Sensory issues

At school it was liver and onions. At home I think my mum didn't always cook onions with it, which is probably why I found the smell intolerable.

Was it just liver or liver and onions, as onions help it taste/smell more of onions and less of liver and probably deliberately used for that reason.  Had to be overcooked for my dad, so made it tough and the textures not great.  I forced things down usually, but when older just chose not to react so much and over the years explored all kinds of flavours and not really have things I refuse to eat, though things less keen on like strong seafood.  

I could not eat liver either, even at home. In later years my mum said she used to buy it because it was cheap and she didn't have enough money for anything else. If I could smell it cooking I would shut myself in my room and refuse to come out until the vile smell had gone!

The only thing I can remember refusing to eat was liver. I was 3. My mother cut it up into tiny pieces and it was on a plastic plate.  She said I couldn't leave the table until I had eaten it. Well, I  would have been happy to sit there forever, there was no way that, having first tried it, I could swallow it or put a piece in my mouth again. In the end, she had to let me not eat it and luckily I was never given it again. 

I turned vegetarian literally from the first moment that I realised too! I am ashamed that it wasn't until I was 6 though, when I "met" a field of young cows when visiting my great grandmother. 

No idea what was in it but everything about that mince was enough to put me off meat for life. I hated the taste, texture and smell. As soon as I was old enough to understand that I was being fed dead animals I turned vegetarian, and have remained so ever since.

My brother was cornered on his last day of Primary school by one of the dinner ladies. She said that her sons and nephews go to the Secondary school and she was going to make sure that he was beaten every day. I’m not a believer in a “nanny state”, but I can see how putting safeguards in place was a good move.

People who abuse children never seem to grasp that they all grow up and then aren’t little children anymore!

Thoes dinner ladies have a lot to answer for

Yep! I ended up taking packed lunches, but still had dinner ladies standing over me rushing me to eat quicker - caused a melt down one day and worsened the food sensitivities

He does have ear defenders, which he hasn’t wanted to wear before. He does pick them up and look at them so I will even try to get him to wear them at home if I can to get use to them. Thank you 

Thanks, I had forgotten the mince!  It was always just called mince, not beef or lamb. The deserts were just as vile, Semolina or Blancmange. My father was a milk man so my mother would cook at lunchtime. It wasn’t felt that we needed two cooked meals per day. I fully understand your noise issue, I felt the same. All the water jugs and beakers were metal and noisy, the food came out in aluminium bread tins and served with large spoons that were banged on the plates to try and release the substance. The plates were ceramic and made noise against the cutlery. This would be after the mid morning warm milk in the summer which also wasn’t optional. I’m actually feeling ill  just thinking about it. Eventually I went on to Secondary school and a cafeteria system was introduced, I got to choose my own food and in the summer sit outside in more quiet surroundings. One childhood sensory overload was if my father had been cooking kippers at home, I would feel physically sick, the smell and look of them was vile. Unfortunately I now have no interest in food, I just look at it as something to endure so I am not hungry.

In my experience noise sensitivity is greatly variable and dependent on a lot of factors. It is not something that peaks at a certain age and it seems to be something that I struggle with more and more as I get older.

As others have already said a lot is dependent on what else is going on in life. If I am relatively calm then I will be able to tolerate noise more. However I have my limits, even when I can tolerate a noisy environment for a short time I need plenty of recovery time in a quiet environment afterwards.

Once I reach my tolerance limit to a specific noise my brain seems to become more and more sensitised to it. In those circumstances any exposure to that noise, or even just general noisy environments, will result in an increasingly intense meltdown reaction.

I would suggest that it is important to identify and block out as much of the troubling noise as possible, preferably long before it gets to the stage where he reaches his own tolerance limit.

School dinners bring back so many vivid memories for me too. The whole experience was a complete sensory overload in so many ways.

I can clearly remember the overwhelming noise from all the voices, the chairs scraping, the pots clattering, the cutlery on plates. This was all amplified and echoed off the tin roof, because the dining hall was in an old nissen hut.

The overwhelming smells were vile. Liver and onions is the worst ever and I could not even tolerate that at home  I remember the cabbage too!

Then the textures of the foods were completely off-putting too. They would serve up mince full of gristle, which made me gag. I agree that the 'smash' potato was vile!

Any attempts to get me to eat the food would result in retching. The more the dinner ladies shouted at me the more distressed I would get.

They couldn't get me to eat anything at all. They repeatedly asked my mum to provide lists of foods I would or wouldn't eat. That didn't help as at home, in a quiet environment, I would eat most things put in front of me. Eventually they decided I could no longer have school dinners and I had to go home every day at lunchtimes.

Those traumatic early experiences caused me eating issues for life. Even to this day I can't eat in noisy environments like restaurants or when there are other people there.

