Oh yes “HE’S BREATHING!!” was another one I copped (if we were in a very quiet room and I sighed or something).
“STOP BREATHING!!!”
Fun times.
Whoa, there, Huckleberry. Let’s back that horse up a minute. No one said anything about running out and getting a prescription for Ritalin. I actually think the doctor idea is a good suggestion. Not to drug the kid up, but to find out if there is some reason behind your son’s sensitivity to stimuli. That way you’ll know how to handle it.
For heaven’s sake, the world is full of noise. He’ll never be able to work in an office environment with phones ringing and conversations and buzz and hum and such. You need to find out why he can’t tune things out. He can’t always walk away from irritating noises and quirks, and if a little thing like a head scratch or a leg bounce irritates him so much he has to leave, I suspect there’s something more going on.
Look, at least take him to a doctor and rule out anything physical or psychological. You’re his mother, you know him best. If you have a concern you need to investigate it.
Damn right he’s being obnoxious. Impudent little pup’s living under someone else’s roof, and is too sensitive to put up with noises arising from the ordinary human behaviour going on around him, and you’re praising him for storming out whenever anyone dares breathe in his delicate presence? I know what the kid needs, and it ain’t drugs - as a swift clip around the ear may be frowned upon, however, I suggest a firm lecture about whose house it is, who makes the rules, and what constitutes common courtesy.
Sorry, Case, but that’s as extreme a position as continuity error. The boy is 10. He needs to be seen by a doctor first before his parents start treating this as a behavioral issue.
For God’s sake, kids are noisy! They slam doors, they run, they scream, they whoop and holler. For a 10-year-old boy to be so bothered by stimuli says to me that there’s something wrong. IANAD, however, but I am a mother of two kids.
Perhaps DoctorJ or Qadgop will wander through?
In any event, neisha, I would suggest starting with a visit to the pediatrician.
I interpreted the OP to show that he is NOT taking a “polite” stand. He is getting irritated and getting up and leaving in the middle dinner, a conversation, whatever. He “asks” his mother to stop making reasonable and customary noises, such as chewing, and if she won’t, he gets up and leaves in the middle of dinner. That doesn’t strike me as “polite” or normal behavior. Children and grownups have to learn that not everything is always going to be done their way and there are circumstances in which it’s rude to just abruptly leave their companions. If he’s so senstive to normal noises, he’s either got a medical problem or is an obnoxious brat who wants his own way and pouts when he doesn’t get it. I am not sure which would be worse to know as a parent: that my child had a medical problem or to know that he was an annoying self-centered brat who doesn’t care about hurting other people’s feelings and is destined to grow up to be a rude annoying jerk.
I also second bringing him to a doctor at least to check his hearing.
Meant to add:
I am not saying he’s deliberately being an obnoxious brat. I mean that if he’s honestly bothered so much by normal noise that it is making him act in socially inappropriate ways, such as being forced to remove himself abuptly from any noise that bothers him, than I would say he might have a medical issue of some kind. That’s why I think it’s important to get a doctor’s evaluation.
If he’s not “honestly bothered” by the noise but instead simply wants things the way HE wants them, that is a whole other story.
We better have a talk Scarlett67 , our husband is a polygamist.
neisha
Kids that age are usually so fidgety annoying that it is kind of different that he is so annoyed at home when he is around kids his own age all day. I remember being that age and being only annoyed at my siblings but not my friends. As an adult I am a very easily annoyed person, maybe it’s just part of the personality he was born with.
I agree that he should probably see a doctor about it. He could have some funny things going on with his hearing and different frequencies of sound.
Aside from jumping to a stupid conclusion, that’s really unfair and judgemental of you. Some children need medication, and sometimes it is a trial-and-error process to find the correct kind and the right dosage. When someone expresses an uninformed opinion such as yours, it makes it that much more difficult for parents who want to help their children.
It’s possible that neisha’s son has a physical problem that, oh, I don’t know, causes his eardrum to vibrate too hard or something, making “normal” sounds uncomfortable for him. Taking him to a pediatrician would be the first step in determining whether his problem is physical or psychological. Once she knows what the problem IS, then she will know better how to deal with it.
