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Today we chat about the sense of smell and its newfound relationship with autism. We discuss interesting findings from recent studies linking the sense of smell to social ability in autism as well as some activities you can do at home to help your child adjust to overwhelming smells.
Making Scents
Show Notes for Embracing Autism Podcast — Ep. 205
Introduction:
Lia: Today we will chat about the sense of smell and its newfound relationship with autism. We will discuss interesting findings from recent studies linking the sense of smell to social ability in autism, as well as some activities you can do at home to help your child adjust to overwhelming smells.
Lia: Welcome to Embracing Autism, a podcast for parents of autistic children seeking advice and support while spreading awareness and acceptance of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Lia: I’m Lia —
Matt: And I’m Matt!
Lia: And each week, we’ll discuss our journey with autism and talk about how to embrace your child’s individuality while providing guidance, tips, resources and sharing our personal stories.
Lia: This is —
Lia & Matt: Embracing Autism!
Discussion:
Lia: Hi everyone, today we’re going to be talking about the sense of smell, which honestly, we don’t have as much experience with but we’re gonna try to let you know as much as we can.
Matt: Yeah, after the last episode, Lia and I actually sat down and we were kind of thinking, Okay, what have our girls really come across with smell. And we’re actually coming up a little bit short, our stories might be a little bit limited.
Lia: Yeah, so I think that to make up for the last episode, which was almost an hour long, this one will be a little bit shorter.
Matt: It’ll all even out.
Lia: So with the sense of smell, our kids didn’t really show much when it came to that in terms of any sort of hypersensitivities to smell. The thing is they may have some under-sensitivities to smell and we just don’t notice because an under-sensitivity would present in that they’re not being reactive to a smell.
Matt: Right, it was I think relatively neutral. Like there wasn’t any discomfort or any struggle when it came to smell directly. We had the different concerns when it came to taste, but smell was kind of one that was kind of elusive.
Lia: It may honestly be because we haven’t looked into it too much with our kids. But it may honestly be that they aren’t smelling things as strongly as we are because they don’t necessarily bring up smells. So like if I’m cooking something like if I’m baking brownies in the oven or something like that. They never make any sort of remarks about it. They’re not like, ooh, smells good or anything like that.
Matt: They do sometimes, but I’m not sure if that’s because they learned how to say like, it smells good. Like when we have them smell like a flower, for example.
Lia: Right, but that is specifically when we’re teaching them because they do that with fake flowers, too.
Matt: Okay, but that also wasn’t sure because sometimes I think like if you’re making like brownies or something, you’ll ask like, Oh, does it smell good? Or does it smell bad.
Lia: And that’s the problem is that we’ve kind of like pre-conditioned them into what their reaction should be when it comes to the sense of smell like they know, if you’re baking something, you’re supposed to react by saying it smells good. So we don’t know if their reactions are genuine and authentic at this point. Or if it was that we essentially taught them those reactions.
Matt: To trust the two and three-year-old on their smell ability or not?
Lia: Right? I mean, if you think about it, though, for example, our kids like whenever they have — they’re still in diapers — so whenever they have like a dirty diaper it doesn’t ever seem to faze them. And I don’t think it’s just the touch sensory component. Kids will usually say like one of the first things they say is, oh, it’s stinky. You know, like when they’re one, two. And our kids have never said that.
Matt: But I think they have because we’ve basically we’ve said it to them, like oh, like you have a stinky diaper. And then now they’ve learned that if they poop, they are supposed to say, Oh, I have a stinky diaper. Or they’ll say that their sister has a stinky diaper or whatever.
Lia: Right? So we basically have had to train them.
Matt: But as far as like what they actually smell, we’re not 100% if that’s a genuine response, or if it’s basically they know how to respond to it.
Lia: It’s kind of funny, because prior to recording this episode, or prior to us actually thinking and talking about this episode, smell wasn’t really on our radar for our kids. And I didn’t really even think about it, I just assumed oh, you know, they must smell like we do because they don’t react in any sort of different way like they do with their other senses. But now in retrospect, it may just be that they are under-sensitive. And because they’re under-sensitive, we’re not realizing it. Because when somebody is under-sensitive, they simply don’t react, right? So if they’re not reacting, we’re not going to notice.
