Thomas’s auditory processing
One of the ways in which my son Thomas’s 5p- syndrome exhibits itself is as a sensory processing disorder.
Imagine that every sight and sound that reached your senses had equal prominence. You have probably held conversations over background music. For Thomas, all music is foreground music. If music is playing when you speak to him, your words will be mixed in with the track, along with everyone else’s nearby conversations and the lawnmower next door. Meanwhile, movement and colours in his field of view and the feeling of fabric on his skin may be pressing on him with equal urgency to your words.
Sometimes, this can lead to a sensory overload, where Thomas just gets totally overwhelmed. A person who is on the autism spectrum produced a great video which helps simulate the experience of sensory overload for the rest of us:
A Good Roar
Thomas can still have a lot of fun with sights and sounds, however, and one day I decided it would be a great game to charge at Thomas like a dinosaur and roar at him. He thought so, too. In fact, he was so enthralled by this experienced that he became determined to roar just like daddy. So, some very cute roaring practice ensued:
I guess it is a nice, clear sound for him to grasp. Thomas got better at roaring over time, and he often tried to encourage me to repeat the game by roaring at me. Sometimes, when Thomas is freaking out from sensory overload, I might pick him up to calm him and he wont even realise I’ve got him until I give him a roar to let him know it’s me. He immediately recognises it, holds on to me and calms down. It has gotten to the point where whenever I come home from work or get up in the morning, Thomas will give me a roar, just to express his excitement at seeing me.
Good Communication
Enter Thomas’s 9-month-old sister. She is an early-starter with a lot of things, including saying 2 or 3 words and attempting many more. She’s also Thomas’s biggest fan.
This morning, I sat her down in her highchair next to Thomas for breakfast. She turned to him and let out a big, “GRROOOOARR!”.
“RAAAAARRGH!”, Thomas growled in response. They smiled at each other warmly and settled in to eat!
Tenuous link to blog topic
Cuteness aside, this incident really showed me that we need to hold loosely to the conventions of language which we think of as absolute. I am going to think twice before I base decisions on assumptions like, “goto is bad”, “callbacks are bad”, “functional style is good” or even “growling at someone is rude”. It really does depend on context, and clarity is key.
scalable notions 