Extremely sensitive

Post Reply New Topic

My 8 year old has AS, and while he is extremely intelligent and precocious, he is also very sensitive.

We were watching a "Justice League" cartoon last night and a boy is attacked by a monster (pulled through a door). We never find out what happened to the boy.

My son was in tears!

He dislikes violence (although he can handle mild amounts) and conflict. We have to be careful what we show him.

Does anyone else here experience this?

Good subject!

My sister and I were a great study for kids watching TV. My sister would shield her daughter from any kind of violence and sexual content. She was meticulous and watched everything with her to be sure it was appropriate. I on the other hand watched everything with them too, but I would allow them to watch what the other kids were watching. When violence or inappropriate behavior was presented I alway...always explained how it was "made up". I explained the process of film making and we would do similar projects like making monster drawings. Halloween was a great example. I would talk to them about the difference between reality and TV.
All the kids are over 22 now and the result was that when my sister's daughter went to college, she was alienated from the other kids and was frightened by some of the normal things kids did. She isolated herself and to fit in, she would drink. She is a wonderful girl now and doing quite well, but she had that difficult transition. (She actually came to me and told me one day when I drove her back to school)

My kids turned out to be very popular kids and know all the new and exciting electronic gadgets. They can explain anything and other people their age look up to them and seek out their company. I can say this because my house is where they all hang out. My youngest daughter is going to college for graphic arts and animation. My oldest 2, son,23 and daughter,29 are both nurses.

My take on it is, the world out there is not something you can avoid. I don't believe you should sugar coat how difficult it is to go through life. But let them understand the balance in life. How hard it can be and how absolutely wonderful it will be. Hold onto the wonderful things as long as you can. Get by the hard stuff and don't let it affect you. Learn from the bad things but remember only the good things. We al have that choice. We can focus on the past horrible things, or focus on the good and look forward to more. Looking at the past can make you miss the present!

KB is all over the place with this. She doesn't like stories with conflict unless I'm careful to read the story without too much "mean" in my voice. I don't sit and monitor every move but she knows how to recognize shows I wouldn't want her to watch and doesn't. She'll click out on her own if something inappropriate slips by. She can be incredibly sensitive one moment, and then so insensitive on another. She took pictures when I had a blood test for crying out loud.

I would allow him to decide what to watch. If he's very sensitive and wants to turn off a show because it's upsetting him, then turn it off. I wouldn't make a big deal out of it though because it may gain more importance in his mind than it should.

I have always let mine watch whatever they wanted to. We don't get the adult channels so I never had to worry about them seeing something they shouldn't when they were young. I have a friend with two NT's is girls, they might be on the spectrum but haven't been diagnosed. One has ADHD. They are twins and almost 16 years old now. She sheltered them almost to the extreme until recently and now that they are trying to fit in with the other girls at high school, they have a lot of trouble with it. She's tried to rent movies that girls that age watch, and I've given her suggestions of what my kids like. They are actually afraid to watch Twilight, because it's about vampires. Fight Club was completely out of the question. Any of the South Park videos offend them greatly and they cry beause of the profanity.

This may just be the girls actual nature or it could be the result of their mother's oversheltering them. I can see not letting them watch a horror movie before bed when they are 12 or something, but they won't watch anything that isn't either cartoons for kids or some movie made for younger kids like on Nickelodean. It's not that something isn't to their taste, they are actually afraid of it, and my friend feels bad that she put so much emphasis on sheltering them when they were younger.

I would let it be your sons call about what he watches, and not make a big deal over it if something scares him or upsets him. Just explain that it's not real, it's only made up for television and can't hurt him. I'd tell him that it's ok if he doesn't like it, and he doesn't have to watch it. He may end up liking it when he gets older, or he may never like it. Validate his choices in his taste for entertainment.

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com

That is oversensitive. What did she do, lock those kids up in the house or something? I have no clue how kids could get to that age without being exposed to something or the other outside the home. KB knows the bad words, she just knows she's not supposed to use them.

My son has a really, really hard time understanding the difference between what's reality and what isn't. I have to be very careful what he watches and what video games he plays. No games with any violence and only the wii so that he is at least staying active and not just passively getting sucked into another world.

It's so hard for him, he's obsessed with halloween every day of the year partly because he can't see the 'pretend' part that it is, so he keeps it near so that it doesn' t sneak up an scare him.

If he see's something on t.v. that may be someone getting shot or something, he'll say "That's not real right?" but he is just repeating what I've told him, he thinks about that person over and over and finally asks me a question like "Will he start a new life now?" (as Buddhists we believe in reincarnation, if not he would be asking will he go to heaven now, so his questions isn't an understanding that it's an actor who will be in another movie)

On the other hand he has a fabulous acting talent as he really 'lives' the characters that he dreams up, pretend just doesn't register with him, it's just another frequency that he 'feels'.

My son watches cartoons that would have scared me at his age but I let him watch Old Yeller and he was terrified....he also does not like pictures of skulls....anyway we found out that he was actually afraid of getting rabies so I had to explain to him (and I did tell him the truth) that there are rabies but that it is very rare and you have to be bitten by a wild animal and they do have medical treatment for it. You never know what is going to freak someone out. Everyone has their fears....especially people with autism/aspergers.....sometimes we just need things explained to us in a way that we can understand.

When I was little I didn't like violence on TV, either...mainly live-action. I didn't understand anything about special effects so if I saw someone get maimed on TV or in movies I always thought it was real. I'd think, "Why would an actor do that, just for a movie???"

My 10 y.o. DS is very interested in zombies. One of the things that fascinates him is the extras on the DVD's about the makeup and special effects. Now he points out the errors in special effects or how they made it look real. I think it is his way of dealing with the fear/excitement combination of horror. We still avoid movies that present themselves as documentaries like Paranormal (darn I can't remember the name) Effect (?).

