about that. My opinion is that I don't agree giving young children drugs, I just don't see it as a good idea because their brains are not totally developed, their whole body isn't totally developed. Giving drugs that to a human being whose physiology is ever changing, right. They're growing up, their size is multiplying. I just don't think it's a good idea. That's number one. Number two is that it affects their behavior. Okay? And you see, Autism Spectrum disorder is called a spectrum disorder for a very specific reason. It's because there are different types, different ways that autism is expressed on an individual. Right? So you might see someone who is autistic look very different from another autistic person or child. And that's very, very, very super duper normal. And how would you prescribe a drug to a certain individual who have differing characteristics and symptoms? Right. That's mind boggling to me. All right, so let's talk about what I learned. Okay? I've seen a bunch of a handful of students that I had who were on medication, all right? And the doctor deemed it was. I'm not bad mouthing them or anything. I'm just telling you what I observed, right? The child couldn't sleep. They were a lot more hyperactive for some. And some of them, they couldn't really focus at all. Right. They were even more out of the world, so to speak. And I feel like this needs to be addressed. If you are right now in a country where doctors do provide medication to Children, autistic children, I suggest you to not do it. All right? Because a lot of the success cases that I've had, like success meaning not getting rid of autism, but coping with. Right. Is through behavioral means. Right. Obviously I'm saying this as a behavioral person. Like my therapy is behavioral based. Right. So don't be alarmed that I am talking about what I believe to be true. And that's why you're watching this. Right. So don't do it. That's. That's the short version of the story. Right. And there are some disorders that, for instance, adhd, that require medical attention. Right. Recently I've heard that there's a new company coming up with a video game that would help alleviate and train some of the symptoms of adhd, teaching them how to cope through a video game. And I think this is very similar. Like we shouldn't use medical means. Medical is always something like every medicine has its drawbacks as a side effects. Okay, don't quote me on that. I heard this from a doctor friend. It's like every medicine has a side effect. It's just that the overall gain is bigger than of the negative consequences and that's why we use it. Obviously, sometimes it's going to make a lot of sense. For instance, for stroke, right. You take some blood thinners, right. So that it doesn't. It thins up your blood and it reduces the chance of a stroke. Right? That's fair enough. Obviously there are different consequences. It might be like, I'm not a doctor, so I'm not gonna go here and talk about like side effects. Right? But if you're dealing with side effects such as like insomnia or like constipation, then it's a good trait. Right, but when is it a good trait with children? Most of the time I would say that, you know, for ADHD children, after they do take the medicine, they do perform better. Right. They are more on task, they're more here, they're faster, they think clearer and they're more steady. Right, but is it a long term thing? No. The reason why I would suggest sometimes for medication is so that the behavioral methods, the approach will work better. All right? Will work better. So my instructions, my coping strategies will actually go into the child's mind instead of me trying to, trying to hammer in like maybe one hour of therapy, you know, maybe just like 30% was useful without the medicine. With the medicine, then it might be like 70. Right. So do I see the same gains with autistic children on medicine? I don't Think so? I really don't think so. I haven't seen a significant difference between a child who had the medicine and they haven't. And I'm talking about like maybe seven or eight cases that I've seen in Southeast Asia. So I'm telling you, I just don't see it. Right. And I've talked to many parents that have gone through that in these types of countries. Because the nature of my work, I work online, I work with people all over the world and just experienced mothers tell me that your medication, biomedicine, having a different diet, these things are great foundations, right? Like it helps with the baseline, right? I don't know about the medicine though, to be very honest. From, from my experience, not really. But what I mean is all these things, they help with the baseline. But what you do, what you teach, still needs to go forward, right? That's the most important thing. The biggest thing that moves an autistic child up is by training them. And you cannot think that I'll give them this medicine, they will suddenly know how to do it. So, for instance, if you take some sort of concentration drug for revising, right? For studying, it's not like you take the medicine and you know the content, you know the material. You take it so that you study better, right? So therefore you cannot do that and you cannot just take some sort of drug and hope that it will help you. There's no magic drug, there's no magic pill. If there were, then great, I'll probably do something else, you know, like I don't need to teach children anymore. And that's, that's a good thing, you know, I'm really happy about that. But at the moment in time, I don't see that happening. Alright, I know this is a very controversial thing to talk about and I know that parents don't know what to do when this situation happens. Especially when a professional says, oh, I'm gonna give your child some drugs. And it breaks my heart just to see that the mother trying to wean off that drug because it was so like, powerful that the child couldn't sleep trying to wean off and the child was just cranky when the drug wasn't in his system. It just breaks my heart. No kid should be taking medicine for autism, which is something not physiological, right? It's not something that is, it's not a medical disorder, you know, it's. It's a developmental disorder. You cannot take medicine for that. So all in all, this is all my opinion, please take it with a grain of salt. I'm just gonna give you my disclaimer here. And that's pretty much the end of this video. If you have any more questions, put it in the comments down below so we can have a discussion. And before you go, you can. You can Please go to agentsofspeech.com checklist if you want to start your home therapy today. All right, we've got a list of tools and toys about what we recommend you to have when you start. So that's it for this video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye. Bye.