When I was a small child, Mum and Dad had a little Austin Ruby car. They loved it. Dad had trained as an aircraft fitter during the war, and now worked for a large diesel engine manufacturer. It was no problem for him to maintain the car and it gave us all real flexibility. I always sat in the back, of course. That meant I sometimes had to share the back seat with various of Mum and Dad’s friends who came on outings with us.
Continue reading »sensory sensitivity.
Refers to differences in the way autistic people experience sensory information such as light, sound, the feel of things. For example, we may be highly sensitive to light and find very bright light painful. The same may be true for sound. Or either may under-stimulate us. Fabrics and textures may irritate or be unwearable.
Un-recognised, a build-up of sensory discomfort may lead to meltdowns when the overload becomes too much.
The sensory challenges of festival time
It’s summer music festival time again. Here on the Isle of Wight we’ve had our own annual event which brings an additional 50,000+ people to the Island. We live in one of the ferry ports, and our road is on the turning circuit for the fleet of buses that carry incoming festival-goers to the site. In a way, I enjoy the festival feeling, but you’ll never find me there, and the reasons are mainly sensory.
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