A couple of weeks ago, there was a carnival being held on the ballpark field of the elementary school near our house. I think part of optimizing efficacy for what we are trying to help our son achieve is being aware of events occurring in our neighborhood and integrating them into his therapy work. And so, I told Tony we were going to be walking past it on our daily community safety walk. I told him we wouldn’t be going in to the event itself, and we didn’t have to stop and stay in the area if he didn’t feel comfortable, but we would be walking by.

What I was leveraging to help stretch towards and increase our son’s tolerance of the crowds, noise, and visual sensory input was his comfort with the environment itself. This is an area he has been working in for years and he has a high comfort level with it. Tony likely would not have been quite so calm had he been asked to walk so close to this in a neighborhood or commercial complex he was unfamiliar with.

As it was, he followed all safety instructions and by the time we had reached the other side of the area we were walking around, he was curious enough to initiate a couple pauses lasting some minutes each where he just looked at what was happening at the event. Anybody driving by just seeing us standing there wouldn’t realize what that moment signifies for him, for me.

Two years ago, this same event had him on edge and ready to flee just seeing it from a couple blocks away. We didn’t walk anywhere near so close to it on that occasion.

Diverse parents of individuals with Autism (or Sensory Processing Disorders) and individuals who are themselves on the spectrum don’t always agree about how situations involving aversive stimuli should be handled. One of our son’s therapists recently asked my opinion about a post she had seen where the individual expressed their views that asking someone to engage in therapeutic tasks to increase their tolerance of aversive stimuli was not appropriate. I told her that while I respect the right of this individual to determine these matters for themselves, I view the matter differently.

This is, of course, just my opinion- given both as a person with some sensory differences and as a parent of a child who presented with significantly more severe sensory differences. Our son, if we hadn’t engaged in years of sensory integration therapy, would not be able to tolerate or access any environments within the community outside of our home. Environments like that school ballpark or grocery stores, he can now interact in safely, happily, and functionally because of the work we have done. I feel like this has increased both his happiness and his confidence, and it has certainly decreased the difficulty of doing certain things as a family.

And in his earlier years, he couldn’t even handle much of the sensory stimuli in our house either- so there wasn’t any place anywhere that he could avoid feeling distress of that nature. And for some other types of sensory differences, such as his inability to tolerate Band-Aids being on his skin, in addition to the medical and safety challenges that presents, it prevented him from functioning safely in an environment such as a school where any accident could cause an injury that he wouldn’t allow to be bandaged. So, I feel like therapeutically helping navigate all of this was the best path forward to any type of sustainable happiness for him.

I personally think avoiding things strengthens the fear, and my personal take is it’s better to find a way to help an individual adapt whenever possible because many things cannot be avoided. Yes, there is on-line shopping- many of us know my history with Amazon and what was going on symptom-wise for our son that necessitated doing that much of our shopping via the internet. But I still think a richer quality of life is to be found by increasing a person’s ability to engage in as many areas of the community as possible. Grocery stores, clothing stores, pharmacies, doctor’s/dentist’s offices, schools, et cetera are all part of accessing necessary services for things he needs that can’t always be found on-line.

Now is going to a carnival strictly necessary? No, of course it isn’t. Perhaps he might have chosen a different path to walk on his own, but I did make sure he knew that if he really didn’t want to be near the event anymore, we’d walk a different direction. Crowd tolerance of this nature is a goal aimed at increasing quality of life for the rest of the family- because for an individual that will likely never live independently, that is an important goal too- so we can participate in things like this together that matter to other family members when another caregiver cannot be found for him (as frequently is the case).

This year’s goals? Walking by carnivals, carousels, gaining comfort in increasing crowd sizes.

Next year’s goal? Walking into that new Mattel Adventure park when it opens. But only if Tony feels comfortable and ready to do so.