Thank you for sharing your thoughts. This boy already struggles with anxiety and ADHD. He is very emotional without medication. He takes a low dose antidepressant already and we are going to start him on a new ADHD med in January. I don't particularly want to do hormone therapy, because I am generally opposed to those types of interventions for things that would otherwise naturally occur eventually. What I am concerned about is his excessively slow growth rate over the past 3 years in addition to the lack of puberty. I worry about things like pituitary tumors or some underlying health issue being the cause.
He has always been a short child. He was always between the 10th and 25th percentiles (trending down over the years), and now he is barely even on the chart at the 1% mark. He has grown less than an inch per year since he turned 11. That concerns me. He is a very high functioning autistic with no real sensory or cognitive issues so I'm not worried about how he will handle the physical changes. He has always been a very mild mannered child and I don't forsee any major changes with puberty in terms of aggression or anything like that. It's just not in his nature. He's very much a pacifist.
As for my younger son, he is SUPER smell sensitive and is over sensitive to pain, but he has been using deodorant for a few years and is fine with several brands. He is similarly non picky aboyt body wash and shampoo. His hygiene habits are excellent. He will be given an electric shaver when he is ready because he is very scared to cut himself with a razor. The acne has been his biggest issue because it hurts and he scratches at it and makes it bleed which then makes him freak out. Fun times! He has only had like 3 pimples so far, so I hope it doesn't get much worse for him. The other son has the most flawless complexion I've ever seen. I'm super jealous of him. Ha ha!
mind has adhd as well and took adhd meds until about sophomore year in high school when his adhd really seemed to take a turn for the better (i think getting a teacher that figured out the ideal teaching method for him helped immensely and that was also when he started in a teen asd support group so he learned some coping techniques that made a big positive impact BUT like i said, he was on adhd meds too-and he didn't really move into puberty until he was off/eating more (those meds killed his appetite so he ate little/burned it off quick). with the acne (big problem for our ds)-we got him clearasil pads (pretreated in a jar) that he uses nightly as well as when he sees a breakout. it seems to help but he's just one of those kids prone to it.