Each week I provide you with some of my ideas about turning autism around. So, if you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel, you can do that now. Many children with autism, whether they’re 2 or 20 years old, if they have limited to no spoken language, they may exhibit problem behaviors related to going to the dentist or the doctor. Some will have trouble with nail clipping or any medical procedures, like blood draws, or tolerating you putting eye drops in their eyes or shots of any kind. These kinds of community outings, if you want to call them community outings, may have serious problems. A child may even have difficulty with tolerating haircuts, which shouldn’t involve any pain. I did a video blog on getting haircuts and making those go smoother a while ago, so you may want to check that out as well.
After you get baseline data, you should make a goal for the child. Maybe the goal is to go to the dentist and be able to tolerate sitting in the chair, reclining it, having their teeth examined just very superficially. And maybe the goal isn’t anything elaborate like the child will tolerate getting a cavity filled. Because for some kids it may only be realistic that dental visits, at least for now, include an observation and not include scraping of the teeth for the plaque. Or cavities being filled. Because there’s a lot of variables, including pain and toleration of pain. These kinds of kids that can’t do all that may need to be put under anesthesia every few years for more invasive dental work. For some of my clients, this is true, especially for children who are not consistent in tolerating and reporting pain.
I learned over the years that the silver fillings actually have mercury in them. We should be getting white composite fillings in our children’s teeth. And in our own teeth as well. A lot of dental offices have phased out, or are phasing out silver fillings, but you may want to double-check.
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