my son age 13 hypersensitive hearing

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Hi,
My son has really sensistive hearing when it comes to young children crying or shouting..this makes it really hard to take him out . We have brought him high quality head phones but it dosen;t make much difference. I see him swallowing hard and looking terrified .As he is non verbal its hard to understand how it is affecting him. Any ideas and thoughts from you guys greatly appreciated.
Thankyou

I can't tell you exactly what is going on inside his mind, but I can make a few observations from my own experience.

First of all, not long after I figured out I'd gone undiagnosed for most of my life, I had an eye exam for the first time in years. This doctor finally figured that issue out: I was born with ocular albinism. I mention this because he actually apologised to me for shining bright lights into my eyes. It seems I have an actual, medical excuse for feeling pain at bright light. This was not news to me; as a kid, I used to get in trouble all the time with eye doctors for flinching away from their lights. What surprised me was, of all the sensory issues that trouble me, that was the one that's "legitimate"? It's way down there among the 'background noise' of things I find hard to take.

Noise is worse. Smell is worse. (Certain smells, and this may not be the case for your son. I'm just describing my own experience. Although it is true that the olfactory nerve is apparently the only one which goes straight to the brain with no filter, so I'd guess at least certain smells might also distress him. You might not notice them - I'm always spotting gas leaks no one else is aware of - and if anyone else knows there's a gas leak, at all, I'm beyond miserable.) When I was younger, I came up with the idea that certain sounds were like having a bucket shoved over my head while someone banged it with a broom handle - and since I've been visiting WP, someone else made that precise analogy with sounds which bother them.

Headphones would be worse for me. I can still hear the sounds, even if muffled. If they are muffled, I know less about what's happening, and that makes me nervous. (Since I have vision issues, this may be due to those, as well, so I can't be sure this is true for him.) My own guess would be there is no humane way to expose him to that type of sound for more than brief intervals. (Yes, we can learn to ignore sensory annoyances: I've also learned to ignore pain. I find physical pain much easier to ignore than irritants to my ears or nose - and have also found that it is not always as simple as learning to ignore one precise thing. In other words, teaching him to endure the noises he hates may in fact teach him to ignore most sounds.)

I can relate. Actually at 13 and in my teens, my hyperacusis (sensitive hearing) triggered dozens upon dozens of pretty severe meltdowns for me, and I hadn't been diagnosed yet. Doctors just loaded me up on psychiatric medication, which had a numbing effect on my senses, as well as everything else.
Almost 20 years later, I still have extremely sensitive hearing!!
I wear ear plugs, the type you insert into the ear- to sleep. Sometimes I wear headphones over sticky earplugs on days where I feel panicked by any noise. A white noise machine in every room to muffle sudden noises or just random noise. To be honest, the best thing I can suggest is to get him active. I've been having Occupational Therapy and they have me doing a lot of activity, and I've been feeling better. Does he have issues with movement or clumsiness? I bump into furniture and walls all the time.
There's a lot of information in the inner ear which regulates the vestibular sense, and it's been helping me to desensitize myself by jumping around and doing exercise, since I tend to lock up and shut down. He might just be so overwhelmed by everything that's going on around him, which is understandable if he's hypersensitive. I would also consider avoiding junk foods and caffeine, especially sugar and candy. It tastes good but this stuff is like rocket fuel for me, lol, and everything becomes so intensely overwhelming that I stiffen up and shut down (I can't move or speak). The gluten free diet has helped me a lot.

Don't worry,

I have the same thing, it gets better as he gets older and learns to deal with it. Not really any way to help besides making him look like a freak in front of his classmates. If you really want to band-aid the pain the best you could do is give him ear plugs and have people treat him like a mute with sign language for the rest of his life. (please don't)

I know this will come across the wrong way, so please don't jump to conclusions...

How intelligent is he? Would he understand an explanation from you? If so, it might help if you can explain what is going to happen before it happens.

When you say "take him out"... where? If you are taking him to do the grocery shopping, could you leave him in the car with some entertainment, or leave him at home? If you are taking him to do "fun" things, do you think he finds them fun? If you are going for his benefit, then consider whether he actually enjoys it. If you are going for someone else's benefit (yours, a sibling's, whoever) then is there anything else he could do rather than go with you? I understand there are "family activities"- maybe look at alternatives?

Welcome to the forum! I don't have any suggestions, but I'm sure you'll get some good feedback here. I would like so suggest that you post the question in the parents forum as well. Maybe someone there has been through the same thing you are going through and they can tell you how they handled it. One word of caution though, don't just copy and paste your original post there, or word it exactly the same because some might consider that crossposting, which is against WP rules.

It really is tough. I think for the time being you've got to keep trying different things until you find something that works. Use whatever communication he has (does he use PECS? if so, you should make sure he's got a card to tell you when things are too loud, for example). Sometimes it helps to damp down the other senses too. I get a lot of benefit out of soft clothes, fragrance-free toiletries, and sunglasses. A lot of autistics like to wear hoodies with the hood up, which blocks out some visual and auditory flooding.

