I remember this day so clearly. My son was eighteen months old and we were pulling out of the driveway into the first rainy day of the year. I turned on the windshield wipers as we backed down the driveway and Tigger immediately started screaming this blood curdling scream. I looked back at him in his carseat to see what could possibly be wrong. I was so scared, I pulled over and got him out of the seat. He was trembling and holding onto me so tight. I finally got him calmed down and I put him back in the car. I started driving again and he was a little anxious, but he was okay. Then as I was driving down the freeway I had to turn the windshield wipers on again. He started screaming again like he was being tortured.

That is how I learned that my son was terrified of windshield wipers. Luckily, we live in a place where it does not rain very much, so for a few months I just didn’t go anywhere with him when it was raining. Then that became impossible as it was beginning to get in the way of our lives. I tried many different ways to try to “explain” to him that windshield wipers were not scary. As he got older, I explained that the windshield wipers had an important job to clear the water off the windshield so that I could see when I was driving. I sang “The Wheels on the Bus” a million times, complete with actions and emphasizing “The wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish.” I showed him videos of how windshield wipers were made. I bought windshield wipers and took them out of the box and let him play with them. I even tried to take him into the car and let him turn on the windshield wipers, but that did not end well. I tried any piece of advice anyone would give me.

One thing many people said was “Well, he is just going to have to get used to the windshield wipers. They are a part of life.” So I was the tough mom; I would take him in the car when it was raining and turn on the windshield wipers and listen to him scream in terror the entire time we drove. When we arrived at our destination, I would hold him for whatever time he needed to calm himself, which was usually ten to twenty minutes. Then he started to become anxious every time it rained and even when it was merely cloudy or foggy outside. I did not know how to help him, and I was afraid I was really scarring him. During winter and fall months he was in a constant state of anxiety about the weather. Our day would be dictated by the sun or lack of it. This went on for about 2 years.

Then when my son had just turned three, he was driving with my husband when it was raining and my husband told him to cover his eyes with his lovie. Bam! Magically he did not scream in horror when my husband turned the wipers on. He was still really anxious and crying a little, but it was not the blood curdling screams that he usually had.

He found a way to cope with his fear.

As time went on he was less and less afraid of the weather. Now if it is raining, he wears a blanket over his head. He is still fearful and anxious while it is raining, but it is manageable for him. If he accidentally sees the windshield wiper go off, he will yelp “Ouch!” and close his eyes. This situation has taught me that although certain things may not be scary to me or you, that doesn’t make them any less real or frightening to my son.

I don’t really know exactly when his fear of bathroom fans started. For the first 2 years of his life, he took a bath everyday in our bathroom with a fan. The fan would come on immediately when you turned the light on. He would talk about the fan, and I guess he did act a little cautious while he was in this bathroom. My dad separated the fan from the light with a remote switch sometime after Tigger’s second birthday. This was nice, because it was quite a loud fan and we didn’t like it coming on late at night when someone had to use the bathroom while Tigger was sleeping. Still for awhile, he was not afraid of it.

In public he was very interested in bathrooms, and would want to go in every bathroom, but while we were in the bathroom he would be very anxious and want to quickly leave. Then stand outside the bathroom flapping this hands and bouncing up and down. I started potty training when he was around three and a half, right after I got his ASD diagnosis. Potty training is a story in of itself, but once he got the hang of it he would still use both of our bathrooms and just request that we leave the fan off. Then one day he decided that he would only go in the bathroom that did not have a fan, which was our master bathroom. I didn’t think too much about it, because I was just really happy he was finally going potty. When he started preschool, his fear of bathroom fans began to grow, as I talked about in an earlier post. It was still manageable, and as long as we could turn the fan off in whatever bathroom he was using he would be fine. Then he started Special Day Class in the public school, which I wrote about earlier as well. The tactics they used to desensitize Tigger, blew up on all of our faces and it intensified his fear in so many ways that I could not have thought possible.

Now, he was even scared of the bathroom in our house that had a fan. He would run past the room, and would refuse to go into even if the fan was off. If someone using that bathroom, god forbid, turned the fan on, he would go completely ballistic, with fear in his eyes, covering his ears and screaming for them to turn it off. I would tell him that the fan had an important job, that it sucked all the wet, stinky, hot air out of the bathroom. We had long intellectual conversations about how fans worked and looked at videos of the inside of fans. He had such interest and was so excited to learn about the fans. But if he heard a fan, all of the excitement was replaced with terror. At his current preschool, with the help of his teachers and therapists, he is slowly venturing back into bathrooms. They do not pressure him in any way and allow him to move at his own speed. He now will go into the bathrooms at school with the fan on, for a short period of time. He still has a high sense of anxiety around fans, but he is learning to manage it. He is even sitting on a toilet at school in a bathroom without a fan. We are still working toward bathrooms in the public, but I am so happy that he has come as far as he has.

