Dd is 11, she has recently been diagnosed with high functioning autism.
For about the past year she had wanted to have her ears pierced but was scared. She finally summoned up the courage in the Easter holidays and we took her to a proper piercing studio to have them done with a needle.
All was fine initially, she cleaned them twice a day etc. Since then she's had periods of soreness but not too bad.
In the summer holidays she wanted to change the earrings. I bought her some pretty flower studs made of non allergenic niobium (sp?). It was a whole trial to change them, just me touching them made her scream. In the end she allowed older sister (17) do it, she was incredibly patient and it took nearly an hour.
Now having started at secondary school, they are much stricter with taking earrings out for PE. The first two lessons, dd asked a friend to help her take them out and put them back in afterwards. Ok for the short term but she really has to manage them herself.
On Monday this week she had to sit out of a trampolining club (that I had paid for) because she couldn't take them out and she wasn't allowed on the trampoline with them in.
Dd is desperately worried, she has tried to take them out herself with me standing there giving her moral support. It's just really painful for her, she has a very low pain threshold. I have told her that once she gets over the hurdle of taking them out, it will get a lot easier.
I'm wondering now with all this stress if she should just take them out and leave them out and let the holes grow together to save all the aggro. But it seems a shame to do that after after all this time and I know dd would be disappointed.
I know this probably sounds like a very trivial problem but WWYD?