Metamorphosis Can Really Tire You Out
October 22, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Adolescence, Charlisms, Classics, Gender, Myth, Poetry, Sleep
Yesterday’s Pathophilia reviews a group of studies (two by Mark and David Geier) about testosterone levels in autistic children. Pathophilia finds that testoterone is not increased in autistic children.
The Cambridge-based Autism Research Centre is also researching hormones in autistic individuals. The Foetal testosterone Longitudinal Study seeks to find out whether elevated levels of foetal testosterone are associated with a later diagnosis of autism spectrum conditions. The Current hormones Project is looking at whether current hormone levels might also be atypical in autism and Asperger Syndrome. And another project is looking specifically at puberty.
Yes, as you may have guessed, I’ve got puberty—so to speak—on my mind.
Charlie’s 11 (and five months, to be precise) and he has definitely entered this new stage of development. He must have shot up some 3 inches over the summer; no pair of long pants really seems to fit him, and Jim’s trying to figure out the best moment to use the electric shaver. Charlie is in middle school—-6th grade, as he IEP notes—-and he is the youngest student in his class, and the tallest. Growth spurts, growing pains, the whole puberty thing. I tend to read most about autism and special needs and neurological disorders and the like, but lately I’ve been throwing in a lot more reading about adolescence in boys.
The mornings have become chilly and it’s still dark when the alarm goes off. Consequently, getting out from under the cocoon warmth of a big fleece blanket has been less and less easy for Charlie, and more and more jarring. Charlie usually snoozes off on the bus and then has to go through a second wake-up and, some days, he’s fallen asleep at school and just can’t wake up.
My very mundane guess about this is that adolescence, with its physical and so many other changes, is proving to be hard and laborious for Charlie. I’m not surprised—when Charlie was a baby, it seemed always to take some sort of extra effort for him to roll over, sit up, scoot, stand. He was nearing 16 months when he started to walk. Talking—and much else—-started ever so slowly for Charlie.
And it’s looking like his passage through the stages of adolescence will be equally slow, full of one setback after another, and just so hard. I still remember when Charlie was about 15 months in daycare and trying, trying, to get on his feet. He didn’t talk at all then and Jim and I felt both a strange wonder mixed with misgiving to hear a girl who was not yet three speak in paragraphs, it seemed, and every other child run, skip, and hurry around, while Charlie carefully made his way across the floor.
Charlie has been quite aware of his own tiredness. For the past few notes he has, on his own initiative, taken himself to bed just after 8.30pm. He still takes melatonin (he tends to get hyper at night) and he usually does not fall asleep for a half-hour plus. These past two nights, I’ve sensed that he just wants to go lie down with his blankets and Leapsters in bed and, I don’t know, stare at the ceiling. He still tucks his hands behind his head for comfort, just how his hands and arms were when he was born. Saturday and Sunday, we’ve been glad that Charlie has no activities he needs to wake up for, and he sometimes wakes up around 7.30 and then is back to sleep till 11.30.
If you could see what a lean, lanky, leggy “long tall drink of water” as Jim sometimes says, that Charlie is growing into, it doesn’t seem surprising that he would be so fatigued. All that growing seems to be consuming vast amounts of Charlie’s energy. Coupled with the greater demands of being in middle school, it’s been a whole new world.
I have been reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses with my mythology class. Ovid opens his long poem by writing of “forms changed into new bodies“: In story after story about the nymph Daphne turned into the laurel tree, of Echo become only her voice among the rocks and Narcissus a flower, of Philomela turned into the nightingale, Ovid subtly make clear, metamorphosis hurts. Daphne’s skin becomes bark, her hair twigs and leaves, her feet grow down into the ground. All is changed and, it’s hoped, some new beauty is born.
And the growing pains—it’s hoped they rise and fade, and rise and ebb.
Jeff Stimpson
Jill Cornfield
I wonder if his sleepiness during the daytime is from the residual effects of melatonin. Hope your’e not giving it to him on a daily basis. Perhaps a “soothing” type of activity prior to or just before bedtime may have a more calming and conducive effect for falling asleep. Often, just lying in bed with our children and pretending to sleep with them often makes them fall asleep fast and peacefully.
Aww, bless his little heart. Poor kid.
He used to fall asleep at midnight and 1am prior to taking melatonin and was, consequently, very sleepy at school. And he likes to make it clear, it’s his bed and he’s not sharing the space!
Kristina , Charlie and my Casey sound so very similar. It seems each morning that he wakes up, he is a just a little bit visibly taller. It’s scary. He started getting a little “B.O” about a year ago, forcing us into the deodorant habit (thanks goodness for Tom’s Of Maine) and the doc said he has a few signs of puberty when you look at his chest and stomach but no other obvious ones if you know what I mean, yet. He is only just 10 and is around 5′4 and I can’t imagine how big he’ll be at his largest point. I wish though that like Charlie, some tiredness from all this growing would manifest itself into sleep, but it doens’t. He’s awake till 11:00 at night, wakes up in the middles of the night for who knows how long, and yet never seems tired! Ah, the mysteries of Autism.
Giving away a free AUTISM AWARENESS T-Shirt on my blog. Would love you to come enter!
http://www.HIsGraceAmazesMe.blogspot.com.
Donna
A pediatrician once told me “It is called growing pains for a reason, it is painful!”
A regular part of the transition into adolescence; your son is fortunate to have parents who understand.
Ah poor guy,
Let him sleep as much as he wants and keep shoveling food in whenever possible ; )
My guy will be sixteen in November. He is 6′ 2″ (and dr’s predict he might be as tall as 6′7″ when fully grown). Between middle school and now he has grown at least five inches! But due to food sensory issues his weight was a concern. I keep offering him snacks at every opportunity and last week after school he demolished 20 bagel bites in one sitting - yikes!
I have also noticed that I am now officially “short.”
I was short a long time ago! 6′ 7″…….. If I note that we go to the grocery store a lot, it’s because food doesn’t last too long once bought!
@bonnie, all of this sleeping is relatively recent—-really just this school year, with an earlier wake-up time due to school starting earlier. So you never know…….
Just a clarification. There are 2 studies that I could find in the literature concerning testosterone levels in children with autism*: One by Tdorjman et al (1995) in 72 pre- or postpubertal children (which included 2 control groups) and one by Geier and Geier in 16 children with ASD (no control group). Tdorjman et al didn’t find increased levels of testosterone or DHEA in their children with ASD. Geier and Geier concluded that levels of testosterone and DHEA were increased and that levels of FSH were decreased in their subjects, despite the fact that values were within normal, published ranges in every case. (Seems to be a tendency of the Geiers to conclude abnormality, despite the fact that lab values are within normal ranges.)
There is also a case report by Tordjman et al (1997), in which 3 particularly aggressive, pubertal children with atypical ASD showed high testosterone levels (although, in 2 cases, values were within normal, published ranges). Geier and Geier have cited this case series to support their contention of “too much maleness” in ASD, but appear to serially neglect the negative study by Tordjman study from 1995.
*Excluding fetal testosterone articles.
P.S. Good luck with your pubertal children.
Next thing you know he’ll be checking out the girls!