Sensory issues

Aiden this morning.

He didn't want to go to school as his legs are hurting. He's normally under sensitive to pain. Autism can cause over sensitivity or under sensitivity to touch. Aiden can't sit still and if he's sitting on you, he digs his elbows into you and wriggles. I'm guessing he can't feel what he's doing so digging in gives him the sensory feedback he needs. Weighted blankets, vests and mats are used to calm and reassure children who are under sensitive. I wonder what it feels like? Does he feel like he's floating?

Another sensory issue he has is, he put things in his mouth. This is something associated with babies, but he never grew out of it. He's eaten crayons, flowers, mud and he even chewed through an electrical cable once! His teacher reported that he kept taking his shoes off in class and she caught him licking the soles of his shoes. She also caught him eating glue. Whats even stranger is, he's the fussiest eater. If he had his way, he'd eat plain pasta every day for dinner.

Aiden always wears his hood up. It's strange that I notice all these little things now, as before I just used to think he was being a bit strange. 

Research

I was searching for other photographers, who had worked with Autistic children and stumbled across this work by Timothy Archibald. I love that he collaborated with his son, and they decided, together, the outcome of the images.

 

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Welcome to Holland

A friend showed me this poem, which encapsulates a lot about dealing with your emotions after a diagnosis.  

 

Welcome to Holland

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this…



When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.



After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."



"Holland?!" you say. "What do you mean, Holland?" I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy.



But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.



The important thing is that they haven't taken you to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.



So you must go out and buy a new guidebook. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.



It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.



But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."



The pain of that will never, ever, go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.



But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

Written by Emily Perl Kingsley