Matt: I think another thing was because we were so focused on the other senses because we could definitely tell oversensitive under sensitive. We were aware of them. And then at the same time, they would throw in what we had kind of taught them oh, it smells nice, oh, it smells stinky. And I just thought in my mind, like, okay, perfect, they’re neutral. They understand smells good, smells bad. But then when we’re thinking about it, maybe it’s not that straightforward.
Lia: Might be interesting as they get older, if they’re able to maybe communicate with us more effectively. Maybe someday we’ll be able to get a better idea of how their senses are and what they actually experience in the world. Because right now, this is just us with guesswork. We’re not actually really sure. So I’m hoping that as they get older, we’ll get a better idea.
Matt: And then did you notice as far as any of our girls like smelling things that weren’t traditionally that a neurotypical kid would smell?
Lia: So that’s one of the things that I’ve read a lot about. I’ve talked to other moms and parents of autistic kids and a lot of parents report that their kids will start sniffing things that a neurotypical kid wouldn’t. So I know like for our kid, initially, the oldest one when she was probably about one and a half or so she was pre-verbal at that time, she would actually go up to my arm and she would sniff my arm all the time. And then she would kind of rub her nose on my arm, and then she would sniff it. And I always thought that was kind of like weird, but that was before we knew that she was autistic. So in retrospect, that must have been like a sensory thing when it came to like the sense of smell.
Matt: So I guess the true question is, was that before or after a shower, so would you tell her that you smell good? Or you smelled bad?
Lia: I don’t know.
Matt: So I wasn’t sure if like, yeah, like, I don’t know if she was seeking or if she was smel l— I don’t know.
Lia: Yeah, I was I was like, giving off a strong scent. And she was like, Oh, that’s nice.
Matt: Or if it was something pleasant like a like body wash or like shampoo or something.
Lia: Yeah, it’s possible, or I could have washed my hands because it was kind of like my lower arm near my wrist.
Matt: I was thinking like armpit.
Lia: No, no, no, she wasn’t snipping my armpit. It was literally my arm, like my forearm. So sniffing my forearm, like near my wrist. And then she was, rubbing her hand, and that’s the area that usually you do wash very often when you’re washing your hands with like soap and water. So it’s possible that it was soap, some type of scent. Yeah, because I don’t remember if I had washed my hands right before or after, but I do remember that it was something that I felt was a little bit bizarre because she would run to me, and then she would just start sniffing my arm.
Matt: And I was trying to remember if our youngest — I have the vision of her either being on the carpet a lot, or the sofa, kind of like face down. So I’m not sure if she’s just trying to like lie face down, or if she’s actually trying to smell like the carpet or the sofa. And I wasn’t sure if that was another interesting object that she was trying to smell or trying to get a scent off of as well.
Lia: Yes, sometimes she would go up to the couch and kind of lean her face over it and kind of rub her nose on it. It’s hard to tell sometimes if that’s like an olfactory thing, like, is she trying to sniff it? Is it the scent? Is it the texture? Is it that she likes rubbing her nose on it? You know, like is it the sense of touch and not smell? We can’t really tell because she was so close to it that we don’t really know what’s going on.
Matt: And we honestly might not know until she’s older and she’s actually able to describe what she’s trying to do. I mean, because she’s still so little.
Lia: But with a sense of smell usually what happens is there’s that whole hypo and hypersensitivity thing again. So you get the two different types. So you get those that are hypo or under-sensitive and hyper, which is over-sensitive. This means for some autistic individuals going to a place — like let’s say like a chocolate factory type of thing where you go to like a bakery or goodie shop or something like that — if they are hypersensitive that could be torturous to them. They might be way overwhelmed by all the senses of smell and they might get stressed and want to leave because it’s just too it’s too much stimuli.
Matt: And I can understand that. I mean, just thinking of your typical person walking through Macy’s or whatever, scent section, whatever, the perfume section home and they’re spraying the different types of perfumes and just kind of the overwhelming like back and forth of the different scents. I mean for me, that’s kind of overwhelming. I try and walk quickly through that. But I mean, if you’re really hyper-sensitive, then that’d be just flat out overwhelming.