Yelling kids are probably some of the worst sounds out there, because it's high pitched and sudden and unpredictable. If you're sensitive to it, hearing it feels like being dumped into freezing water, having a railroad spike hammered through your head, sticking your finger in a light socket... You get the picture. Thoroughly unpleasant, and makes it impossible to think. For me, car horns have that effect. One time the noise of a car horn actually threw me off balance, and the next thing I knew I was on the ground, with my throat hoarse from screaming. And I live on my own, can speak, and am more than twice as old as your son--so, let me tell you, this is not unique to young autistics nor to non-verbal ones. It's a very common problem. On the other hand, that means that we've thought up plenty of partial solutions, which your son can hopefully mash together to figure out something that'll work for him. Me--I wear an mp3 player with those foam earplug style headphones, with predictable familiar music or interesting audiobooks playing. Oh, I can still hear the car horns, and they're still unpleasant, but at least it dampens it out so I don't go completely bonkers. It's kind of like the way a painkiller takes the edge off a headache.... makes it bearable. But the same things won't work for everybody.

Also teach him how to tell when he's getting overloaded. That's a really important skill, though it's slow going to learn (I should know; I have trouble with it myself). The key is to know how much is too much, to be able to find a way to de-stress yourself before it gets to the point that you're just completely shut down and you can't think for the rest of the day. It is useful for him to learn how to tell when the noise is going to overload him, and how to tell you so that he can leave the situation (or in situations where noise is expected, how to arrange a quiet place where he can take a break from it).

There's the matter of his own energy reserves. If he's having a good day, he might be able to handle something that on a bad day would send him straight into a mental blue-screen. One of the most annoying things in my dealing with autism is that people see me do something once, on a good day, and then they assume I can always do it whenever I like. Of course, that's not the case. Some days I can hold a conversation, no-problem. Other days I resort to canned phrases. Other days I just stay by myself and don't talk at all. It depends on how much brain I have left to spend that day, you know?

Lastly: Adjusting the environment. If your son is going to be overloaded by too much noise, finding quieter ways to do the same things can be a pretty good solution. So if you're going to the supermarket, it's easier to go in the off-hours when there probably won't be a crying baby in the next aisle. Or if you have to wait in a crowded waiting room, you could ask the secretary to call your cell phone when they need to call you in, so that you can wait outside. These are reasonable accommodations for your son--just as reasonable as a wheelchair ramp or an elevator button marked with Braille numbers are for people with other disabilities.

I also recommend the Parents forum here. The people there could probably give you some useful tips.

I am able to relate to that because I have sensitive ears and like when I go to places and I know that it is very noisey or alot of noise like for example when I do to comic con that is in california called wondercon, I try to remember to take my earpuds headphones because in a place like that my brain trys to process all the voices at once. I use headphones to filter sounds like High Pitched sounds and stuff like that. Also I use my phone as a Mp3 player and play like a podcast or Audio Book to were my mind is focusing on that then all the sounds around me.

[Moved from General Autism Discussion to Parents' Discussion]

Thanks for all the usefull advice .Its really interesting hearing it from those autistic people who are able to share with us how things really are for as a parent of a severley autistic non verbal child who just screams and hits out when distressed it is heartbreaking I will never know how or what is really bothering him.I will persevere with noise cancelling headphones and ipod when out where small children are, its a real shame because when they are good he loves kids I can see him smiling and laughing with them especailly as he has 4 young cousins...
anyway thanks again ,

abbylou

Aw, hey, don't say "never". Okay, so he's not so good with the words--but just because you can't speak doesn't mean you have nothing to say. I communicate with my cats all the time. They have yet to say a single word. And yet I understand them.

Now, your son isn't a cat (though some people may argue that all cats do have Asperger's)--but you still read his communication. I can tell my cat is happy to see me by her relaxed whiskers and tail up and curled at the tip... You can tell when your son is happy, too, or when he's frustrated or angry, interested, amused. He doesn't have to say a single word to be able to communicate those things. Plus: We learn stuff. Stuff like how to use words, or pictures, or signs, to communicate. We don't stop learning, especially in an environment where things are peaceful and we're nudged in the direction of interesting things to learn. It's pretty much inevitable that your son's communication will continue to steadily improve.

"I will never know" and "it's heartbreaking" and "a shame"... Man, don't be kicking yourself like that! Maybe to most people autism is scary, but to us it's our normal everyday life. It's frustrating sometimes, and joyful other times, painful sometimes and peaceful other times. It's just life. I promise--your son can be just as happy as anybody else.

There's a lot of bias in our culture that says that the "normal" way to do things is the only acceptable one, and we all get bombarded with it every day. But don't ever let the world tell you that he can't communicate without using words, or that his way of doing things somehow isn't as valid as the usual way. If anybody tells you that he doesn't belong because he's different, you should feel absolutely no shame in following your instinct to turn into Mother Bear and beat them down (er, metaphorically) until they back off and stop being stupid!

I'm not saying it's not hard. I remember how stressed out my mom always was when I was little. But don't you dare let yourself or your son buy into the crap they're trying to sell us, that autistic people aren't good enough or can't be happy or need some kind of magical transformation into typical folk to have a decent life. We belong in this world, just like anybody does, and it's strong allies, parents like you, who are helping us make our way in it.