My son, Garrett, is very intolerant. If someone in the room is making noise as they chew, he gets irritated and leaves the room. If someone is minorly fidgeting, he leaves the room. When I bounce my leg, or my foot…he asks me to stop it. If I don’t, he leaves the room. If someone scrathes their head, smacks their gum, cleans their fingernails, taps their fingers, makes any noise more than once, out he goes. It’s gone past being a funny little quirk, and I’m starting to worry. Any help would be very appreciated.
I would definitely take him to a doctor to check it out.
It’s your son’s job to find everything about you utterly intolerable. He’ll get over it when he’s about 26.
But, it’s not just about things I do. I can’t stand it when anyone does those things. But when it’s me, he’ll say something. When it’s someone else, he knows better than to say anything.
neisha - Have you actually discussed it with him? Maybe he doesn’t even realize that he’s being touchy. Or maybe he doesn’t realize that being so touchy affects more than just him. Either way, sometimes people just need to be reminded that the world doesn’t revolve around them and they need to get over themselves. I know that sounds harsh, but that’s real life. And think about it - he manages at school with all those fidgetty classmates, he can manage at home.
Good luck.
StG
Huh. I thought this thread would be about a very young racist. Anyway, this seems wierd to me. I second Good Egg’s suggestion.
Sure, I’ve discussed it with him. I’ve explained that he shouldn’t be bothered by such small things…especially those that are out of his control and people have a right to do. He says he thinks it’s up to him whether or not he chooses to stay in the room or leave it. I can’t argue with that.
What you said about him putting up with the kids at school all day long is interesting. I guess that's true enough.
Thanks for that.Wow, are you describing me or are you describing your son? I don’t know of anything to help him, but what I usually do (or try to do) is ignore it.
I’m at my worst when some idiot is snapping their gum in a quiet room. Or chewing it really loudly. It doesn’t disrupt my thoughts when it starts, but for some reason, it seems to get louder and louder until it eventually does disrupt me.
As an afterthought:
Could it be that his hearing is very sensitive?
Uh, no.
That’s not true, though. If people are chewing, that means you’re probably sharing a mealtime. If he’s 10 and you’re his mom, it should not be up to him to throw little snits and storm away from the table at mealtime. My parents would have beaten me six ways from Sunday for such rudeness. You need to take a more aggressive stance with him, and tell him how he is being disrespectful to you (which he is), and you won’t stand for it. Tell him that if he pulls this sort of behavior in public, he will end up alienating people and embarrassing himself, so he might as well get used to people’s quirks and noises while he’s home with you. He needs to tune it out, get over it, learn to deal, because that’s what growing up is all about.
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s bratty little kids who think they can get away with anything.
Well, look on the bright side-- rather than screaming at the person, or throwing a fit, he quietly leaves the situation which is bothering him. There are much worse ways of dealing with irritation.
That said, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Kids are weird-- they go through phases. Chances are, he’ll grow out of it soon.
Big Bad Voodoo Lou has a point: he must understand that there are circumstances in which he cannot do this, such as abruptly leaving the table, or when company is present. As long as he can control himself in social situations, I don’t see it as being a big problem.
I’ll also second this. I’m also very sensitive to distractions and noises: can’t stand a ticking clock, have to sleep/work with white noise, find it very hard to ignore fidgety children, toe-tapping, etc. I’m also a little Monk-like in that I’m distracted if things are not at right angles, there’s a small puddle on the table or a thread on someone’s sweater, earring hanging crooked, etc. (I’m a freak.) There are a zillion things that I findclinically impossible to Just. Tune. Out.
Two specific examples involve my dear husband: I absolutely cannot stand the clink . . . clink . . . clink of his spoon against the bowl when he’s eating cereal, and he also has an extremely annoying habit of picking at his fingers while he’s driving. This second drives me absolutely batshit and I just want to scream “STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!!!” I have to look away and silently grit my teeth until he’s done.
But I never say anything and he has no idea that these things annoy me. Why? Because I know it’s completely unreasonable and that the problem is mine, not his. I would be an absolute ass for bringing it up.
As someone else said, your son needs to learn that he’s not the only person in the world and sometimes he’ll just have to grin and bear it. He will not always have the social option of just leaving if he doesn’t like his environment.
