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Children on the Autism Spectrum and High Pain Tolerance

It is not uncommon for Aspergers and high functioning autistic (HFA) youngsters to experience great pain and discomfort that goes unreported, unnoticed by others, undiagnosed, and untreated. Enduring pain and allowing it to become chronic is extremely detrimental to your youngster's ability to function, grow, and learn. Untreated pain and discomfort will also seriously affect your Aspie’s behavior and ability to communicate with others.


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have experienced this with my son...which Ive always found strange as he is very overly sensitive to things like having his hair stroked or noise and complains of them hurting him.....in particular last christmas when he was 4 I was putting away some xmas decorations and happened to notice blood all over the floor leading in a trail to my son who was pacing about with some glass stuck in his foot without really bothering about it.He also hates me to look at anything he has hurt, I have to really conjole him into showing me any cuts or bumps.

Anonymous said...

Very interesting and relevant, also regarding the toilet training, which didn't happen until 4 1/2. We've always said our 5 1/2 yr. old son is the kind of kid who might break his arm, and he'll still be yelling "I'm okay, I'm okay!". Does NOT want ouchies looked at, rarely will wear a bandage. Will not let the (known)dermatologist look at his Plantar's wart (I had to treat it while he was sleeping w/ an OTC med, after first applying numbing cream!). Had to take him to the Dr. once just to remove a splinter, so we had enough adults to hold him down (and it took me and 2 nurses to hold him when he had 5 staples in his head when he was 3 after connecting w/ a table corner).

Anonymous said...

so true my son never complains about anything hurting or feeling unwell. When he was two he fractured his ankle and was walking around on it normally, it took us almost a week to know something was wrong.

Anonymous said...

I had a patient like this, his mom eventually insisted on an xray and he had an obstructed bowel or something. My son is the opposite, nothing ever goes unlamented, to the point that we've ignored actual pains because we couldn't tell the difference.

Anonymous said...

My son has a high pain tolerance to actual pain (i.e. major surgeries cleft repairs) but a low freak out tolerance to minor things like paper cuts.

Anonymous said...

I didn't know there was any connection between high pain tolerance and Asperger's Syndrome, my son has an extremely high tolerance of pain, very interesting.

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