Today, Pig Jr. was home from preschool so I could take him to a doctor's appointment. We almost never get in and out of that particular office in a timely manner, so I told him he did not have to go to school afterwards. However, that meant he was stuck with me when I ran some errands after our appointment.
As we were walking around a store, in search of the somewhat elusive HEPA filters for Horse and Rooster's bedroom air filter, I glanced down at my son and thought he was playing with the Velcro at the bottom of his jacket.
Me: "Why are you holding your jacket?"
Pig Jr.: "I not. I holding my penis."
Lovely. Any parent who has a small boy knows that when this is the case, it's time to hunt down the nearest restroom facility or risk having to purchase a new set of dry clothing. So, off we went.
Pig Jr. is not a happy camper when it comes to environments with which he is not familiar. The restroom at the local department store falls into this category. We walked into the restroom, and he started trembling with fright. I wish I could say he was as creeped out about public restroom germs as I am, but the truth is that it was simply a case of sensory overload for my little boy.
The lighting is different from the rest of the store. There are oodles of people coming and going at random intervals. The toilets make industrial-strength flushing noises, and are rarely dry when you enter a stall. The toilet paper is rough enough to have been made straight from the bark of trees. The soaps smell different from our soap at home, and the water pouring from the taps was flowing in an apparently unregulated torrent. There was also a pervasive smell of whatever cleaning chemical had been used when the restroom was last cleaned. Every sight, sound, smell, and touch that could possibly exist in that small room existed solely to freak out my child, at least in his opinion.
As soon as we left that particular torture chamber, Pig Jr. was back to his normally chipper self. He skipped along merrily as we finished shopping and paid for our items. You could not tell that just a few moments before, he was trembling and frozen in place, desperate to use the facilities, but freaked out by it nonetheless. We were fortunate today. Sometimes, it takes much longer for him to recover.
People dealing with sensory issues very often react the same exact way when dealing with an unexpected, different, or new environment. Airplanes and I are mortal enemies the same way Pig Jr. and public restrooms are. (I freak out, start trembling, and I definitely don't want to have to pee while I'm in there!) Rooster reacts that way when in an unfamiliar environment where she can tell it is getting dark outside. Her meltdowns are legendary and can go on for hours. These are not the tantrums of a spoiled brat; They are how a child with sensory issues can react when their senses feel under attack. It is quite literally a fight or flight situation. How do you take a person with sensory issues somewhere when every fiber in their being is telling them it is not safe? It's incredibly difficult, and people who travel with ease cannot even begin to fathom what it is truly like.
The worst part though, is when people who supposedly care about you demand that you go and visit with them because they think you are just being picky or stubborn. Tell that to my son who is petrified to go into a public restroom for a whole whopping sixty seconds. It feels like emotional blackmail, and that makes a difficult situation far worse.
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