Even as an infant, any time I gave Tony a bath, he’d immediately fuss, quickly progress to crying, and even begin to scream sometimes as the water touched his skin. He was especially sensitive about water splashing on his face, and even a fine mist would cause him clench his body and face in startlement. This is one way tactile defensiveness can present. By the time he was starting occupational therapy as a toddler just under a year and a half old, I had certainly already begun to try and help him gain comfort with water touching his skin. By the time he was two, he was enjoying baths, and within a couple of years water play was so motivating to him that we could use the local pool as an enticement to help him develop crowd tolerance.
His occupational therapist at the time, Miss D, told me that I had good instincts with what I was doing- because what I started out doing I did on an instinct level rather than one informed by direct research on the subject. Simply put, my approach consisted of very gradual desensitization and tuning in to things that Tony found motivating. The specifics are what worked for Tony, but the approach is something that could theoretically be used to help any young child suffering with such an extreme sensitivity provided that their own individual interests and comfort levels were tolerated and respected. This is only what helped Tony develop a love of baths and water play, that does not mean the specifics would be a one size fits all approach for anyone with sensory differences that experiences this kind of sensitivity to water touching their skin.
As a baby, when we’d take him for walks in the stroller, I would take a water bottle with the finest mist setting I could find. I would periodically pray myself first (so that Tony could see we were dong the same things to ourselves as to him), then Andy, and then do a quick spray over our little man with an animated and loving expression (Tony at that time was very responsive to expressions with smiles and would smile in return- the emergence of his autism was regressive in regards to early social skills). The weather was warm when we started this, so he would have noticed that after the mist landed he felt cooler. As he tolerated brief mists from a sprayer I would increase the number of sprays and duration, adding them eventually to bath play, being careful always to make sure my delivery happened in an animated and loving- but quieter- manner.
For baths, I started out with a bath sling, keeping water contact with his body to the minimum. Then, I would just put an inch of water in the toddler tub at first. I made no increases or changes until he was completely calm with the level we were at. I noticed Tony was drawn to bright colors, so I got color changing tabs to see if this would interest him and distract him as I tried to increase the amount of time he was in the water. And it was a huge success, he loved watching the colors and grabbing after the tablets, absorbed in the mystery of how they dissolved.
In fact, we still use color tabs because he likes them so much, but I progressed to use them as motivators to gain skills such as removing and replacing screw caps, etc. He likes to pick his own colors, and currently he will pull out one yellow and one blue every night. He does this until all the yellows and blues are gone because he knows they will mix to make green in the water (green and orange are his current favorite colors).
Sometimes he still doesn’t like larger droplets on his face, but he absolutely loves pools, baths, sprinklers, showers, rain storms, and fountains from the community pool’s splash pad. I know everyone has different opinions about what to do in regard to sensory differences, but I would say that what we did increased Tony’s quality of life and turned something that is a normal part of functioning in the everyday world that he hated into something he loves and looks forward to.
