Mouthing and sucking his right hand

[Guest guest]

Hi,

Your speech therapist is right. Your son is craving oral input. My daughter had a similar problem. She used to constantly lick around her mouth to where it looked like a permanent strawbery stain - and it was scurvy and dry so she licked it even more. This would go on for days and we were at our wits end. We tried all kinds of aversives - bitter aloe, vaseline by the boatload, hydrocortisone creams - nothing worked. She would just lick until she was satisfied and then it would stop. But since she's been on the HANDLE program (Google it), they have this excerise called Face Tapping. Basically, you tap the child's face along the trigeminal nerve - the big nerve in the face. Some of our kids, my daughter especially, had an understimulated trigeminal nerve around her mouth and that's what was causing the licking. So within two weeks of doing this Face Tapping Exercise, the licking stopped and has

NEVER come back again - the last lick was 4 months ago. And keep in mind, we'd been struggling with this for 3 years!!!! A good introduction to the HANDLE therapy is to buy and read the book "The Fabric of Autism" by Judith Bluestone. HANDLE is based in Seattle and Judith is herself a person with ASD. Absolutely a must in my mommy opinion. Please give the therapy a try. Anything else is going to be an exercise in frustration - ask me - I went through it for 3 years!!!! Let me know if you need any more information.

Jazel

Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.