I’m like this too. I am so easily distracted that I cannot concentrate at all if someone is whispering or smacking their gum or basically being a pain in the ass. I can’t follow a movie if someone is talking. I can’t sleep unless I’m wearing ear plugs and a fan is going. Some people are just uber-sensitive to stimuli.
Synesthesia (the perceiving of a stimulus on two senses at once- “tasting” colors or “feeling” noises, for example)? Chronic anxiety? Sensitive hearing? ADD (can’t tune noises out, and feels extremely disrupted as a result)?
Is this new or something that has been ongoing? Are there other behavioral “quirks” going on?
This is very interesting- let us know how it turns out!
What the hell? 
Let me get things straight, you think the child is being obnoxious by leaving a situation that annoys him? Kudos to this kid for taking a VERY polite stand to things that annoy him. First of all, AFAIK he doesn’t argue make bullshit demands or cause trouble he just gets up and leaves to take himself away from something that causes his blood pressure to rise. Most people these days would either Try to ignore it and become very annoyed OR be an ass straight out and demand them to stop. and not only does he ask first for someone to stop their own irritating quirk he won’t even dare to speak up to a guest when it would be rude and innapropriate
Kudos again to your kid neisha hes older than you think. In time however he will become less annoyed at the little things.
How does your boy get through school? I can’t imagine him just leaving the classroom if the kid next to him is tapping his foot…
At the tutoring center I work at, children like this are challenging to work with, because it is difficult to get them to try to ‘tune out’ the disruptions. With 24-30 kids in the center, there are a lot of distractions.
I second sensitive hearing.
I always thought I was just easily annoyed. I also thought my mom was going deaf, because she always turned the TV to a setting that was ear-splitting to me. It wasn’t until a few years of “going deaf” roomates that I realized I was the freak. A little bit of annoying chewing sounds like an all-out gore fest to me, even from across the room. The volume I listen to TV at leaves other people wondering why I put it on mute. It’s not something I can just tune out, just like you can’t take off those silly sunglasses they give you when you get your eyes dialated at the eye doctors and not hurt.
It doesn’t really get to me unless it is structured sound. I lived two feet from a busy street for years and got by, but I absolutely cannot read if there is music playing. I will read the same word over and over again, entranced by the music- sometimes for hours without noticing, until I get a horrible headache and give up on the whole thing. I can’t write at all when there is any sort of structured noise. I simply lose all ability to concentrate. Tapping fingers, tapping feet, dripping water- all of these things arrest my attention, freeze me up, and hurt me physically, in the same way that hearing firecrackers hurts you. The din of a classroom is okay, but a repeated, structured sound will make me crazy.
And yeah, a lot of time the best thing I can do is leave the room. I know I can’t make unreasonable demands on other people, but I also cannot hang around a situation that hurts me. I will eventually get hostile and freak out and start being mean to people- for the same reason that you wouldn’t want to spend all day in the middle of a Chuck-E-Cheese and would probably end up crabbing someone out if you did. I try to ajust my lifestyle as best I can- and this does mean there are some living situations, jobs, and situations (like bars with loud music- I can’t follow conversations, even if I hear them fine) I have to opt out of. Your kid doesn’t have that choice yet. The best you can do is give him the peace and quiet of his room when he thinks he needs it.
I definitely second this. There’s lots of medications they can put your kid on that will get him to sit wherever you’d like, all serene and patient, like a little doll. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Remember, if the first one doesn’t work, just keep on experimenting till your kid is as pliable as you’d like. It’s totally safe and will not fuck up your kid at all!
Seriously, wtf? I was always taught that the polite thing to do when you were annoyed was to leave the situation. (Assuming it’s one you can leave.) Certainly leaving is better than sticking around and bottling up all your frustration until it explodes in a giant tantrum. Your son is doing the mature thing by leaving to cool off a little. You are really overreacting.
My sister was like that.
When I was about seven or eight (she was two years older), I’d not be able to put a morsel of food in my mouth at the family dinner table without her going totally apeshit: OH MY GODDDDD!!! HE’S EATING!! HE’S EATING!!! YUCCCCKKKKK!!! IT’S REVOLTING!!! MUUUUMMMMMMM!!! TELL HIM TO STOP IT!! EWWWWWWW!!!"
Now, young boys are not the most refined social creatures, but I can assure you my table manners were at least average to start with, and then extremely above average for my peers after I realised I was walking on eggshells at every evening meal.
Anyway, this behaviour in my sister didn’t last long, and it went as quickly as it came. Sure sucked at the time though.