Lia: Exactly. That’s actually a really good metaphor, because it’s true. It’s kind of like an onslaught to your senses. It’s a good example to be going through like a perfume store. And then there’s like those individuals who are hypo-sensitive, and the ones that are hypo-sensitive, are going to want to seek out that sort of extreme scent and smell, because their sense of smell is kind of stifled so they need a lot more of it to be able to smell it then your neurotypical person would. So when it comes to those sorts of behaviors, lots of times you will notice just by how they react, so if they if they seem to be avoiding places that have lots of scents so things can be like fairgrounds where they have like kettle corn popping, and they have what are those? What’s the thing, sugar flour thing?
Matt: Sugar flour thing?
Lia: The pancake, swirly thing.
Matt: Oh, the funnel cake. I was thinking of like this smoker with like the meats and things.
Lia: Yeah the meats, you have like this combination of like meats and sweets and the smoke from the grill. And then if there are animals around the of the smell of the animals and all this stuff, so it’s really like a huge onslaught of a ton of smells. And we kind of just tune it out but when it comes to autism, sometimes it’s really difficult to tune in at like, you just can’t tune it out.
Matt: Right, So I think it would definitely be something just to try and pay attention to because at the same time, if you have a young child who is very sensitive to that, I’m not really sure how they would display that if they would know enough to plug their nose to try and like limit the smells coming in. Or if they would kind of have more of like a meltdown reaction. I’m not really sure how that would actually appear in some of these settings.
Lia: Right. And that’s why it’s always important if your kid is appearing to have some sort of meltdown or tantrum. It’s always important to try to recognize what’s going on in the environment and try to pay attention to what may have triggered it. So we always say like, was there something that changed? And if so was it visual? Was it auditory? The smell what is something that I think would be trickier to pick up because you don’t necessarily know when a smell has changed if you can’t sense it the way they can.
Matt: And I agree, because I mean, if you’re — like we know like our kids, they’re sensitive to sound, for example. So when we go to a fair, for example, and it’s noisy, the rides, kids screaming, yelling, have a great time, we know that they’ll cover their ears, but we know enough to bring headphones. So we just put their headphones on, and then they’re perfectly fine going for a walk or like sitting on their wagon.
Lia: Yeah, but if you aren’t able to prepare in advance, and you don’t know to anticipate those needs.
Matt: Right, you could be caught completely off guard.
Lia: Exactly. So we always advocate for like a lot of like observation and just trying to pay attention and see if you can catch what’s leading up to it. See if you can see a pattern because once you identify a pattern, then you can put things into place to try to accommodate that, like earmuffs, or whatever. In the sense of smell, it might just be like, you just need to avoid those areas that had those smells. Or if your child is older, if they’re like a teenager or something like that, you can maybe give them some sort of like mask or something to kind of put over their nose so they don’t have to smell it.
Matt: Right now, like a mask might be kind of your best option or to just kind of avoid those places altogether.
Lia: Yeah, I know that. People also use nose plugs for like swimming.
Matt: Yeah, I guess you could but I was like-
Lia: It might be like another sensory issue with like touch and stuff.
Matt: Plus, it goes up in your nose. So that might be kind of-
Lia: Well, there’s some that just pinch on the outside.
Matt: Oh, do they?
Lia: Yeah, they just go around the outside of your nose and they just pinch.
Matt: Oh, I thought it was the ones you had to like push up in your nose. Okay.
Lia: No, something like that might work. But again, it just depends on the sensory needs of your child. And it depends on what they can tolerate more versus less.
Matt: True.
Lia: But I thought it was really interesting, because we started looking into some of the recent studies when it came to the sense of smell and there was a really interesting study that Matt actually found.
Matt: Of all people. I’m not usually the one for research.
Lia: That little bit of neuroscience came out.
Matt: I was gonna say, and Google, I suppose. Yeah, this study that we found it was actually analyzing both neurotypical kids as well as autistic kids that have been diagnosed to see how their I guess you would say smell receptors.
Lia: Yeah, which is like the olfactory system. The olfactory system is referring to everything that’s wired in the brain and in the nose to give you the sense of smell.
Matt: Right, so they had two studies, it was 18 children who were diagnosed with autism, and then 18 neurotypical children, and they ran the study 10 times and what they were trying to look for was different breathing patterns and smelling patterns when they were exposed to pleasant smelling scents versus gross things, basically.
