Helping with Clothing Sensitivity
Clothing sensitivity is a common issue that we come across, as we work with children on the spectrum.
As children grow older, these sensitivities may manifest into challenging behaviors like pulling the pants down in public, not wanting to wear underwear, removing all the clothing and throwing it down the balcony.
The common mistake
These behaviors maybe labelled as attention seeking and sometimes punished or reprimanded. It affects the family adversely by limiting the social contexts they can be part of.
What we did instead
Recently, we came across a 7-year-old exhibiting behaviours that indicated clothing sensitivity. We tried a different, more holistic approach.
Make least harmful assumption
We interpreted it as a multifaceted problem, not an attention seeking behavior. It is a negative perspective the child may have developed due to some experiences.
Consider the emotions
We realised the child is distressed looking at the underwear and the family is unable to make him wear it, and we said we will not force the child. We will work on familiarising him with underwear, give him time to make up his mind and take the step of wearing it.
Pretend play
We made a template of a boy without clothes (Tom) and asked the child to dress him up everyday.
It was an interactive activity. The child chose which colour underwear, shorts or pants, colour of the shirt using Avaz (AAC). Tom was dressed everyday as part of worktime during therapy.
The final steps
Then we informed him that he can touch his underwear one day and take it upto his feet. We were expecting huge resistance and distress. We decided we will let him take his time, how many ever days he takes for this first step. We resolved not to force him at any cost.
But Voila! He did it!
He took it to his feet, put his feet in and pulled up the underwear. He kept it too!
We were overjoyed. We are so proud of him!
Please note that these interventions are shared for general guidance. Designing and executing interventions - more importantly - noticing how the child responds and modifying the interventions so the child does not get distressed, is a specialist job. Consult qualified therapists as necessary.
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Social Story
Once the child mastered this, we made a social story for the child to wear underwear.
Since he likes to watch videos, our therapist drew the pictures with hand, and read out the script and made it into a video.
He watched this for a week and liked it. This was done along with dressing up Tom.