She hates cloudy days........ | Autism PDD
My Cammi is 7 yrs. old (I posted an intro. on the "introduce yourself strand). For the past few months she has been so upset every time it's sunny outside and then it gets cloudy. Everytime a cloud passes over the sun, she starts whimpering and sometimes cries really hard :( . I've tried everything - drawing pictures of what's happening in the sky; getting on-line and showing her video clips of clouds passing over the sun, taking her outside with sunglasses and having her look up when the clouds are over the sun and watching the clouds move away. I don't know what else to do. This summer we have had very few days of all sunshine. My other two daughters have had to suffer through her being upset almost the entire summer. When it gets dark, she is fine.... I know it's the transition thing. She wants it one way or the other. Not going back and forth from sunny to cloudy,etc.
Any ideas on what I can do to help her? Last year it was the phone ringing. Didn't matter what type of ring (we tried lots of different phones and ring types) - she screamed every time the phone rang. Thankfully, that stopped. Then this started. We kept thinking this would get better too, but it's only worsened....
Thanks!
Teresa
Maybe she is afraid it will rain, and she'll have to go in? Or maybe the bright light to cloudy hurts her eyes? Kind of sounds like a sensory issue to me. Try sunglasses. That's all I can think of.Is she getting ABA therapy? They do wonders in this area and can come up with a behavior program to help her get used to it and reward her for coping better till the behavior is totally extinct. Give her praises when she can deal for just a minute...stickers for looking at it..a toy prize if she can go without crying for one day out of a treasure box....ect..make social story of it and let her look at it and carry it with her till she overcomes the fear/reaction she has to clouds. Make pictures of clouds that look like pigs, rabbits or faces:) Good luck!
Such great ideas!!
Thanks so much everybody!! Teresa We got a complete 'weather chart' and it is AWESOME! Try it, they are sold at lots of places, namely Lakshore Learning and other school based companies - it will let her participate in the weather outside - it may really help - I hope so! Keep us posted. Sounds like she has a need to feel in control and is wanting sameness, even in things like nature. It could also be that a phobia or strong fear of clouds and rain is developing. This is pretty unique--I smiled when I read it! Your daughter sounds cute! :) My son had a phase where he cursed the son. He really wanted to be able to decide over the weather. This mostly passed with time and lower stress levels in general after he got his diagnosis (we could understand and manage his needs better). He did go through a brief period this spring where he cursed the sun because it was still up when it was time to go to bed. He disliked that this bedtime signal was so unreliable in our region of the globe. We dealt with this via a sort of social story using his favorite Lego Bionicle characters -- the heroes went to bed by the clock, the bad guys went to bed by the sun and thus never got the treasure because they were either sleeping all day or sleeping too little and quarreling amongst themselves. Good luck with everything.
hated when the sun went down. Refused to go outside etc. After many
months of this, I finally just outright asked him why he hated dusk so much.
He said the following (verbatim!);
Oh, mama,
the blues look green
and the greens look black.
All the color goes away and it just makes me so sad!
I was astounded at the poetry of that, as well as it's overall "rightness" Talk
about visual sensitivities! My word. That phase is long gone.
He is currently afraid of overhead airplanes...... 
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