Dear Half-Left -
I understand your concerns about side effects. We, too, were very concerned about them, and did a lot of research before we used Paxil with our ASD daughter, who is now 18 and in college. We used Paxil to help our daughter's anxiety, because she was so wound up and anxious about her obsessive thoughts that she could not sit still through the therapy session. The therapist believed that she was so upset about her anxiety-causing thoughts (She kept wondering if I was going to kill her, sell her into slavery, all sorts of thoughts kept running through her head, on a non stop tape). The Paxil calmed her down enough, slowed everything down enough to let her use cognitive behavioral therapy - that type of therapy allowed her to really examine those thoughts, and say to herself, Does this thought really, honestly, make sense? I had said to her, If I was going to do those things, wouldn't I have done them by now? (she was in 4th grade). We were pretty desperate - and the Paxil seemed to work pretty well. When she hit middle school, we switched to Zoloft, because Paxil was known to interfere with a person's ability to form deep attachments to other people - it flattened your emotions too much.
We did have to deal with one nutty psychiatrist who thought her obsessive thoughts were psychotic, when all the other psychiatrists said no, she KNOWS the difference between reality and her scary thoughts, she just can't stop thinking about the possibilities. That's the difference. It's like having scary movies playing in your head and you can't stop watching them, but you know they're movies. So that one dr. wanted to put her on Risperdal, because she was also pulling her hair (Trichotolomania), but I researched that, and it can have terrible side effects.
The thing is, she's doing really well now, on Zoloft, because she was able to learn how to help herself, using cognitive behavioral therapy. She learned to expose herself, too, to things that upset her, when she starts forming phobias. She asked to garden with me, without gloves, when she started forming a phobia about germs, so she could MAKE herself get over that before it settled into her too much. (She'd started carrying that antibacterial wash around everywhere, she'd noticed. Uh oh!) She's going to college in Florida, and we live in MI. Is everything perfect? No. But she's doing very, very well. She did try to go over her meds, again, and got very teary and anxious. She needs them like a diabetic needs insulin...and I don't really think you'd be telling a diabetic child of yours not to take company made insulin, right? You might try to control the diabetes through diet and exercise, as we do work at her anxiety with cbt, and exercise too (which does help) - but this kid has a blown circuit. She needs the chemical assistance just as a kid with epilepsy needs the chemicals to avoid a seizure. No meds, kid gets anxious, obsessive, the developmental delay behavior becomes more and more obvious... she becomes nonfunctional. The only time she skipped class...was when she was off her meds.

So...do the research. Think hard. Talk to the doctor, and if he/she won't listen, won't discuss your concerns, switch. IF there's a lot of weight gain, then switch meds. That's not acceptable. But that doesn't mean meds in general should be off the table. My friend, a newly diagnosed diabetic, took a long time to find the right prescription for her. It happens. Hang in there! Amy