In The Autism World, Lately

Alex, today.

Alex has super sensitive hearing with his autism.

The other boys are only bothered by sound and noise

occasionally, especially when out in public, but they

seem to handle it much better than Alex.  I remember 

the first time we noticed this was a problem.  We took

the whole family into Lowe's when the triplets were about

4 or 5 years old.  Alex cried and held his ears

until we left the store.  It took another trip there for

us to figure out it was the humming of the fluorescent lights...

something we normally don't even notice!  Alex again covered

his ears and cried!  We avoided family trips to Lowes and he

seemed fine but a few years later, the sensitivity seemed wide

 spread, and he would live most of his days covering his

ears, which made doing things with his hands difficult,

interfered with school, eating, etc.

Months later I learned about the benefits of a sound 

muffling headset from an autism parent chat room

 and that helped immensely!  Ironic thing...

we got them at Lowe's. haha.  

Well, here we are 15-18 years later and he's still wearing

them!  He only takes them off to get into the tub, but

compensates for this by laying back and submerging the back

of his head in the water, including his ears!  I go in and slip

the headset off his head after he's fallen asleep at night

 and recently he's left them off all night.

Because of the constant warm, moist environment around his

ears, we have to be careful of yeast infections.  We have several

pairs that we rotate so they can dry out and have resorted to

a prescription cream, Ciclopirox Olamine, to keep his skin

healthy.  Kind of crazy, huh?  His head has even

grown with an indented shape around his ears!  

Lately, I've been trying to gradually get him to keep the headset

off at home.  This works only if he's in the family room alone

and there isn't any noise around, like television or vacuum.

At first he could only last a few minutes, but with lots of

praise, he's gotten better and better.

I purposefully turned the sound down on his iPad so he

would feel like he could hear it better without the headset.

He's been doing very well!  A few times he let me take the

headset off when he got into bed, but that only works if his

brothers are already settled and quiet. :)

This past weekend he went almost the whole time with it off.

One never knows how much of it is habit or a security thing

and how much is really a sound sensitivity at this point.

But we do know that he is terribly attached to them!

I had to snap the photo above because it's a pleasantly

different sight to see him without that big thing on his head!

He looks so much better without it! haha.

 ♥