Why We Chose to Medicate Our Son

A look at autism, anxiety, and medication.

My son Jack was diagnosed with autism when he was eighteen months old.

In first grade, he was crushed by anxiety. I had never seen anything like it.

He chanted about painting babies blue. He was afraid to leave the house because of the wind chill factor. At six years old, he lost toilet training when a toilet in a public restroom flushed automatically and scared him. He asked what time it was a dozen times an hour.

On top of that, he seemed eerily checked out most of the time – as though he was living on the periphery of our lives. He never joined us to watch television at night, or participated in anything our family did. He hovered outside of the rooms. He slept less and less.

We had trouble simply getting him through the day. This went on for months.

But we weren’t going to medicate him! Oh, no way. We weren’t those kinds of parents. Or so we thought.