banging head on wall..help

[neenah's mommy]

My daughter has started banging her head on the wall, floor, furniture or anything else she can find to hit it on. She will be sitting on the floor playing, and all of a sudden lean over and start hitting her forehead really hard on the floor. I have to restrain her to make her stop. She will also run as fast as she can into doors or walls head first. I thought she broke her nose the other day! She also punches herself in the face/head at random, but that looks more like spasms in her arms than deliberate. Does anybody else have a child that does this? What can I do to make her stop? I'm afraid she is going to really hurt herself!

[URL=http://s871.photobucket.com/albums/ab277/neenahsmommy/?action=view&current=1266612286.jpg]
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[Cody]

Hiya,

My son Cody has started to hit his ear with his fist, he does it when restrained i.e sat in his pushchair or highchair it's as if he's bored. He also bangs his head not quiet as violent as your daughter, but he bangs the back of his head against everything his cot, the wall. I was told that it's sensory feedback.

I have not had chance to look in to this further, I was thinking of taking him to the doctors to get his ear looked at, but it doesn't look red and he doesn't do it all the time. have you been able to find any more info on your concerns?

Many thanks

Sarah Brown

[neenah's mommy]

Hi Sarah,
I have had her OT watch her when she does this, and she said the same thing, that it is a sensory thing. She has started doing joint compressions on her head and neck to give her extra sensory input. She does not like it much, because she doesn't really like to be touched, but it seems like it might be helping a little. Like your son Cody, she also hits her ear with her fist, but mostly she hits herself around the temple/ eye area. She has also started hitting herself in the belly, but thats just when she gets really excited and starts hand-flapping. I wish I better understood this stuff, and knew more of what to do to help her. I really like her OT, and am trusting her to figure alot of this out with me. Does Cody see an OT?

Donna
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[wendyj]

Dont know if this will help at all, but there is a few interesting ideas.

www.sensory-processing-disorder.com/sensory-diet.html

I have found it quite useful

Wendy
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Wendy Derek, Sarah 12 and Andrew 6 del+

[neenah's mommy]

Thanks Wendy. I appreciate the info!!
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[Cody]

Hi Donna,

No Cody doesn't have OT where they work with him, he's a big two year old and has become difficult to change and feed so we have started to have OT look at his equipment in the house to make things safe. I mentioned the head banging to her and she said about the sensory feedback.

I am going to look in to it further because Cody is marking the back of his head. I am also going to try and get him OT. If I get anymore info I'll let you know.

take care

Sarah

[neenah's mommy]

Good luck Sarah and Cody! I don't know where we would be without our OT.
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[chancesmom]

I agree OT has been the most help especially with the sensitivity to touch for Chance, He also does the head banging thing, I call it more of a tap though , it seems he is doing it for sensory input but sometimes it gets obsessive to the point where if he is near anything with a hard surface he is determined to get to it and tap his head, I am assuming its his way of figuring out where he is in his environment and how to move around it and also exploring what is around him, joint compressions always help Chance to calm down also lately he has been letting us put his weighted pressure vest on him almost as if he knows he needs it...
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Regards,
Shauna, mom to Chance (DOB 11-09-04) Del +
daniella (DOB 4-20-09)
wife to Jay

[Magster's Mom]

I think you are smart to consider if this is sensory seeking behaviour and to involve an OT. But I would also get the doctors to consider pain as a reason for it as well.

We think Maggie had headaches the whole year she was 3. At age four, these became migraines. Migraines are very common in children and adults who have seizure disorders. Head-banging and hitting the head are very common in children with migraines and any non-verbal child who is in pain.

This is a link to useful tool for assessing pain in a non-verbal child. http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/Shared/PDFs/AKH_Breau_everyday.pdf I would just examine the behaviours closely to see if the head-banging could be head pain of any kind. The causes of head pain can be headaches, earaches, sinus/allergy pressure, neck pain, etc. If doctors don't find anything, you might try a chiropractor who can also do cranial sacral work. This made an ENORMOUS difference for Maggie when she was younger and had head pain. I usually assume first with Maggie that self-injurious behaviour is pain before I consider whether its behaviour like attention seeking. Its counter-intuitive, but many people will do things that worsen or exacerbate pain as a way to cope with it. Maggie will pick at sores and injuries incessantly even though it hurts to do so.

Maggie's migraines were improved by putting her on a preventative nerve pain medication called amitriptaline. It also improved her sleep, improved toilet training and just made her more comfortable in her body. We were really surprised how it seemed to lessen her sensory over-sensitivity to anything on her skin. She used to hurt herself by scratching too hard at her mild eczema or at her g-tube button on her tummy. All of that improved with the amitriptaline. Some seizure meds are also preventatives for chronic nerve pain like migraines. When Maggie went back on Keppra, it dramatically improved her migraines. She went from having one a week to two in the past year.

I would also think hard about anything that might have changed for your kids at the time they started the head banging. Many seizure meds can cause headaches over time. I would look up any med your child is on and just see the symptoms that are common. I like to find chat rooms for adults with epilepsy since I can see how verbal adults describe how the various meds make them feel. It might not have emerged with the start of a med but it could definitely be linked to a med. I keep a calendar where I write in anything different about Maggie and it helps to see the pattern of how/when symptoms that might not have been obviously related might actually have a cause I didn't suspect. In Maggie's case with the migraines, she stopped Keppra in November of 2007 and had her first migraine in December of that year. It wasn't until she re-started Keppra in March of 2008 and the migraines disappeared that we had the "aha!" moment of realizing that the Keppra had probably kept the migraines at bay; stopping the Keppra had triggered the migraines.

