As most of you know, around this time last year, it was a terrible time for us. My son came home full of bruises, we found out it was his teacher, then we started the fight to make sure he was not only fired, but that he would also lose his licence.

Aside from the bureaucracy of all of this fight, my son was dealing with many issues. His anxiety was thru the roof. As soon as the bus would arrive, he’d become anxious and scared and would go into fight mode. He’d fight the bus drivers, the aides, the teachers, anyone that would get near him. Then he started trying to escape from school every chance he would get.

We took him to a child psychiatrist that specializes with kids with autism, and he prescribed anti-anxiety pills.

But they weren’t working.

We’d see the psychiatrist every few weeks because of how severe my son was. He kept increasing the dosage over and over again. But it simply wasn’t working. I think my husband and I were just in such despair.

During this time we were getting ready for an ARD. We were going to demand all these changes for our son. We reached out to one of our old therapists. My husband calls her the Autism Whisper. She was amazing with our son. Unfortunately she decided to go into the teaching field and we lost her. But she was still our ‘go to’ for advice.

During our visit, she asked us if we had thought about CBD. I know this is a difficult topic for many. I think it is a difficult topic because at least for me, it’s been engrained in my brain to say no to drugs. So this has always been a topic of taboo for us, specially coming from a very strong Christian upbringing.

But we were so tired and just fustrated in how we couldn’t help my son, that we were unable to help our son, that we decided to give it a try. I ordered the CBD oil. We decided to go with the drops.

We completely stopped all of his other medications because they were not working. We decided to do this because some of the medication that my son was taking had side effects, which means we needed prescriptions for those side effects as well. We felt it was just a snowball and it was out of control and not helping my son.

We started giving him a few drops a day and kept increasing it until we found the dosage where we saw a change in my son. His anxiety was under control, he stopped his outbursts, and his personality was more subdued. The aggressiveness that we were seeing had diminished.

After we tried this for a few weeks we had our visit with our psychiatrist. He noticed right away how the monkey was acting. The monkey came in to his office, and sat down. We normally would see his anxiety because he’d be going in circles, hum out of fear, and would cover his ears. But this time he was calm and sat down. We told the doctor about the CBD oil. Because we live in a state where this is still not legal, he told us he could not recommend it. He told us the legal verbiage that he was required to tell.

Then my husband asked him, “What would you do if you were us?”

He replied, “Exactly what you’re doing. I would give him the oil in a heartbeat.”

We’ve been doing this for about 10 months now. We’ve seen how this has helped my son. I have been uncertain to talk about my story and our decision in how to assist my son because I don’t want it to seem as if I am recommending this for anyone that has a child with autism. Because that’s far from the truth. The purpose of this is to tell others how this has helped us during a time that was very difficult.

I am very grateful for the recommendation from our friend. I have heard from others that CBD did not help their kids the way it helped my son. I know that every child is different.

But in the end I am very grateful that we did find a solution when we were so worried. This decision helped us to get out of this hopelessness that we were in.

And my hope is that sharing our story may help someone else.💙