The sensory sky

Despite being summer, we've quite had a few bright but blustery days. There's been periods of grey skies, and at night there have been some high winds. As I'm stood watching the sky turn grey over the playground, it is slowly emptying. We often go later in the day when it's a bit quieter but we are soon the only family there. 

It's not cold but the drop in temperature indicates it may soon rain. My squeaking son pulls me over to the spinner again, "pin" he signs and says to get another spin. As he goes round he is face up at the sky.  In fact for a few moments its almost impossible to stop him looking at the clouds. 

Both our autistic boys, Anthony aged eight years and his younger brother David aged five, are sensory seeking with relation to the sense of touch. They are hypo-sensitive or under sensitive to touch and so seek it out as a way of balancing their sensory system, hence David's love of spinning. They are also both hypo-sensitive with their sense of sight. This means they seek visual stimulus. For example Anthony might wiggle his fingers near his eyes and David likes to look at objects from odd angles. It makes their visual experience more interesting. Some people with autism use this as a way of calming and balancing their system.  Some trains of thought also believe the intensity of the stimulation is  enjoyable. 

We can all imagine something we 'like' to look at. The pleasure of a beautiful painting maybe, baby animals, autumnal trees?  But if you are one of the people that loves to watch as the leaves are blown off the trees to the point of not being able to look away, then you might get the idea.  Possibly you enjoy looking at beautiful flowers?  The best part of a bunch of flowers for me is the smell.  I could stand and breath in beautiful smelling flowers for at least a minute.  And that's probably the closest I come to this feeling of sensory satisfaction.

David was intensely watching the clouds.  It was only as I looked up at them that I saw how lovely they really were.  They were a variety of shades spanning everything between duck egg and ash blonde.  And I became aware of how fast they were moving.  It was like watching the people who walk on the travellators in airports. And I thought, how beautiful. David literally squealed with delight.  I bent down to join him in his viewing and just as I did an aircraft burst through the bottom of the clouds like a whale breaching out of the ocean. "Plane" I said. "Tane"' David echoed and stuck out his finger and thumb.

Once it was time to go and I'd retrieved the rest of the kids it occurred to me that of the possible hundreds of children and adults that were at the playground that day that my son and I could have been the only two people to have enjoyed the sky like we did.  In that moment, there was nothing that David found more enjoyable than to breadth in the sky and watch a plane. In some ways I wish I'd had more time to look at them with him.  My son may see the world differently to other kids but what he sees is amazing.

External Links
NAS - Sensory

I'm supporting #wetalkmakaton this summer. See the latest sign 'plane' here