I’m a very still person. I sit very quietly, stand quietly without fidgeting or shifting or moving around. My husband is a leg-bouncer and, occasionally, a fork-biter. When he does either of these things, I feel like my head is going to burst open from supressed irritation.
How do I combat it? By creating a noise that I can control. If someone’s snapping gum and I start a conversation with them, the snapping stops. If my husband is biting his fork I can talk while he’s biting and make him talk while I’m eating. Leaving the room isn’t always an option, but turning the situation around often is.
Some of the situations described by the OP seem a little different – does your son understand the differences in the situations he encounters? Life is full of little annoyances, and learning to deal with them is a great skill to develop early on. If he is visiting the grandparents of a friend, and grandpa’s dentures are chomping away, grinning and bearing it would be the way to go. But if he’s watching TV with little sis who is smacking her gum for the sheer joy of it, it’s great if he can say “you know, I think I’m going to go read in my room for a while.”
But man, I would leave the room if someone started cleaning their fingernails in front of me! I am trying to think of an emergency situation where someone would need to clean their fingernails in front of others, and am coming up with few that a 10 year old would be likely to encounter.
If he is skilled at seeing the difference between abruptly breaking off a conversation and stomping out of the room, and politely excusing himself in an appropriate way, then the more power to him.
I do think that some people are more sensitive to sounds than others, and agree that your pediatrician could shed some light on this if that is the case with your son.
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Now that we’ve got that out of the way:
IANAPsychologist, but were I to make a snap opinion based upon your description of the problem, it sounds like the kid probably has some kind of attentional problem. That is, he finds minor disruptions disproportionately distracting “oversensitive”; although you or others might consider a light tapping, whistling, or sighing, or other slight noises to be, at most, an ignorable turmoil–just a little white noise in the background of life–to him it may be like a thumping bass drum, preventing him from maintaining focus on anything else. Telling him to just ignore it, or punishing him, or “a swift clip around the ear” (this not being The Pit, I can’t say what I’d like about that suggestion) isn’t going to help anything, and more than telling a person who is nearsighted to just stare harder at the board, or someone with asthma to breathe harder.
For instance, I have a problem with small noises at work; the people who hold conversations outside my office door, the guy who walks around my bay whistling, the guy next door who keeps tapping his chair on the wall. These aren’t just annoyances; I literally cannot focus on my work. I sit and grow frustrated at not being able to remember what I was doing ten seconds ago. However, large amounts of white noise don’t affect me, and sometimes actually improve my concentration. I’m the guy in the back corner of the Good Luck reading and sipping my Jameson amid the clink of glasses, the laughter of two dozen conversations, and the music pumping through the sound system. The more overload the better, in terms of being able to concentrate; one part of my mind is (inescapably) eavesdropping on conversations, another is tracking who is ordering what drinks, another is paying attention to who is leaving and going (and keeping count of how many people are in the building…a particular autistic-ish propensity of mine), and so forth, all while reading a book, in bad light, at a rate of 600+ words per minute. I can’t study in a library with one person coughing to save my life, but I can do so in a crowded diner with a focus so intense I wouldn’t notice if Dream Girl sat down next to me (but I would count her as she came in the door.)
This trait is called hyperfocus and it’s not voluntary, or intended to offend anyone, or being snobbish or selfish. It’s not overly sensitive hearing (though I do have excellent hearing); it’s just the way my mind concentrates on things. Singular, repeatitive disruptions, like someone tapping on a counter, break that focus and make it impossible for me to concentrate on anything. I’d leave the room, too, or put on headphones, or otherwise sit there and boil until I snapped.
Whether medication, training/therapy, or a combination thereof is indicated is up to a clinician and diagnostician, but the problem isn’t just going to go away, no matter how much you criticize him. I’ve been reading a book–Driven To Distraction–which describes very well, I think, the various behaviors and characteristics which fall under the aegis of ADD and are often ignored or attibuted to other causes or to just being lazy or stupid. He also does a good job of differentiating between behaviors which do legitimately indicate ADD and those that typically don’t, and the fact that ADD is often accompanied by other problems, either stemming from childhood issues, parenting/education difficulties, or independant problems. Also, (and uniquely from what I’ve read) he tries to get away from overpathologicizing the “disorder” or trying to use it as an excuse for poor behavior, but rather finding ways in which to use the strengths (the attentional focus, tendency to think creatively or conflate independant ideas to come up with novel solutions, drive for stimulation) that ADD people often have in their education and vocation.