Maybe some of the learning channel / discovery channel shows on how movies work, how the music, special effects and camera angles encourage the audience to "feel" certain ways.

Hi,...this is my first post, just found this site yesterday.

My 7 year old is also extremely sensitive. He will remember any/every bad thing another child (or adult!) says to him...for a very long time. I remember at 5 we went on a family trip to Vermont, and when we pulled away from the resort I said, "bye Vermont!! Hope we can come back soon!". All of the sudden my son sobbed...I mean SOBBED...in the back seat because he was sad we were leaving. His newest thing is that he cannot be wrong about anything in school, that "they all will think I'm stupid". He really and truly beats himself up when he is wrong, especially if someone else is there. If he is losing at a WII or DS game that he is "battling" with his twin sister, he will sabotage it so he cannot lose. I just don't get it....

My son is the same. Very sensitive to anything "scary" on TV. We just gradually acclimatised him. AT 5yo, he couldn't take ANYTHING scary. While we minimised his exposure to scary stuff, we didn't completely eliminate it. Over time he has improved. He's 9yo now. We watched "TinTin" at the cinema yesterday. He didn't flinch once. 3 years ago he would have been in tears over some of the tense dramatic scenes. Was a great triumph! He's still more sensitive than most kids his age, but now he's in a range I could call manageable.

I definitely wouldn't blame yourself. Like you and many of the other recent posters on this thread, my son is incredibly sensitive too. He is 4 1/2 and very limited in what he can watch without freaking out. We try to respect his comfort level. We will explain to him about what he is watching--i.e., don't worry, Frosty the Snowman is a good guy, etc. and try to help him understand his fears. However, if he is still freaking out, we turn it off. It doesn't do any good to try to 'force' him to not feel frightened. It doesn't work that way. We have SLOWLY acclimatized him to watch a few things. Movie theaters are out of the question for him still. But we finally managed to watch Cars 2 at home in bits and pieces, though he still runs out of the room for some parts--even though he's already seen it.

It isn't because of our home environment or because we are too overprotective or any such nonsense as that. Our daughter is not yet 3 and she will watch all kinds of stuff that he won't--Beauty and the Beast, Muppets, etc. She gets scared at parts--but says, 'It's ok, I'm a big girl.' She can handle her fear, he can't handle his. That's the difference. It's like she has a monitor that says yes, I am afraid, but I know it isn't real. He doesn't have that monitor, no matter how much we try to help him and explain to him. We didn't make him that way, it's just the way his brain works.
He refuses to enter our church kindergarten class if a video--any kind of video--is playing. He hides behind the kindergarten door and waits. People think it's strange, but he's my little boy and I know it's just not in his comfort zone. So I don't force him in.

That said, he has been able to watch nature shows about poisonous snakes, bears attacking people, etc. and he is not afraid. Why? Maybe because it is real and obviously real and he has a mental context for that.
So, take it slowly. Be understanding. In time they grow out of their fears, right? And if they don't, and they never want to watch ScoobyDoo, well, who cares. It's not a requirement for success in this world, thankfully,

I agree - we are very, very careful about what my son watches, at least in our home (unfortunately, the social consequences of policing what happens at other people's homes, even when the parents understand, is too much, so we have to deal with that.) Some of it he's aware he can't handle, and some we know he can't handle. My son is now 11, so restricting media is an extremely difficult decision because it does affect him socially.

We have explained very carefully to my son that media is there for fun, and if it isn't fun for him, he shouldn't watch it. (It's interesting - he can tolerate the animated Dr.Who, but can't sit for two minutes when the live-action show is on, even if he knows it's all special effects.) We have also had to explain that the media he watches is dependent on his behavior: if we see him scripting or modeling inappropriate behavior off a TV show, that TV show is out. He can earn more mature shows by better behavior.

To the parents who are saying it's all about parenting: while I believe your choices matter, I don't think this is true. I, myself, was an extremely sensitive child and my parents made me watch all kinds of stuff that were outside my ability to tolerate. I didn't learn to tolerate it better until I was an adult, even with explanations of how special effects work, and how none of it was real. To me, it wasn't the special effects, it was the IDEA that people had the potential to be that cruel; that some moviemaker was able to imagine that cruelty...and cruelty was something I'd experienced firsthand. The fact that it was pretending and special effects was immaterial.

My son doesn't have the same issue, but he has had similar issues, and the way I've handled it is to honor those sensitivities, but always leave the door open for HIM to choose to nudge himself on them.

My son has long moved past most of them. He is now 14. But he did it in his own time and in his own way.

As for the tangent conversation in this thread, what the kids watch ... my kids (one AS, 14, and one NT, 11) have mostly chosen that, too, with some advice from me, but I've always watched anything borderline with them so we can talk about things that come up. Still, they would rather not watch anything scary or sexual; fantasy violence doesn't bother them at all. Neither has any interest in Twilight because, face it, it is a ridiculous story and they figured that out without any help from me (I kind of enjoyed the movies myself, anyway). My NT daughter would tell you she hates vampires, but she isn't afraid of them: she is sick of them because they are too trendy and she is a bit of an anti-trend girl. I'm certainly not going to force my kids to grow up faster than appears to be natural for them, or make them pretend to like things that are popular just so they can fit in better (although we tend to give them enough information to not seem clueless); I consider that just as overdone as overly sheltering the kids would be. For many things, I believe kids should be allowed to grow up in their own time and in their own way, and I'm pleased that my kids held back a little; we are surrounded in this area by other kids doing the same, and its nice.

I think as long as parents stay mostly child led on these concepts, the kids do fine. Some kids need a little holding back, some need a little nudging, but they all are internally propelled to grow up eventually.