fear of flying insects

[eatyourveg]

13 year old classic autism petrified of any flying insect. Summer is coming and every year the anxiety seems to be getting worse. Anyone had experience of this and come out the other side?

Yes ...we have this problem (much better now but we have to work on it).
Posted about it recently... here
Has he/she been seen by anybody about it? i know cahms do sessions to help with phobias
(a friends child had therapy for a phobia)

Thanks troutpout. I looked at the other posts you suggested and found them quite interesting. Haven't approached cahms as we've been trying to do it ourselves. he's fine with spiders etc and will even go to touch them but its flying things which freak him even though he is quite happy to talk about them and look at pictures of them. today has been hot and sunny and we got as far as setting up the skittles on the patio and then the breeze blew some apple blossom onto him and he thought it was a fly so ran in screaming and wouldn;t come out for the rest of the day. Later a fly came into the sitting room and he cowered by the door demanding we got rid of it. I think trapping something in a jar might help though I'm not sure the animal rights people will like me for it

Oh yesssss. I recognise that very well.
We also found that discussing the behaviours of various insects helped . Ds hates wasps and bees...and used to really panic at those big hoverflies (that pretend to be bees). We discussed the flying pattern and how it doesn't move like a wasp or bee. He still panics when one is hovering near him...but he will go out (lol atm!...it could get worse once things start warming up)
We seem to be able to manage ok atm...but it wouldn't surprise me if ds needed treatment at some point in the future.

flying patterns?????

Can't stand them. Have learned over time to cope with bees and butterflies, but wasps and hoverflies and ordinary flies - yuk. Can't track them fast enough or predict what they're doing, and if they bump into me it's like an electric shock. Not sure that helps, but it might explain a bit about why?

My 11 year old (ASD) is the same.. absolutely petrified of anything that flies and if it buzzes he can move faster than a speeding bullet... he's a shaking terrified mess. It has actually become worse over the last few years and bno amount of persuading/showing him has helped.

We now take a graded exposure approach.. if it's alovely day he has to come outside with us for , say 10 mins and they he can go in. If all is calm he is ok outside, if a buzzy thing comes near we walk away from our garden quickly and give lots of praise. I'm not sure it actually helps MUCH be we can't stay locked inside , as he would like, all year round!

Its a real problem
Jules