18. What Is Your Child's Behavior Telling You?
Have you ever thought that your child’s behavioral actions are related to a nutritional problem? Sadly, so often children with autism often don't receive adequate medical care because they can't always tell us what's wrong.
Brittyn will be discussing how your verbal or non-verbal child may be using other communication tools such as head banging, pushing on their stomach, and even other verbal tools that something deeper is happening!
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IN THIS EPISODE
Advocating for your child’s communication method with your care team
Nutritional needs and how they relate to non-verbal and verbal communication cues
How to find support for your child’s nutritional needs
LINKS
Join the Autism Nutrition Library
Follow @AutismDietitian on Instagram
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Nourishing Autism Podcast where you take a deep dive into the research on autism and dietary changes, nutrition supplements, and lifestyle modifications. Every week, we break down nutrition topics and an easy-to-understand way for you to feel less overwhelmed and feel confident on your nutrition journey with autism.
Hello everyone! And welcome to the Nourishing Autism Podcast. I'm your host Brittyn Coleman, the autism dietitian. And this week, we're talking about behaviors, which is a very overarching term. Behaviors can be good, bad, or something in between. But today we're going to talk about some of those behaviors, like headbanging or pushing their stomach up against the furniture crying for no reason, covering the ears, even when it's quiet are a few of the behaviors that we're going to be talking about today.
And thinking about why your child may be doing this if it's rooted in a health issue, and what they might be communicating. So children with autism often don't receive adequate medical care because they can't always tell us what's wrong. Now they may be verbal, but they may not know that what they're feeling isn't considered normal or healthy. They may have felt this way all of their life, and they may be doing some of these behaviors because of that.
And some children may be nonverbal, but they're still communicating with you through some of these behaviors. So if a child is having some of these self-injurious behaviors or repetitive behaviors, I often encourage parents to talk through if the child could possibly be telling us something.
So, for example, if a child is headbanging or hitting their head; are they telling us that their head hurts? Could they have a migraine? Could they be having a headache and reaction to a food sensitivity? That is common reaction of a food sensitivity to get a headache or migraine. And in fact, there are many different reasons why somebody could have a headache or migraine.
If they're pushing their tummies up against the back of a couch or a table this is often called posturing. Are they bloated? Are they constipated? Constipation is one of the most common GI issues in autism. And if they're pushing their tummies up against something, to get some feedback, it may be offering them some kind of temporary release of that pain that they could be feeling. So it's interesting to think through some of those behaviors that they are showing us, which could be very subtle.
Another one could be that they're crying for no apparent reason. And they may be telling us I feel uncomfortable, something hurts, I'm overstimulated.
And what's difficult is really hard to pull apart what they may be trying to tell us, and it can be really frustrating as a parent who has a child on the spectrum, to feel like you're not able to understand what they're telling us. And I've worked with a lot of parents who have a lot of guilt on this that they look back and say," oh my gosh, I bet he was in pain because of XYZ, because he was constipated because he had this unknown food sensitivity". And my answer always has to be you. I had no idea, first of all. And it can be really difficult to break apart what they're telling us if they're not able to explain to you verbally, or in plain words what they're experiencing. So sometimes it does take a little bit of trial and error in order to figure out what they are saying.
If your child is non-speaking, that doesn't mean that they cannot communicate with you. So this could be a good time to bring in some kind of communication device, whether that's an AAC device, or if that's a pecs board or some way that they could communicate to you to tell you why they're hurting. This takes time to learn so it's not going to be something that you could give to them immediately and they'd be able to tell you everything that they're feeling and thinking, but this can be a really great way to help teach them how to tell you how you can help them.
What can also be really frustrating in the autism world in different therapies is a lot of these behaviors are completely ignored in order to prevent the child from doing them, like reinforcing the child, doing them in the future. So they will restrict a child from doing some of these behaviors but in fact, the child is trying to communicate that they are feeling bad. And so it's this negative reinforcement that they no longer can share that they're hurting in their own way, they stop these behaviors, when in fact it could have been being used as a communication technique.
