Family falling apart because of transport fear

Hi, have you thought about trying distraction. Perhaps try headphones to shut noise out with music, or think like a child, get him some magic glasses that will protect him (sunglasses) or a special jacket sent by his favourite superhero that will give him special powers...

Obviously I don’t know your son, so I’m sure you could come up with something that he will relate to, but in a nutshell, stop thinking like a rational adult, and start thinking like a less rational child.

Hope I’ve helped, good luck.

 I think it's far too early to be able to make much progress on this issue yet as your son won't be able to effectively verbalise how and why he feels like he does. These issues may be a constant feature of his life. At 35 I've found that no matter what I do, such as noise-cancelling headphones, travelling a quieter times etc, public transport will always have an adverse effect on me and I'm far better off avoiding it. Instead, I drive everywhere. On the other hand, you are able to change your own behaviour. If you'd like to take part in social events it may be time to start leaving you are so with others, such as his dad.

I suspect my 4-month-old is autistic and my husband is finding it difficult that she becomes very distressed when he takes her to family gatherings. It looks highly likely that she'll be like me and want to avoid these in future. I'm telling you this, as although he wants the best for our daughter and me, he finds it upsetting that we neither of us may be by his side at family events. As such, I understand your predicament and how rotten you feel. It sounds like you're a brilliant mum who is doing a fantastic job and looking after your son's needs.

Fear of sickness is quite common.    It sounds like he's overloaded - too much new stuff going on for him to process fast enough.      Is he interested in toy cars and trains?    Are there any transport museums near you?     Getting him to understand the mechanisms might make it so he's more interested in the technicalities of what's going on so he has something to concentrate on other than sickness.     Another trick is to occupy him with games while out & about - spotting car colours, looking out for landmarks, spotting road signs etc - anything to enable a few successful journeys so the fear of sickness becomes secondary and he looks forward to the 1:1 interaction of going out somewhere.

Spotting things in the distance is better because they are more stationary in the visual field.

Trainspotting and bus-number spotting is a low-risk interaction with transport.

Rewards after journeys can help motivate his mind into something other than fear.

I think what happened years ago, he was in a car and bus where he got sick . Dizziness and fast moving surrounding makes him freeze. Even when we go with a train he kinda freezes,  he doesn't talk or move he just sits there looking so confused.

Now when he sees a  bus approaching he would cover his eyes and sometimes ears. 

Cars are slightly easier to walk next to, but not too close. Although he tried to open doors at random cars parked  in the street couple times, but this stopped and he never got inside.

If it's something to do with car sickness how do I go around it? I tried to explain to him that if we would just sit in the car without moving  he won't get sick but it didn't work. 

When I told NHS , school and basically all people who works with him I get the same answer "Awww, that must be so hard. Did you tried training him?" Or when I mention that he is sort of ok with trains everyone thinks that there is no issue because we could travel with train everywhere (not really). Obviously I could buy a car and try training him but it's a big question if this would help, and to keep a car outside for no purpose is too expensive for me. 

What is the trigger for the problem?   The noise? Smell? Movement? Being strapped in and helpless?    Not being able to see out properly?  Does he have toy cars?

The bigger and stronger he gets, the more he will be able to control the situation so he might learn to use this tactic with anything he chooses not to do - so understanding the trigger will be helpful to you.

I think you have done the right thing as what would usually be done to overcome a fear. I recently read a psychology book which gave an example of beliefs where a boy is scared of dogs after having one experience of being bitten. As a human this gives him a belief that all dogs will bite him but this is not reality as dogs can have a range of different behaviours and most will not bite you. He then sees other kids playing with dogs and not getting bitten and this forms a second belief that not all dogs are bad. From there his experiences will give each belief more or less energy and the solution is to slowly introduce him to overcome his fear. It sounds like you tried this, is there any professional help available on the NHS for him?