Help!

I'm sure the others will be along later to discuss their views, and I don't pretend to know exactly what your ten year old is experiencing, but I also hate surprises and need to know what is going to happen to feel comfortable with going to things.

I find what are for many people very normal experiences, somewhere on a scale from mildly unpleasant to physically painful or debilitating. Because this is a not unique experience for me but certainly a rarer one, I cannot rely on other people to take into consideration what is going to make things difficult for me, because it literally won't register for them. As a result it is on me to plan any mental or physical preparations I need to get through. This can be as simple as taking ear plugs or ear defenders, bringing an extra stim toy, or just mentally knowing that this is going to be a taxing environment and so planning the rest of my energy expenditure accordingly.

You may be familiar with the phrase 'forewarned is forearmed'. What this means for me, is that if I know what is going to happen, I can plan, I can manage my energy expenditure and schedule my recovery time, I can make escape plans, mitigation plans, all the planning! This is because fundamentally, my processing doesn't necessarily work fast enough to react to things, so I need plans in place before hand, or I don't react at all and I end up in a bad/dangerous position.

If I have a thing that might happen, or that will happen and I don't know the details for it, my internal planning looks like this instead:

Thing? Work? Rest? Energy sinkhole? Energy rejuvenation? Escape? Where? Requirements? Escape plan? Escape plan? Things afterwards? Energy levels? Do I need to schedule recharge time? Can I do things afterwards? When do I go to the toilet? When do I eat? 

You can see how that's quite anxiety inducing. 

As your son is 10 it's possible he hasn't quite worked out the planning thing yet, but he's probably doing some of it subconsciously and feeling all the anxiety. When the world is difficult being prepared is important. 

I think personally, if there are the options of maybe doing something fun and definitely not doing it, I might often chose the definitely not doing that, because at least that's certain.

I'm sure the others will be along later to discuss their views, and I don't pretend to know exactly what your ten year old is experiencing, but I also hate surprises and need to know what is going to happen to feel comfortable with going to things.

I find what are for many people very normal experiences, somewhere on a scale from mildly unpleasant to physically painful or debilitating. Because this is a not unique experience for me but certainly a rarer one, I cannot rely on other people to take into consideration what is going to make things difficult for me, because it literally won't register for them. As a result it is on me to plan any mental or physical preparations I need to get through. This can be as simple as taking ear plugs or ear defenders, bringing an extra stim toy, or just mentally knowing that this is going to be a taxing environment and so planning the rest of my energy expenditure accordingly.

You may be familiar with the phrase 'forewarned is forearmed'. What this means for me, is that if I know what is going to happen, I can plan, I can manage my energy expenditure and schedule my recovery time, I can make escape plans, mitigation plans, all the planning! This is because fundamentally, my processing doesn't necessarily work fast enough to react to things, so I need plans in place before hand, or I don't react at all and I end up in a bad/dangerous position.

If I have a thing that might happen, or that will happen and I don't know the details for it, my internal planning looks like this instead:

Thing? Work? Rest? Energy sinkhole? Energy rejuvenation? Escape? Where? Requirements? Escape plan? Escape plan? Things afterwards? Energy levels? Do I need to schedule recharge time? Can I do things afterwards? When do I go to the toilet? When do I eat? 

You can see how that's quite anxiety inducing. 

As your son is 10 it's possible he hasn't quite worked out the planning thing yet, but he's probably doing some of it subconsciously and feeling all the anxiety. When the world is difficult being prepared is important. 

I think personally, if there are the options of maybe doing something fun and definitely not doing it, I might often chose the definitely not doing that, because at least that's certain.