Please help...is this PANDAS/PANS behavior or something else!? At

[TinyTreasures]

Anyone experience this when your child has a flare up - my 3.5 year old actually BECOMES (and believes he is) someone else, always someone "naughty". He literally is not like himself anymore, and if you call him by his name he screams at you that he is not (his name) he is _____ - in the past it has been Captain Hook, a Pirate, a naughty Robot, and now The Naughty Guy. When you say "Oh you are pretending to be "The Naughty Guy" he screams that he is not pretending, he IS the naughty guy. This naughty guy my son becomes is aggressive, does not listen whatsoever, and is absolutely horrible to other kids, moreso with perfect strangers - screams at them, yells "Stop It" if he even sees a child, rages, cannot be reasoned with at all.

He has been on Keflex now for about 2 weeks and had been 95% back to his wonderful sweet self for 10 days in a row, but this morning at a playplace he saw a semi-violent video game and suddenly "I am the Naughty Guy" and snapped back into his role as the Naughty Guy 100% for about 20 minutes - it was horrible, and my sister (who we'd come with) was dumbfounded, never seeing him like that before. He only snapped out of it when I let him watch Humpty Dumpty (his latest obession) on my iPhone, then he became Humpty Dumpty for the rest of the time there - a much nicer character. When we left and said bye to my sister & niece - the people we met there and hung out with the entire time, he gave them a hug, we walked 10 steps to our car, and he said "Who did we just play with?" like he had no idea. I said "You know who, who did we just say bye to?" and he said "Emma?" (another of his friends who wasn't even there!) I asked him again and after some thought he remembered our relatives. Now at home he is back to his sweet self, not pretending to be anyone else.

Quite a few times recently he's asked where we are going even though he was talking about it minutes before, asked what he was just thinking about, what he was just eating, where had we just come from, etc like he can't remember.

He often acts like someone else (although insists he is not acting), but when he gets a cold/flu/virus/etc it is ALWAYS someone "naughty" and he always has a name for them. And he starts calling himself Stupid - "Stupid (his name)".
(This is just one of his symptoms - I wrote more about his other symptoms here: http://www.latitudes.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=20303 )

My husband and I even mentioned the thought of "split personality" today - our son was COMPLETELY different yesterday. Please, does anyone have an idea or know if this sounds like PANDAS? So desperate for our son back.

[beeskneesmommy]

"Split Personality", or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is very rare. I would not go there at this point! He is 3, and they do tend to get involved in their fantasies to a great extent at times. My son was dx at age 2.5 and during his most ill times (ages 3.5-5) it was not uncommon for him to forget things, much like what you are describing. I do belive that there is a dissociative process going on with these kids sometime, mainly due to so much going on inside of their heads that they fail to register what's happening in the world around them (i.e.: whom they just played with, where they just were). My son also had a short period of time when I believe he had auditory hallucinations and at least on visual hallucination. I believe that this is PANDAS symptomology. The aggression fits in as well...

Edited April 23, 2013 by Beeskneesmommy

[Teri]

Our then 5 yr old Dd last summer was obsessed with playing that she was someone else. We all had to participate in the scenarios - characters from The Magic Tree House and after the Olympics we had to pretend that we were "Kerry & Misty" the beach volleyball girls. We think it was an OCD thing because she would insist on playing and we all had to completely immerse ourselves in it. She would get stuck in it. Not sure if its the same for your son but it sounds like it.

[airial95]

My son was dx at 2 years old and is now 5, much of what you're describing we have also experienced.

 

He often "becomes" characters from something else, at first it was Thomas the Train, he would wake up each morning and announce who he was, and if you called him by any other name it would be a huge rage. Now, it's on to video game characters (Sonic the Hedgehog, Ratchet and Clank, etc...) This happens much more often when he is in flares than any other time.

 

As for the "personality switch" - that is common for us here too, although he doesn't always associate it with the name change. He actually gets a new "face", a look in his eyes, muscles tense up in his face, etc...and we can tell it's not him anymore. We call it the "jeckyl and hyde". We have found that ibuprofen helps immensely when he has those moments, usually pulling him out within about 10 minutes (although it may take us longer to get him to take it!!)

 

If your son has his "jekyl and hyde" moments when he changes his name, you may be able to use that to your advantage. Our therapist suggested our son "name" his OCD, so that he can separate the things his OCD makes him do from his real personality. He's not a bad kid, "Harvey" makes him do things that are bad. It has helped his self esteem, and has given him a vocabulary to talk about what's going on in his head. At 5 years old, he has even started self advocating - telling me and the doctors which abx has made "Harvey" go away or be quiet.

 

As for the forgetfulness, this in one that we see more in my daughter than my son (yes, she's also PANDAS), but in her case, we figured out it's not actually forgetfulness, it's reassurance, a common OCD trait. She just needs to be told things she knows over and over again. Sometimes they are important things (what time do I have to go to school? Do you love me?) other times they are just mundane and weird (what color was the car next to us at the red light?) but she asks over and over and over.

 

Hope this helps!