You don’t recognise the sensory pain your child is in

13 Jan, 2020 by Barry 1 Comment

Point 7 from Sometimes my Heart Hurts for your Child

Over on Speaking of Autism… Quincy has written a heartfelt piece aimed primarily at the autism community, but it is also relevant to the wider neurotypical (non-autistic) community.

The article is quite long (approximately 9 minutes reading time), and each of the points Quincy makes shows how much the autism community fails to understand the autistic community. For this reason, I’m re-posting each point as a separate article here, because each point is important.

Before I start, I feel I need to explain the difference between the “autism community” and the “autistic community” The autistic community consists of people who are autistic, whereas the autism community consists mainly people who are directly or indirectly involved with autistic people (typically family members and those involved in the “treatment” of autism), but are not typically autistic themselves.

Each of Quincy’s points illustrates just how far the autism community and the wider community has to go to meet the autistic community even part way.

I see the sensory pain your child is in, but you don’t recognize it

So often I see kids who are having a hard time making it day to day, and I can almost guarantee the issue is their sensory input is not regulated. Their schedules and environments are not suiting their neurologies. The problem is so obvious to me, and yet the parents are completely oblivious to it.

They say “little Johnny has a meltdown every morning while I put his clothes on him. It’s so haaaaaaaard being an autism parent,” completely neglecting the fact that maybe those clothes you’re making him wear feel like cactus spikes pressing against his skin? Or that you touching him is causing overload? Or that that fluorescent light in his room literally hurts to look at?