Quirks & Ticks

Large crowds....he hates large crowds. Decided to take him to see Clifford the Big Red Dog who is having a show at our local mall. He loves Clifford. He will put on a show and he will be able to meet Clifford. There will be activities for children his age and their will be face painting and happiness abound. Or so you think. You know how some kids love Santa but don't want to meet him in person and they cry or scream when you scoot them onto Santa's lap? That wasn't the issue with Clifford. He really wanted to meet Clifford. What ruined the experience? People ruined the experience. Other children who were loud ruined the experience. Children running around ruined the experience. Yes, it is all normal. Nothing wrong with kids running around having a great time with the activities that were planned for this event. Getting your face painted and squealing with delight when look into the mirror. You know happy 2-4 year olds waiting for Clifford. However when you are sensitive to sounds, large crowds and chaos an event of this magnitude can be a total nightmare. It was our first outing of this nature and it would be our last. I tried to engage him in some of the activities that were going on without actually engaging with the other children. His older brother was there. The were those Little Tykes cars for the kids to be pushed in and little bowling games for kids to play by themselves if they wanted to. All he focused on and was quite unhappy about was the noise the other kids were making. He was not happy at all. In fact the pictures that I have of the event show a very unhappy child. I recall one picture so vividly and that is a picture of his brother pushing him in the Little Tykes car and you can clearly see that he has been crying and is distraught. Another picture shows his older brother trying to engage him in an activity and he clearly isn't having it. He cried several times and we left the activities area and went looking around the mall for a few. He was happy in his stroller as if it actually provided some form of solitude. At least we were away from all the noise and chaos. He shook his head yes when I asked him if he wanted to stay and still see Clifford. We would stay for the show but the day was so overwhelming for him as soon as Clifford came out he laid back in his stroller and fell asleep. Large crowds and chaos would prove to be a trigger for him in different settings. Didn't have to worry about him wanting to go to the local carnival or to an amusement park. Going to the zoo was ok because we went on weekdays and not the weekend. Some things had to be a certain way. He was a creature of habit. In the morning he watched Sesame Street's Journey to Ernie and Elmo's World but would not finish watching the rest of Sesame Street. Then you changed the it to Disney Channel so he could watch Out Of the Box (Disney needs to bring that back-seriously). Luckily after Out of the Box, it was time for him to go to school. It would be during the second year of Preschool that he would have the summer off as they felt that he would not regress during summer break in which the TV had to be on Disney Channel. If there were no mouse ears at the bottom of the TV screen he would have a melt down. Some of the shows that came on in the afternoon were not geared to the preschooler. The VCR and DVD player came in very handy as we recorded a lot of Journey to Ernie, Elmo's World and Out Of the Box to simulate his regular morning TV viewing. As long as there were mouse ears on the TV he was a happy camper. It was hard explaining to him that Out of the Box was no longer on TV, luckily he was fascinate with Blues Clues to accept the change. Eating was another issue. When he was a baby he loved all the fruits that were introduced to him. Pears & Peaches would disappear from the menu once he started developing sensory issues. He loved pears, nothing was wrong with the flavor but it was the "grainy" texture. Sand he said. Pears feel like sand. (Yes a toddler knows what sand in the mouth feels like). Peaches, same thing he loved the way peaches taste but to stringy he said as pulled peach strings from his mouth. Homemade hamburgers? Nope too bumpy, not flat like McDonald's (don't laugh). There were all kinds of food dos and don't. Food could not touch each other. No mixing foods. Brushing teeth would also prove to be problematic. We tried all kinds of tooth brushes. Soft, medium and yes, even hard. Nope. Spin brushes were a no go as well. You pretty much had to hold him down to bush his teeth. Barking dogs and other loud noises = chaos. He wanted no part of anything loud. All these things were not really inconvenient they were almost second nature. It became second nature. It kept peace. And for this part of the roller coaster, we wanted peace. So I became peace. For him.