Sorry I'm not a woman but I thought this was the most appropriate forum for this since it concerns child rearing (sorry if that's sexist, don't kill me). I found this on another forum:

Why I Give My 9-Year-Old Pot - MNS Forums

Why I Give My 9-Year-Old Pot

He has autism and terrible pain. Marijuana is taming his demons.
By Marie Myung-Ok Lee


Last spring, I wrote about applying for a medical marijuana license for my autistic, allergic 9-year-old son, J., in hopes of soothing his gut pain and anxiety, the roots of the behavioral demons that caused him to lash out at others and himself. After reading studies of how cannabis can ease pain and worry, and in consultation with his doctor, we decided to give it a try. A month into daily cannabis tea and mj-oil cookies (my husband discovered his inner baker), I reported, we both felt that J. seemed happier. But it was hard to tell. He'd have a good morning, then at dinner he'd throw his food. Still, we did notice that when he came home from school with stomach pain (he wasn't getting any supplemental cannabis there), he'd run to the kitchen and demand his tea and cookie. As if he knew this was the stuff that dulled the hellish gut pangs.

How is J. doing now, four months into our cannabis experiment? Well, one day recently, he came home from school, and I noticed something really different: He had a whole shirt on.

Pre-pot, J. ate things that weren't food. There's a name for this: pica. (Pregnant women are known to pica on chalk and laundry starch.) J. chewed the collar of his T-shirts while stealthily deconstructing them from the bottom up, teasing apart and then swallowing the threads. By the time I picked him up from the bus stop after school, the front half of his shirt was gone. His pica become so uncontrollable we couldn't let him sleep with a pajama top (it would be gone by morning) or a pillow (ditto the case and the stuffing). An antique family quilt was reduced to fabric strips, and he even managed to eat holes in a fleece blanket -- so much for his organic diet. I started dressing him only in organic cotton shirts, but we couldn't support the cost of a new one every day. The worst part was watching him scream in pain on the toilet, when what went in had to come out. I had nightmares about long threads knotting in digestive organs. (TMI? Welcome to our life!)

Almost immediately after we started the cannabis, the pica stopped. Just stopped. J. now sleeps with his organic wool-and-cotton, hypoallergenic, temptingly chewable comforter. He pulls it up to his chin at night and declares, "I'm cozy!"
Next, we started seeing changes in J.'s school reports. His curriculum is based on a therapy called Applied Behavioral Analysis, which involves, as the name implies, meticulous analysis of data. At one parent meeting in August (J. is on an extended school year), his teacher excitedly presented his June-July "aggression" chart. An aggression is defined as any attempt or instance of hitting, kicking, biting, or pinching another person. For the past year, he'd consistently had 30 to 50 aggressions in a school day, with a one-time high of 300. The charts for June through July, by contrast, showed he was actually having days -- sometimes one after another -- with zero aggressions.

More evidence: the bus. For the last few years, the arrival of J.'s school bus had been the most traumatic and unpredictable moment of our day. J. has run onto the bus and hit the driver in the face. He has scuffled with the aides and tried to bite them. His behavior brought out the worst in people: One bus monitor (we joked that her personality better suited her for a job at the local prison) seemed to dislike all the kids but treated him with particular contempt, even calling him names, once in front of us.
But the summer brought a new set of aides and driver. It hit me that these folks knew only "Cannabis J." -- a sparkly-eyed boy who says hi to them each morning, goes quietly to his seat, even tries to help put his snap-on harness on.

One day, J.'s regular aide was sick, and a lady with a wacky smile lovingly escorted J. off the bus. There was something familiar about her; once I superimposed a hateful frown on her face, I burst out to my husband, as the bus snorted away, "It was her, wasn't it?" We laughed as J. looked on. "Funny!" he said.

There's a twist to the happy marijuana story, though. While the cannabis has eased J.'s most overwhelming problem, his autism has become more distinct. As the school data show, his aggressive behavior is far less frequent, but his outbursts -- vocalizations that include screams, barking, yips of happiness -- remain. When J. was in his dark phase, we spent our time out of sight, out of mind, inside our house with a screeching, violent, food-and-dish-flinging J. The sounds were contained by double-paned windows (when they weren't broken). Now, within our family, we've reached a lovely homeostasis: household goods unbroken, our arms and J.'s face unscratched. But as we venture outside to play in the yard, take after-dinner walks, or ride with J. on our tandem bike, we can see that the people in the neighborhood know our family is different, and that this is not always to their liking.

Our closest neighbors (on one side, we could probably pass them a pie from our kitchen) have always been understanding. But on the next street, a man stops playing ball with his son when he sees us, and pushes his boy into the house as we approach, turning his back on J.'s cheery "hel-llooo!" He is the man we suspect yells at us -- from behind other houses, so we can't see him -- when J. sometimes vocalizes a bit loudly outside. Then there's the mom with the son about J.'s age (who, incidentally, sounds exactly like J. when he screams). She won't make eye contact when we pass, and pointedly ignored a party invitation from us. I've also heard, from behind a fence of a family who stares at us but never says hi, "Oh, that's J."

And so sometimes we feel a bit the victims of a 21st-century shunning. In the larger context, however, these are small annoyances from small people. The chair of my department invites J. to her yard so he can play in her outdoor pool and lets him vocalize to her neighbors, who do not complain. A mini-gang of too-cool teen boys walks by our short fence after school and always greets J. sincerely, as he calls out adoringly, "Hi, hi, HIIIIIIIIII!" I am grateful that the cannabis has given J. the chance to get out and experience life. If it sometimes punches him back, it also offers him flowers.