Anyway, I’ll stop now before I ramble further; but if this is as persistant of a problem as you indicate, I think it is definitely something that needs to be checked out by a psychogist familiar with attentional disorders (not to neglect other potential physical or emotional causes, either.) Try reading up on the subject first and see if any of the other indications (disruptive behavior, excessive daydreaming, erratic educational performance, et cetera) fit.
Stranger
My .02. I think he might have some sensory integration problems. Even if only very mildly.
Some children are extra sensitive to different stimuli. For instance, a lot of autistic children have to have the tags removed from the back of their shirts because it irritates their skin. That doesn’t bother most people, but they have that hyper sensitivity.
Garrett might have a low level problem. Those things that seem little to you might seem very loud and disruptive to his senses.
Or he could just be an eccentric person with little tolerance for annoying behavior and a penchant for the bizarre.
I don’t know why, but I’m picturing Harold from Harold and Maude. 
Good luck to you and Garrett.
I’m the same way as your son (and I’m almost 19). It’s not because I think the world revolves around me; small, repetitive noises like chewing or tapping really bother me. I don’t know exactly what my problem is, but I don’t think it’s just me being selfish.
Me too. The gum-smacking or bowl-clicking (QUIT PLAYING WITH YOUR FOOD AND JUST EAT IT!) make me insane, and sometimes I do have to leave the room. But it’s not always an option. Sometimes you just have to deal (though I have been known to ask perfect strangers to please stop smacking their gum, especially if they’re sitting right behind me).
I’d like to add, though, that it must be much harder for a child, because children have so little control over their enviroments. They can’t just get up and leave a classroom, for example, or a school bus, or their parents’ car, etc., and perhaps that’s where the frustration lies: not the actual noise itself but his lack of control over a particular situation.
A.D.D.
(however, IANAD)
I was just like this when I was a young boy. Only recently have they diagnosed me as ADHD (ADD). Yeah I thought ADHD was a bogus disorder too until I figured out that I suffer from it and have all my life.
And y’all are still quite welcome to consider it bogus. But keep in mind that whether you call it a disease, a disorder or a dog bowl, there is something going on with this kid that needs to be addressed.
To echo what has been said, ADHD and Asbergers Syndrome can include hypersensitivity to sound. This does not imply that everyone who is sensitive to ambient noise has ADHD or Asbergers. If this is a problem that is disruptive to family life or activities, it would be a good idea to have the child screened for either of these problems. Medication is available that helps reduce the problem of noise sensitivity in people who suffer from ADHD or Asbergers Syndrome.
Vlad/Igor
Thank you all for your in put. To make things a little clearer…my son is not hypersensitve to sound. When I am bouncing my leg or my foot, I’m not making any noise and he still can’t stand it. He’ll even look away, but if he thinks I’m STILL doing it, it drives him crazy and he has to leave. He doesn’t leave in a huff. He leaves more frustrated and irritated. He’s not a brat. He IS intolerant. I don’t know if it has to do with control, like someone mentioned. But that could be. I just don’t know.
Oh yeah, this is just great. You know, I agree we give way too many drugs to our kids, but this is really going to help the parents who have to give their kids drugs, and don’t want to. Good one.
Why is there an automatic tendency to attribute bad behaviour in children to some form of medical disorder? We’ve done away with right and wrong, good and bad, and the concept of individual responsibility for one’s actions, and replaced them with the no-fault get-out clause of blaming everything on illness.
A 10 year old kid’s being a pain in the arse? No, can’t be that, since nothing is anyone’s fault: let’s take him to the doctor and find some medical label to give his brattishness, instead of sharply telling him to pull his horns in or else.
Damn straight! The country’s been going to hell since we stopped beating those kids who just wouldn’t breath properly, and gave them the fancy diagnosis of asthma. :rolleyes:
Some behaviors suggest a higher likelihood of disease states which should be excluded first, before attributing it to the need for discipline. This will avoid such unfortunate situations as years of escalatingly harsh punishment to correct such varied problems as type I diabetes, childhood bipolar illness, or even epilepsy, none of which can be corrected by punishment.
QtM, MD