DD autistic hiding upstaires.

[Crawling]

Whenever we get visitors dd hides upstaires the exception being my mum and gran who she will visit for a short time. My gran was overjoyed to recieve her first hug of dd aged 3:8. Now my question is do you leave them to hide or should you gently encourage short bursts in the room?

I normally leave her too it but I was wondering what others do.

Ds4 who is 10 always goes up to his room when visitors come. This is because he doesn't like the noise and the change to his routine. He usually comes down eventually to say hello, but if I try to force him this usually makes things worse. Ds2 who is 23 still does the same!.

Ds spends a lot of time in ' his cave'and retreats there as soon as poss when we have company
I read an interesting chapter about solitude and bedrooms in the Tony Atwood book the other day.
About how in solitude with their things around them... They no longer have ' a qualitative impairment in social interaction'
No speech and Language peculiarities ...and they can engage in their special interest for a long time without any judgy pants people around. It must be hugely calming . What a lovely feeling that must be!
Plus Ds reads a lot so I'm guessing he is learning stuff all the time. I think he just about tolerates school but learns little coz he's just concentrating on coping socially... And dealing with noise etc
His cave is his haven.
He knows he has to do the social bit a little bit ... But as long as he puts in an appearance at some point , I let it fly.

My dad does this and he is a pensioner! He will say hello then disappear to be alone. The more I read the more I am certain he is on the spectrum....

I'm sure my DS would do this, except he is terrified of being upstairs/on his own so has to convince someone else to go up with him.

My husband does it! My two ASD sons are actually not bad and will play around people but tend not to answer any questions they don't see the point in answering

Thanks all.

Both my boys have always done this, especially DS2 who is now 9, he is getting a tiny bit more comfortable being in company but DS1 14 is still happier to squirrel away up in his room or in his 'cabin' in the garden.

To be honest wish I had understood more when DS1 when younger, made him come downstairs far too much when we had family/friends over. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, at least I understand much more now, but by far not everything!

vimeo.com/52193530 might be a worthwhile two minutes to look at this. The sensory world of autism for 8 out of 10 of us. In any noisy busy social gathering, that's how much it hurts to hear/see/smell all the stuff....even without the panic of routine changes and the overload of social signalling (eye contact, body language etc). Our brains were designed for protecting quiet rural villages from attack; super-sensitive to the tiniest approaching noise of a predator in the distance....eyes that can track the tiniest broken blade of grass when tracking animals on a hunt. In today's world, every sense we have is on overdrive, all day every day.
Compromise works well. Earplugs or ear defenders. Just very short visits to the room with a task to do e.g. "your job is to hand each person this and say hello to each person, then you can leave". And gradually encourage them to spend a little longer in the room. Or let them sit at the other end of the room to quietly work out how much sensory pain they can tolerate. Might work. Works for me.

vimeo.com/52193530

Sorry to hijack, but hi Amberlight! Hope that things are going well. X

[ Hi - yes, still here after all the cancer treatment, and no sign of it at the moment thanks :-) ]

( Brilliant news. There was a thread a few months back asking where you'd gone. We missed you. )

(yikes - was there?? ) sorry about that!