Using a calendar to track unusual things with Maggie has helped after the fact to see the pattern of when seizure activity is occurring or to see symptoms that might be related to meds that weren't obvious when we stopped or started the med.

Erin
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Erin Sheldon, mom to Maggie, del+, DOB 8/14/03 and Ella DOB 8/19/06. www.sheldonhickey.com

See Maggie star in her movies on YouTube: http://ca.youtube.com/user/magstsersmum

[chancesmom]

Thanks Erin, I am glad you mentioned that. I have always wondered if Chance gets headaches, I have assumed before, when he is extremely whiny and nothing noticeable seems to be causing it (not constipated, hungry, wet, sick) How did you know Maggie was having migraines, exactly? I haven't seen Chance bang/tap his head recently, I am hoping his seizure med (trileptal) could be helping either his sensory or maybe he was getting headaches more often than I assumed especcialy since you mentioned it. I am going to keep a really close eye on it. Thanks !
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Regards,
Shauna, mom to Chance (DOB 11-09-04) Del +
daniella (DOB 4-20-09)
wife to Jay

[neenah's mommy]

I too have often wondered if Neenah could be having headaches that is causing her behavior. I do know she has a ton of sensory issues that we have been working on, but lately I've noticed a change in her personality. She is not as happy, and is extremely clingy to me. She acts like something is hurting, and I've taken her to the doctor, but they dismiss it as "normal" todler anxiety. We go back down to the Childrens Hospital in a few months, so I figured I'd mention it to the Neurologist. Until then I just follow her closely and stop her from smacking her head as much as possible, but her forehead is always bruised.
Erin, how do they tell that the kids are having headaches when they are non-verbal? Neenah does not seem to understand much of what is said to her, so I don't know how we could tell.
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[Magster's Mom]

I think figuring out pain issues in our kids is very tough. For Maggie, she started having periods of being whiny and clingy and touching her forehead a lot when she was about 3 years old. I experimented by giving her tyelenol and motrin and it often seemed to really make her feel better. So I concluded it was headaches and would usually give her tylenol when she got like that. It happened once or twice a month.

When she was a bit younger, we lived in a town with a wonderful chiropractor, who had also been a physical therapist and was also a cranial sacral therapist. She taught pediatric and special needs chiropractic at the local chiropractic college. I would bring Maggie to her whenever Maggie seemed to have head pain and it made a huge difference. I haven't found such a gifted chiropractor or similar professional in our new community so Maggie just gets tylenol now.

When Maggie was four, she was critically ill and had a very difficult recovery after getting off life support. We knew the drug withdrawal and meds and recovery were causing more severe headaches. She would be whiny and cuddly, hold her head and want to stay in dark rooms. We would give her tylenol and motrin together to give her relief.

At age 5, she was on the ketogenic diet and had achieved great seizure control. She was on 3 seizure meds when she started the diet and we began weaning her meds away. We successfully weaned one med, then weaned Keppra without any trouble. We were so excited she was down to just a low dose of clonazepam. Then she had a day that started out tired and whiny but escalated into non-stop horrible screaming. She vomited a few times and was absolutely inconsolable. I finally took her to the ER and she was admitted. She finally settled later that night. They never found a source of pain and we were discharged the next day. It happened again a few weeks later and then about two weeks after that. It was always the same, vomiting when it started, holding her head in obvious pain, avoiding light, curling into a ball...It was diagnosed as migraines. They were increasing in frequency when her seizures began to become a problem again. When we re-started Keppra for seizure control, the migraines stopped. She's had two in the last year and neither was as serious as the old ones were.

When Maggie gets tired and whiny, I do several things. The first thing I do is give her tylenol. If that helps, then I decide she had a headache and I give her an easy day with lots of cuddling. If that doesn't help, then I watch her more closely. Sometimes breakthrough seizures appear along with headaches and then we go the seizure treatment route to prevent them. Othertimes, the pain seems to intensify. If the pain continues into the next day then I call her paed and go in for an exam. If the pain intensifies, I will either add motrin or codeine. If it takes both tylenol and motrin to settle her, then I know she needs to be seen within the next 24 hours or so to find out what is causing the pain. If she doesn't settle until she's had codeine, then I e-mail paed and will take her to urgent care. Responding to codeine tells me that Maggie has a more serious pain issue that needs to be examined quickly. So basically, my strategy is to treat the pain and see how she responds. If its seizures causing head pain then tylenol won't make a dent in them.

For Mag, we believe she has some kind of neuropathic pain. It appears to be related to her sensory over-sensitivity. Her GI doctor believes she has this over-sensitivity all throughout her GI tract and its a big reason she has no appetite. One doctor told me that her red hair causes her to have a low pain threshold because redheads have more nerves and pain receptors. I haven't researched that! When we started amitriptaline as a migraine preventor, Maggie just seemed to settle into her own skin better. She stopped scratching her face so hard, stopped scratching at her g-tube button, stopped scratching her eczema. When we stopped it, all this came back. We experimented by starting it and then stopping it again and we saw the same pattern. Something about her amitriptaline makes her more comfortable. She's on a very low dose (just 3.5 mgs) so we are fine with keeping her on it so long as its helping. Her response to pain relievers and amitriptaline has convinced us that she has some kind of mild chronic pain that responds to meds like amitriptaline.

Good luck!!

Erin
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Erin Sheldon, mom to Maggie, del+, DOB 8/14/03 and Ella DOB 8/19/06. www.sheldonhickey.com

See Maggie star in her movies on YouTube: http://ca.youtube.com/user/magstsersmum