Giving In? Or Reasonable Accommodation?

Parenting a child with any kind of special needs is an extreme stress upon all family members, especially on moms. You love your kids and you want to do the right thing for each one of them. You do not want to cater to what seems to be a quirky attitude problem. You do not want to set up a pattern of giving in to everything that bothers your misophonia child and have to sacrifice your own and your other children’s preferences to accommodate that one kid. It is an impossible juggling act to be the parent to more than one child, even when one of them does not have special needs. I know, from speaking with many families, that it is very hard to decide where to draw the lines. I know it is painfully difficult for family members to understand, accept, and fully appreciate how real the problem actually is for a misophonia person. I know you do not want to give in to a behavior that seems so spurious.

And yet …

I’m thinking about a young cousin of mine who has a serious peanut allergy. She’s one of those kids who ends up in the ER from time to time, simply because she was exposed to peanuts, even if she didn’t eat them. She has been close to death on more than one occasion because of this peanut allergy.

Regardless of whether her siblings or her parents like peanuts, it is pretty clear that they have had to eliminate peanuts from their household. She is so sensitive that even peanut dust from a package left on their fingers or body can affect her.

You see where I am going with this line of thinking. There are many things that misophonia people cannot avoid: other people’s breathing, coughing, sniffing, and similar ordinary sounds are almost impossible to avoid. But what if your miso family member is sensitive to something in the household environment or while driving in the car that CAN be removed or reduced? Some examples I have encountered are flip flops, chips or other crunchy foods, ticking clocks, clanking silverware (that can be replaced with plasticware), noisy keyboards (that can be replaced with fingertip boards, rather than keys), etc.

When even the subject of the dreaded sound comes up, and your miso family member gets extremely agitated, it is very real for that person. It may make no sense, but even so, it is distressing. In that person’s understanding of the situation, you and other family members are choosing something relatively avoidable over him or her. That is, you love your chips or trail mix or flip flops more than you love him or her. I am NOT saying this is so, of course, but it probably is how it seems. Imagine how painful that thought must be.

I know that you know your children far better than anyone else can possibly know them. So I am not telling you what I think you “should” do. I am just offering you some thoughts on this topic that comes up so often in my conversations with families. I wonder what would happen if you and other family members thought of this obsession with a particular sound as my cousin’s family has to think of peanuts.