As a mother of a son who is on the Autism spectrum and has sensory issues recently his father and I have noticed he isn’t playing as well on the soccer field. Our son, who loves soccer, just hasn’t seemed to be playing as well since school started. We were sure it is the stress of school going from an SDC class to a mainstream class. He has been doing well at school struggling to keep up, but doing the work and making friends! A few meltdowns at home but it is nothing compared to what we lived with in the past.
We see the difference on the field, the one thing he loves most in life.
Today he came to me and said, my shirt (soccer jersey) hurts me. Once again, flags went up. He is telling me that his body cannot handle the input of his soccer jersey today. Not a good thing when his team is playing for seating for state championships. I watched as he started giving himself his own deep compressions. I asked him if he would like me to try putting lotion on his skin. My son doesn’t like to be touched when he is on overload. My thought is if he thinks I am trying to calm his skin with lotion I can do deep compressions on him and maybe that will help his body. After a few minutes on each arm he slipped his shirt on and it no longer hurt. I reminded him he will be playing defender and he can challenge the other team and so many times when you challenges you take people down. If you do that you will be able to get more input on the field and your shirt should be fine the rest of the game.