Sometimes these behaviors are also just written off as autism and "oh yeah, heading banging is common in autism or crying for no apparent reason is common in autism" and they just get swept under this autism rug. I have a whole podcast episode all about getting swept under the autism rug. So definitely go listen to that if that phrasing resonates with you, but this is just really unfortunate because then it causes kids with autism to be more and more underserved when we just write their symptoms off as autism.
And just because they're common in autism doesn't mean that it's healthy. It can still mean that there's something else going on. You can have autism and you can also have severe gastrointestinal issues, which is common. You can have autism and still also have migraines. And a lot of these behaviors just get written off as autism and don't get explored as other conditions
And it can be so difficult, and oftentimes really heartbreaking, as a parent who has a child on the spectrum because you really want to help them feel their best. But you can't just pinpoint what they're trying to tell you if they're non-speaking. So, if this does resonate with you, I encourage you to keep a journal of these behaviors alongside a food journal to see if you can draw any connections between a food allergy or sensitivity and the way that a food may be making them feel.
Working with a dietitian can really help you do this and help you make those dietary changes to help your child feel their best and thrive. And I did a post on Instagram about this so if you're following me on Instagram earlier last month I posted about what your child is doing and what they might be communicating. And so if you're a visual person, it helps you to look through that that is a great post to reference back to.
I would also highly encourage you to read the comments on that post because there are a lot of parents who are sharing their experiences. One person was sharing that their little guy hit his head or punched his face to indicate acid reflux pain. And it took them a while to figure this self-injurious behavior meant heartburn for them. And whenever they were able to resolve the heartburn, that self-injurious behavior stopped. I even had an autistic adult comment and say he definitely had banged his head when he was a kid and he had headaches and it helped, and he was diagnosed as an adult, and that it really resonated with him.
Another one was saying, once they changed their child's diet they had cut out gluten of their son's diet when he was sensitive and he stopped heading together, and that food really had a big impact on the self-injurious behaviors. So I encourage you to take a look at that post take a look through the comments of that post and decide if this could resonate with some of your child's behaviors if they are exhibiting these behaviors too.
And I do have a lot of information in my membership, the Autism Nutrition Library, about some of these symptoms and help you connect the dots into what might be going on underneath. So what you can do is log into the Autism Nutrition Library, you can go into either the symptoms or the conditions, and if you see a symptom that your child may be exhibiting you can click on that and read a little bit more about it. Or if you don't see it, you can also search in the search bar and type in headache and see all of the different notes and conditions that may be related to headaches and explore and go down that rabbit hole, and really help you understand what could be helpful for you to bring up to your pediatrician or your healthcare provider. So that we could explore all of these different areas and reasons why they could be exhibiting some of these behaviors. So just a different way to think about some of these behaviors and what they're doing and what they could be communicating and helping you piece this together in terms of nutrition if nutrition is at the root of some of those behaviors.
That is all I have for you this week. Thank you for joining me on the Nourishing Autism Podcast, and I look forward to chatting with you next week as we talk a little bit more about nutrition and autism and how to help your kids feel their best and thrive. So I'll see you next Friday morning and until then I would love if you rated my podcast five stars so I can continue to reach more and more families and help them take the guesswork out of nourishing autism. I'll see you next week!
This podcast is brought to you by the Autism Nutrition Library, a one-stop hub and community for all things autism nutrition created to help you explore evidence-based nutrition approaches that have proved to be effective to help individuals with autism feel their best, do their best, and be their best.
Join now by clicking Autism Nutrition Library or by stopping by my Instagram @AutismDietitian. See you next week.
Transcribed by Descript
ABOUT Brittyn Coleman, MS, RDN/LD, CLT
I’m a Registered Dietitian, Autism Nutrition Expert, and the Creator of the Autism Nutrition Library.
I work with parents of children with autism to optimize their child’s diet, supplements, and lifestyle based on their unique needs. I help expand accepted foods for picky eaters, improve digestion and gut health, find the root causes of many symptoms, and ultimately help them feel their best so that they can do their best and be their best.
Not only do I relate to families on a professional level, but also on a personal level. I have been a part of the autism community for over 20 years, as my younger brother was diagnosed on the spectrum at a young age.
I look forward to working with you to uncover the root cause of your child’s symptoms and help your child be the best version of themselves!