His fear of bathrooms fans fits into a larger fear of sounds. He is afraid of so many sounds that occur in our daily lives. Car horns, intercoms, school bells, hooting owls, any construction tool sounds, loud trucks, any alarm, dogs barking, and many other sporadic “normal” sounds of life. His reaction varies from mild to extreme, and none of them are consistent. I never know what exactly will set him off. His younger brother, Nemo, is also exhibiting pretty intense fears of those same sounds. I don’t know if it is nature or nurture. I’m unsure if he is just sensitive like his brother or sensitive because of his brother. I don’t know if Nemo sees Tigger’s reaction and then thinks that he should be scared too. I comfort them both and talk to them about the sound. I tell them what the sound belongs to and what they are doing. This usually helps relax them, but they are still fearful and anxious until the sound stops. At night, they both have sound machines in there rooms and we love to listen to music and dance around the house. They aren’t necessarily afraid of loud noises, as much as sporadic not immediately seen or known noises. Honestly, I have a hard time explaining it, because I just don’t understand it. But my goal is to help them figure out a way to deal with it.

Now onto the evil elevators. Again, I’m not sure exactly sure when this fear started. I know that we would have had to take him in elevators as a baby in a stroller and I have pictures of myself holding him in an elevator. I do remember taking him to Target when he was a toddler and as we got onto the elevator he began to cry and I know that we sang to him and put on a full show trying to calm him down. I remember watching him as he was trying to figure out what he thought of this moving contraption. Then when he was able to walk well, he always begged to take the stairs. I never argued with him, because I knew the stairs were better for me anyway and they were fun for him. Not until we started going into some taller buildings or we were late for an appointment did I realize he had a major fear of elevators as well. His reaction was similar to windshield wipers. He made it very clear that there was NO WAY we were getting him into any elevator. He is happy to watch his little brother go up in the elevator or to sing songs about them or watch videos about how elevators work, but that is as far as it goes.

We went to the Academy of Sciences, which has a rainforest exhibit that is held in a dome and you take a twirling ramp up to the top, and then you have to take an elevator to the bottom. I didn’t realize this until we were already securely in the exhibit and they didn’t want you to go back out the entrance door. Plus, my son was so excited for the exhibit and it was early and there were not a lot of people inside yet. So I thought- okay this is our opportunity to conquer the elevator fear. After all, there was a great incentive as the elevator took you straight down into the aquarium and into a cool tunnel with fish swimming above you. He happily raced through the exhibit, and my attempts to slow him down long enough to give me time to figure out how I was going to get him to willingly go into the elevator were futile. We found ourselves to be the first people to the top of the exhibit. He was happily looking down on the rainforest when I got down to his level and I said. “Hey look at those cool elevators…” That was as far as I got- his face turned white, the smile wiped off his face, he covered his ears and began to quickly back away from me. I could tell that he remembered being forced into the bathrooms as school, and he was not going to let me get anywhere near him. I tried to stay calm with him about 10 feet away from me yelling “NO! No elevators.” My plan was to tell him all about the cool things at the bottom of the elevator ride and how elevators were just like a fun carnival ride, but he had completely shut down and was only thinking of his escape route. I told him that we could go back down the ramp and wait for them to let us out.

I’m sure throughout Tigger’s life there will be other things that cause this sheer panic and anxiety in him- things that are not a big deal to you or I. My goal is to try to never utter the words “that’s not scary,” because obviously it is scary to him. Simply telling someone that they shouldn’t be scared does not help them. As I’ve said, I’m really scared of bees and if there is one around me I jump up and run around flapping my hands by my hair like a lunatic. You can tell me until you are blue in the face that “bees aren’t scary; they won’t hurt you unless you hurt them; they do very important jobs… blah… blah…blah.” I’m still going to have that fear rise up inside me and I will run around and make a huge scene when one is buzzing near me. I have learned to cope with the fear a little better in my life and to try to remain calm, and that is what I want for Tigger.

I want to help him find ways to lower his anxiety and terror when confronted by one of his fears.

This unfortunately is not very easy to discover. We’ve been working with many professionals and no one really has the magical answer to help him. It will be a series of trial and error and we all find our way. I would definitely love to hear any methods that have worked for anyone else to deal with sound sensory issues specifically.

Besides the bees, I’ve never really had anxiety issues. My husband has, and it is much easier for him to understand, but I am learning. Our brains are amazing and complicated and the way that we all perceive objects, sounds, events are so different. This experience specifically has taught me a lot about tolerance and patience, but I know I have so much more to learn.