I don't consider marijuana a miracle cure for autism. But as an amateur herbalist, I do consider it a wonderful, safe botanical that allows J. to participate more fully in life without the dangers and sometimes permanent side effects of pharmaceutical drugs; now that we have a good dose and a good strain. ("White Russian" -- a favorite of cancer patients, who also need relief from extreme pain). Free from pain, J. can go to school and learn. And his violent behavior won't put him in the local children's psychiatric hospital -- a scenario all too common among his peers.
A friend whose child was once diagnosed with autism, but no longer (he attends school at his grade level and had three developmental assessments showing he no longer merits the diagnosis), wanted to embark on a kind of karmic mission to help other children. After extensive research, she landed on cannabis the way I had. "It has dramatic implications for the autism community," she says, and it's true. We have pictures of J. from a year ago when he would actually claw at his own face. None of the experts had a clue what to do. That little child with the horrifically bleeding and scabbed face looks to us now like a visitor from another world. The J. we know now doesn't look stoned. He just looks like a happy little boy.

And cannabis still can surprise us. We worried that "the munchies" would severely aggravate J.'s problems with overeating in response to his stomach pangs. Instead, the marijuana seems to have modulated these symptoms. Perhaps the pain signals from his stomach were coming through as hunger. J. still can get overexcited if he likes a food too much, so sometimes when he's eating my husband and I leave the room to minimize distractions. The other day, we dared to experiment with doenjang, a fermented tofu soup that he used to love as a baby. The last time we tried it, a year ago, he'd frisbeed the bowl against a tile wall. (Oh, smelly doenjang soup and the million ways it can make a mess.)
We left J. in the kitchen with his steamy bowl and went to the adjoining room. We waited. We heard the spoon ding against the bowl. Satisfied slurpy noises. Then a strange noise that we couldn't identify. A chkka chkka chkkka bsssshhht doinnng! We returned to the kitchen, half expecting to see the walls painted with doenjang. Everything was clean. The bowl and spoon, however, were gone.
J. had taken his dishes to the sink, rinsed them, and put them in the dishwasher -- something we'd never shown him how to do, though he must have watched us do it a million times. In four months, he'd gone from a boy we couldn't feed to a boy who could feed himself and clean up after. The sight of the bowl, not quite rinsed, but almost, was one of the sweetest sights of my parental life. I expect more to come.


Marie Myung-Ok Lee teaches at Brown University and is the author of the novel Somebody's Daughter, and is a winner of the Richard Margolis award for social justice reporting

http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/b...1992648&page=0

Oh man what a wonderful story, and necros or any of you other males, you don't have to be a woman to post in the Womans Lounge.... It is articles like this that we need, Just yesterday there was someone asking about autism... How beautiful it is that this child is now able to learn and play without all of what was going on inside of him,,, It really is too bad that more do not see the good marijuana does but, the word is getting out there, Thank you for such an inspirering story

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Necros, I don't know what happened but this thread had to be moderated onto the public forum. No idea why. It is a glitch we have found in a few spots. I am going around trying to fix this so please bare with me.

This is a great post by the way. and we have another parent, forloveofdavid that is doing this for her autistic son. She swears by it.

God Bless.

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Life,
j-angel

aka GP purrie kittie attack cat!


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Gr8t post.

hi necros.....i hope you don't mind but a lady over at phoenix tears has an autistic son and was looking for info on mj and autism.....i copied your post over to there for her to see..........i hope thats ok?!!!!!

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tracey xxxxxx

NOW GROWIN WW FOR HEALING HEMP OIL!!
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http://www.greenpassion.org/f92/new-...emp-oil-13367/
http://www.greenpassion.org/f53/gran...-2009-a-16443/

What an awesome post! Chalk up one more for MJ!!!!

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Our first grow
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As a mother of an autistic son, This article brings tears to my eyes. I understand- All Too Well, this mothers Pain. How BLESSED she is that she is able to safely and legally administer this medicine to her child- Without fear of prosicution. I am fortunate enough that my son requires NO medication- only therapy and a school that caters to my sons needs. I am so GREATFUL that my son is adjusting to life, and turning into a normal 4 1/2 yr old! I am very lucky that my sons case is so mild, and that he is responding to his therapy and schooling with flying colors. It does make me so sad though to see the other kids in his school. Of all the other kids my sons age in his class- He is the highest functioning. His behavior is almost normal, with only the occasional melt-down. His social skills have improved 100% over the last year, and he will be attending the public Elemantary school for his kindergarten year. This article makes me SOOO Sad in more ways than 1. My son had made great friends with another autistic boy last year. This was a first as my son is very shy and had problems communicating. My son and his friend became extremely close. At a conference last year, I overheard his mother discussing his behaviors at home and how they were turning violent and he was getting worse. To my surprise, this boy was released from the school the following week and entered into a childrens psych hospital. This boy was apperantly turning aggressive to himself and others. I wish I knew how to contact his parents and pass this info along.
If only our world was not So corrupt that they cared more about our Health than the All Mighty Dollar?

JG

I think was long as you give credit to the original author and link to the original website that it was taken from it's OK. You can access Marie Myung-Ok Lee's Double X profile here:

Marie Myung-Ok Lee

My original post is part 2, you can read part 1 at the link above.

Attached Images

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Da-amn, that's amazing.

What a great story! It brings tears to my eyes as we have a highly functioning autistic son also.

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~Big Momma~
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I am a dreamer and live in a fantasy world. I only wish I could be doing the things I'm typing about and stole all of my pictures off the internet.

Just read first post with interest... perhaps the final missing clue is going gluten free. My 8 yo niece is autistic and within 2 weeks of going gluten free, she was able to get off all medications and although still has some odd-like behaviours, she's doing great!

I read that story with great delight,because they think that my 2 year old may have some minor autism. Studies show Gluten free does absolutely nothing.

Thats a story far from what I saw on reffer madness.

Great story, thank you for posting. :-)