Earplugs for church

Yes it's true... we take earplugs to church.  At lunch today I took my book with me, "The Way I See It", by Temple Grandin, and was reading about how growing up she was put into social situations that we not always comfortable for her due to sensory overload, and one of the examples was going to church which made me think about our own struggles with social situations and sensory overload and how they go hand in hand a lot of times.

At Universal Studio's watching the Waterworld show

I wish I had thought about this early on in other situations, such as restaurants, movies, fireworks displays, but early on in the Autism world, I wasn't always prepared for situations.  Oh, I thought I was, but as you begin to realize, you learn new techniques every day with helping your child cope.  We got some passes for Universal Studios last year and the first few trips I realized, my son is not going to get use to this.  I thought OK, once or twice and he'd get use to the noises of the shows, the constant chatter of people all around, but he wasn't.  Then one day on our superstore visit, I saw them: earplugs (insert angelic music and beam of light here).  Could they work?  Could they do the trick for the stress of sensory overload?  Worth a shot... we took them home.  Then on our next trip we took the earplugs, and whaddya know, they did the trick. So now we take the ear plugs anywhere I think we'll need them... including church.  I just recently introduced the boys to church and didn't think anything of it...I was unprepared!  I could see the meltdown starting.  Several times my mom took him outside so he could calm down.  But something about it was making him uncomfortable and he was in tears and clinging to me thru most of the whole service.  Maybe it was the murmuring sound of the collective voices.  Even the music, which he usually responds to well, was not helping.  In fact, it seemed to be adding to the situation.  So the next time we went to church, which he was already resisting (surely because his first experience was negative for him), I took the earplugs.  I said, "you can use your earplugs today, OK?"  That seems to give him some relief.  When we got to church he immediately asked me to put them in.  Ahhhhhh, it worked!  And just like that, church is no longer stressful for him.  So it may be just one more thing I have to carry around in my bag, but oh so worth it 'cause you just never know!