Hi Dawn, your part on school dinners has filled in a missing blank for me. I was the same with food, most things were okay until school dinners started. I can’t stand anything that is mushy. We were only allowed real potato’s once a week, the rest of the time it was this powdered potato mixed with water, it was grim and just tasted of metal. The smell of cabbage was overwhelming, I could smell it when I came into school in the morning, that gave it a full 3 hours to boil. Each table in the dining room would have a teacher sat at it to make sure food was eaten. Some teachers really shouldn’t have been allowed to teach. They most probably new a subject very well but didn’t understand children at all. I vividly remember one day when we had spam and as a so called treat a piece of tinned pineapple was put on top. I was told that I wasn’t leaving the table until I had eaten it. With each mouthful I was retching, the teachers response was that I wasn’t to wash it down with water, it was a treat. I think that’s when I became more intolerant to food. Liver and onions was another punishment but thats another story. It’s strange how your mind can bury these parts of your life and then they can seem like yesterday again.

Yes, the heat bothers me disproportionately and lowers my tolerance to other sensory input, I'm guessing because my inadequate temperature control already has me that tad nearer overload.

This is actually more complex.

Just one environment can make changes and the noises/music can become drastically harsh. A music system, or TV or anything broadcasting, depending on the quality of cables, quality of the speakers, positioning and what they're bouncing off of, these all affect sound and how the human ear receives the signal. Things are changed about all the time in shops, in open spaces, in packaged ingredients, in lighting and even the chemicals used to clean bathrooms. Changing the structure of anything can affect sound. Even outside, over time things corrode or like trains and busses, break pads start screeching and companies are too lazy or don't even consider these might need fixing/oiling. One thing to note is now shops and outdoor lighting have fitted LEDs, they may not have changed the wiring or components like drivers, which is crucial to proper fitting. And components which are meant to work with halogen now lit with LED will make a high pitch excruciatingly irritating non-stop sound. 

But another thing mentioned here, is as we grow, we take on more responsibility, we incorporate more complex navigation into our being. A baby might be completely focused on holding a thing or walking. But once competent with one try doing both and so on. So when younger, he may have been putting energy and focus to make an effort to shut out sounds or not know the need to express discomfort. We can get lost in the moment and forget a thing happened seconds ago and then it's gone and we can forget again. 

Honestly, the thing which is important is that you recognise he is sensitive to sound and probably needs ear defenders. That sensitivity may not ever go away. I work in sound and get paid to be sensitive to frequencies and harmonics and all kinds of elements involved. This kind of ability is actually amazing for safety, as well. The inability to dull our senses was noted mid last century by psychoanalysts. It's never changed and just a cool, unique feature of autistic-wiring. 

Thank you. Recently more ASD traits are appearing more full on than they did before. My Son doesn’t like the heat much so that could be a factor. I know or I guess that some people with ASD can be more effected by sensory issues than others? 

If they are suddenly more bothered then it could be other things are affecting them and then a noisy environment is taking them over the edge, or it could be they are stressing themselves about it.   I don't know enough about sensory processing difficulties to know if they worsen, likely to be the same throughout life I would say - its the reactions to them that will vary and can worsen because thought patterns and anxiety can inflame triggers.  Helping them react less to these things is the best way, help them think less bad about it.

I used to love going to air shows as a kid, but found the loud jets really hard to manage until about 10 and then decided to let the noise happen and enjoy the show - not all autistic people can control how they are affected, but harder for children so growing up might mean they learn better ways to manage these things.

They can change over time or suddenly flick on out of nowhere for sure.

For instance; having had to wean me with in weeks of being born because I would not tolerate a bottle, my mother said, I ate anything put in front of me until my first school dinner and thereafter had major issues with food until adolescence and still have a fair few now.  From my perspective I still remember the utterly vile stench and nauseating texture of that school lunch even now, with the dinner ladies demanding that I eat it.  Basically, I think if something gives you a sensory shock, it can flip these things into being and they can take years or decades to dissipate again.

Others of my senses flit about all over the place.  I have been known to experience no physical pain when others seem to think I should be experiencing quite a bit, and conversely be in agony, when others think I am making a fuss about nothing.  There must be something other than simple touch/pain at play in my sensory system at that point.  But then I'm also a synesthete; another sense triggering something it shouldn't???  Who knows.

But yes, these things can suddenly pop up.  I don't think it's exactly age dependant, although I got better at tolerating somethings as I moved out of childhood.  As I am now middle aged I am finding it actually harder to tolerate others, which I used to manage. 

My sensory issues just seem to get worse and worse. I am 40 now. I don't know if that is a typical experience or if it is related to autism or other factors though.

I have noticed that the more stressed/anxious/overwhelmed/over loaded I am, the harder I find it to tolerate sensory input. It is as though if things are relatively "okay" then it is easier to deal with sensory input.. but if I am already feeling under pressure then any sensory input will send me over the edge. So perhaps something else is bothering your son, that is making it harder for him to cope in noisy environments?

For example, I can tolerate noise better on a cool, cloudy day than I can on a hot, bright sunny day. I can tolerate noise better if there are no demands on me and my routine is undisturbed, than I can if there is an expectation for me to do something and if my routine is being disturbed... Also, if I am tired I cannot cope with any noise at all.

So, pay attention to any other factors that may have changed and may be impacting your son, as these will likely also impact his ability to cope with a noisy environment.