Sensory issues

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. 

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.

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.

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

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.

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.