Published on 12, July, 2020
I have noticed my six year old seems to be more bothered by noise suddenley. He has always found certain noises troubling but noisy environments he could cope with but now he can’t. Does Sensory Processing worsen or reach its peak at a certain age?
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.
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
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!