Sometimes it feels like I’m playing musical chairs with my sons’ sensory issues. I never know which issue is not going to be accommodated. When the boys were younger, it was like playing musical chairs with ten people and three chairs. Hence, I did not leave the house much.

As the years have gone by, both of my sons have learned to filter their sensory input, and most of the issues are no longer as extreme for them. Nigel can go into grocery stores, public restrooms, and restaurants now. Aidan rarely throws up in the car and no longer cries 80% of his waking life. Aidan’s oral defensiveness and tactile sensitivity still affect him, as does Nigel’s sensitive hearing. And so I still tend to write a bit about sensory issues, especially if I’m describing how far they’ve come.

Since both of my boys have tactile sensitivity, I felt it was quite fitting to be interviewed recently by Soft Clothing. As the mother of two sons who hate socks and wear certain clothes for days on end because they’re the only clothes that “feel comfortable,” I look forward to trying out their line of seamless socks and tagless shirts, coming later this year. And if you’re interested, click here to check out my interview/blog profile on their site.

As for my game of sensory issues musical chairs, we seem to have a new player to add to the mix: light. Nigel’s latest addition to his bedtime routine involves putting on a pair of sunglasses and hiding under his covers before I turn off his bedroom light. He says that the sunglasses “speed up the darkness level in the eyes,” which I assume refers to his adjustment from light to dark, just as his eyes need to adjust in the morning from dark to light. Of course, I think most of us fall into the latter category. But the adjusting from light to dark is a bit different. Perhaps it’s a transitional thing, and transitions of any kind have always been hard for him. Either that or he’s been listening to that old “Sunglasses at Night” song. Lucky me!