Published on 12, July, 2020
My son (who is now 5) was diagnosed with autism 2 years ago is very scared from cars and buses. This anxiety started nearly 3 years ago and I decided that is better stay away from this transport to make him less panicky in the street and help him with sensory overload...thinking it will go away...But it didn't.
As you can imagine I missed a lot of things : weddings, birthdays, family holidays and any trips all together.
His fear of cars and buses is scary to watch and be around. If the bus is too close he will run as far as he can, screaming, hitting and pulling anyone around him.
We can't go anywhere further than 10min away from the house and this is for the last 3 years...
To summarise., my husband and I getting separated. My family thinks I'm lying about his fear because I don't want them to see my son. My ex's family thinks the same. My friends turned their back as well.
I tried slow approach , talking about cars, getting close to them for months. Safe distance from a car is about 1 meter, bus is around 5 meters. Anything closer triggers panic attacks
How to even start moving away from this fear? Anyone had the same issues?Any advice how to approach this problem?
P.s. - I'm not here to listen how horrible people are around me and my son .( Three years is hard to explain in two sentences.) I'm here to find the way to help my son...
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?
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.