Auditory hypersensitivity (Autism)

When the season arrives with its parties, lights, food, excesses, rockets or firecrackers, here I stop.

Since we were little we are used to give ourselves pyrotechnic games, we start from the simplest things like the stars or flares, that's how they are called in my country, as a child I enjoyed them, although I must confess that my dad was careful with that kind of games.

But today they are almost out of my reach, about 8 years ago we were at a friend's house on her birthday and in an instant our son got into the car running and screaming for us to leave. The diagnosis for us was recent and there was little we knew about ASD, and the ignorance was almost total about a word that would remain with us for many years: Hearing Hypersensitivity.

That night our little boy in a panic said he wanted to go home, screaming and begging.

The boys tried to persuade him to get out of the car but he didn't want to, he felt in his comfort zone, I stayed with him in the car and he covered his ears every time a rocket in the distance exploded, I say in the distance because the sound was almost imperceptible. I went out and commented on what he was saying so we decided to go home. When we arrived he was more calm. And we started another investigation (noise and autistic children) I remember that there were over 1 million papers on this, and they all said auditory hypersensitivity

These children or people with ASD have the particularity of being sensitive in their senses, in this case that we treat today, the ear. We were able to understand that our son was hearing 5 times more than we normally do. From that year onwards, the modifications of our December celebrations began for the next 4 years.

During that time we didn't go out at night from November to January, locked up in the house by the rockets, he waited for January 1st like no other date, since the rocket season was over. Then we experimented with using a hearing aid that would filter out some of the noise but could only be used on the street, not in the house. It's important to remember to set limits on what you think is worthwhile.

Dinners 24 and 31 were the most modified. We ate at 8pm and at 10pm Saint Nicholas arrived, then we played for 30 minutes or more and went to sleep. There were times when we had the children in bed and separated by those two little bodies, we would say to ourselves Happy New Year. These were difficult moments, but now many years later we can say that we have won the battle in large part to the hearing sensitivity.

We started with warning when we went to noisy places, and he was alert to that. Then to play with louder noises, I always kept cotton wool in my purse. Some days even I can't stand the noises, maybe he can.

I recommend you to follow these tactics and implement yours, each child has his or her particular needs, discover them and everything will go smoothly.