My son wants to experience pain

[united4ever]

My five year old son sometimes tells us that he wants to feel pain. He likes to ask how much something would hurt and is not satisfied with normal answers like 'a lot' or sooo much'. He then wants to experience the pain. So far he hasn't done anything to himself and possibly he would be too scared when it came down to it. Often it's small stuff like when his mum was in the shower and got soap in her eyes he insisted that he wanted to put soap in his eyes and would not relent. In the end I pretended to put soap on my hands and just wet my fingers and put it near his eyes.

He asks how painful a snake bite would be and asks us to squeeze his skin to replicate it. Things like that.

We're a bit worried why he does this? Wonder if anyone has had this sort of behavior before?

Otherwise he is happy (with the usual trials and tantrums). Maybe we should see the GP?

[nc060]

Slightly different but my nephew is autistic and sometimes does hurt himself. It is all to do with his skin being hyper sensitive to touch so when he hurts himself he likes the stimulation. Obv we discourage him from this, may be worth looking into?

[united4ever]

Thanks, had another episode tonight, his 2 year old sister slipped in the shower and nudged the hot top which made the water hot for a second and she cried a bit. Then he starts asking her how much it hurt and then gets really upset saying he wants to know so he has to have the hot water on him but hes scared because it will hurt. Sounds trivial but he gets soooo upset and was screaming for about 20 minutes. We tried hugging him and saying 'oh you are curious arent you' but nothing worked. In the end i pinched his leg a little bit hard and said it hurts about this much. Amazingly that worked and he calmed down. Very odd but we are going to book an appointment with GP. He gets more upset about this than anything ive ever seen him get upset about.