Dear Mums! If you think bandaids and gloves are a good idea to cover hands: think again as the glue on the underside of bandaids causing skin irritation.  Leaving gloves on can also make hands sweat depending on material of glove. The kid does not get the sensory input from using bare hands.

My experience  with my kid is this:  The kid would have a minor abrasion on hands or other body parts and a bandaid would have to go on to cover. This happened again and again until we were going through so many packets of bandaids. Kiddo would not like to take the bandaids off either but preferred to leave them on. So: doing regular maintenance health check Mummy notices the bandaids are getting old and dirty and there is quite allot on the kids hands. This was not a good look. I find out that the bandaids are there to cover minor scrape and falling injuries (nothing to worry about but very) hyper painful to the kiddo. I notice that skin is peeling and irritated redness on fingers underneath the sticking part to bandaid.

Being a kid with Autism and sensory challenges is not easy by any means. The bandaids are kiddo’s attempt to armour himself (with bandaids) against an abrasive world. I understand this, but also not wanting the bandaids to get out of hand and turn into a fixation or Obsessive Compulsive thing I limit supply of bandaids. I’m also “caught between a rock and a hard place”  because I don’t want to injure a developing self esteem and self preservation ideas in kiddo.Its a double edged sword. I look for alternatives. I think, well its cold and winter is coming on and the obvious solution is the wooden gloves for winter.

I thought it was a great idea . So kiddo wore them everywhere, at school, at home, to bed. The hand was warm and protected in the glove.

I realised that getting the glove off him for washing was going to be a big deal. We eventually worked out that I was to wash the gloves at night when he was in bed. HE was to take gloves off while in bed to let the skin on his hands breath. If I didn’t wash them at night then there would be problems.

If you are going down the glove road with your child just beware that if the fabric of the glove is made of a polyester or poly fibre then your child’s hands are more likely to sweat underneath. This can be a breading ground for bacteria leadings to infections if not properly maintained.

To avoid this hand sweat thing kiddo would clap hands and demand that Mummy blow dry them at a certain place in the house many times a day. I got sick of this quick as it became time consuming and not functional in the daily routine. I tried to envisage myself doing this routine for a long time and I just did’t like what I saw. So that moment, I just said “No I am not doing this any more!” I got all the pairs of gloves from that had accumulated in the house and I drove to a bin somewhere, I don’t know where, and I just dumped them in the bin and went to my piano class. I did this in full view of my kiddo so he could see there were no more gloves ever to be in this house again. Kiddo did not like it one bit.