Puppygnu wrote:
I have a 7 year old son with Autism. Why does sound irritate him so much? When the announcements come on in his school, he feels extremely upset. I hope that someone on this forum has a memory of being an Autistic 7 year old. I would appreciate any and all personal recollections.
Extreme sensitivity to loud sounds. How would you feel if you were standing in front of someone who had a bullhorn who switched it on two feet behind your head and started talking through it????
Some sounds are worse than others. For me it was the intercom, and the sound of gravel, dirt, coal, or snow being shoveled - when the shovel hit the pavement under the load I would just about lose my mind. It physically hurt.
That was 5 decades ago, though. In my teens and 20s I spent a lot of time with headphones hooked into a stereo playing rock music. I seem to have slowly increased the sound level there over the years until it was actually quite loud. Unfortunately, I've kind of fried out my hearing a bit.
There's also something about predictability of sound - if you know it's coming it's not as bad as when it just blasts you. And "blasts" can be anything from, for instance, the bullhorn scenario above to someone coughing to a knife scraping on china plates. It depends on how tightly one is wound that day already.
Hope this helps at least a little.
Last edited by Nan on 05 Jan 2011, 3:07 am, edited 1 time in total.