Wow, I’m glad I found this thread, I’m not sure how I missed it. I just started a thread this morning wondering if there were any parents of special needs children in CR, this answered that question 🙂
My daughter is six, she has sensory processing disorder but we think if she would be diagnosed again they would diagnose high functioning autism.
Clothing is a big sensory deal for her. If it has seams she can’t handle it, she says it hurts. Socks were a HUGE deal until we found seamless socks from an autism website. She’s only every worn skirts out as that’s part of the tznuis standards we hold as a family. She’s been struggling this year with clothing a lot more than ever before. Now that it’s getting colder she can’t just wear bloomers and a skirt, it’s not warm enough but she can’t wear sweat pants or other long pants underneath her skirt because it’s not comfortable and gets “bunched up”. In previous years she was okay with long pants under her skirt.
She’s been watching her brother and friends play outside today from the window, accepting her defeat. When they ask her to come out and play she just says “I can’t”. It breaks my heart for her. Even if we were to let her wear only pants out and skip the skirt, she doesn’t have pants that are comfortable for her anyway.
I don’t know that there’s a right answer to this… Do we let her wear pants realizing that Hashem made her with these struggles? Or do we stick to our tznuis rules and let her be miserable until she gets used to it? We’ve spent so much time in prayer over this and just don’t feel settled in one direction. I know as Noachides we’re not bound by Orthodox rules of tznuis. It’s a longer story than one sentence can hold, but we came from mennonite background (kind of like amish) and are headed toward conversion, it doesn’t make sense (for my wife at least) to wear pants, our devotion to Hashem and reasons for modesty haven’t and shouldn’t go backward.
I read somewhere that an Orthodox autistic boy could only fall asleep listening to his ipod, the Rabbi understood and told the family it was okay if they turned the ipod on before Shabbos and let it run until the battery died. But how rare is it to find someone compassionate? I would think the “typical” response would be that the child just needs to learn to deal with it, or in that case, fall asleep without the music. At least that’s the type of responses my wife has received on “regular” Jewish parenting forums.
That’s just one issue we’re facing right now, I have so many questions about how special needs fits into Judaism… Do any of you eat a GF/CF diet? How does that work when visiting other people’s homes? I have more questions but will save them for later.
I guess even just knowing there are other families out there is comforting in itself. I think a blog or forum dedicated to this would be wonderful. I build websites (and graphic design) for a living, and would be more than willing to help and donate my time with this in whatever capacity would be helpful. I have plenty of server space. 🙂
Sean Ben Noach
Sean Ben Noach