Lia: Pleasant and unpleasant scents.
Matt: Right, so the pleasant sense that they had was a flavored shampoo, I think it was like a rose scent shampoo. And then the unpleasant smell was rotting milk and rotten fish.
Lia: That sounds so disgusting.
Matt: So kind of the two extremes. So I mean, I think most people would agree that you’d be able to smell one pleasant one unpleasant there. So they had each of the children watching cartoons while they ran the study. And they ran the study 10 times, and they said they were able to identify, I think with an 80% accuracy rate, just with the smelling — the change and breathing or sniff — if the child was autistic or not. So they found that the neurotypical children within .3 of a second being exposed to the rotten milk and rotten fish, they changed their breathing and sniffing patterns to kind of reflect that they were encountered with something that was very unpleasant and very pungent odor that they didn’t want to smell. But then they didn’t have the same reaction with the autistic children.
Lia: And when we say they changed their patterns, what they were doing is that they started all off with breathing out of their nose, kind of like how you typically do where you inhale from your nose, exhale from your mouth. And when they were exposed to the bad-smelling odors, the neurotypical kids started mouth-breathing, so they adjusted their smell so that they wouldn’t be inhaling through their nose. And they were taking shorter, more shallow breaths, whereas the children that were diagnosed with autism continued to breathe the way they normally do. So they didn’t change their breath pattern at all.
Matt: Right, they were able to identify 17 out of 18 of the neurotypical children for the study, which is around 94%. And then for the autistic children, they were able to identify 12 out of 18 as being autistic, which I think is somewhere like the 60%. But then when you combine that it’s about 80%, they’re able to recognize if they’re autistic or not. So the interesting thing that they were finding with this was, I think the youngest participant was four years old, but they were saying, if they were able to run this and find the same results with younger subjects, they might be able to easily have a strong pull one way or the other if your child might be autistic from a young age. And this isn’t an invasive procedure or anything. It’s basically just exposing them to unpleasant smells and pleasant smells, and then they’re only looking at the breathing patterns and how the child is reacting.
Lia: So the cool thing about that is the way that you breathe, it’s kind of like a neurological response. You don’t think about breathing it’s kind of like your heartbeat. You don’t think about having your heart skip a beat or anything like that it just happens as a reaction to your environment. So it’s kind of like the same thing with your breathing pattern. So what’s really interesting about that is that not only does this allow you to try to diagnose kids at a younger age, because the breathing pattern changes, regardless of your age, because you’re not doing it consciously. So you can theoretically expose toddlers or even babies to different smells, and just see how their breathing pattern changes. But the other cool thing about this is that they actually found that the breathing pattern was also associated with the social ability of the autistic children.
Matt: Right. And I still am still kind of scratching my head. I mean, actually, I’m literally scratching my head right now. Because I still, I still am kind of trying to figure out that connection between the social element in the sensory element regarding smell.
Lia: We mentioned a little bit in the last episode, we went over a little bit of how the brain works with tying the social aspect to different senses. But basically, what they found is that when it came to autism, those who had been diagnosed with more severe social impairments, specifically, they found that those that had more severe social impairments ended up having more severe olfactory impairments, or sense of smell. So it seems to be like there is a strong correlation between autistic individuals who have a more difficult time sensing smell, to also having a more difficult time in social situations. And what’s interesting about that is that the social part of the brain, there’s that whole like social complex of the brain. So it does seem to be tied to things like the sense of taste and other senses that we talked about earlier in the season. So now they’re finding that it is also associated with the sense of smell. So it just seems like as a general whole, each of the senses seemed to be strongly correlated with the social aspect.
Matt: Okay so, just kind of depending on where you’re falling on the spectrum, how that kind of pulls from your social interaction with the individual senses, how they each relate to the social element is that kind of?
Lia: Well, and that’s exactly why they say that Autism is a spectrum. So autistic individuals can have social deficits in different areas and different levels, just like they can have different sensory issues in different areas and different levels. You have people who are hypo-sensitive, yet people who are hyper-sensitive. And I think that the research tends to lean towards the reason behind this being the fact that it is all like complex cross-wiring. So if one string connects one sense to one behavior, it’s not going to necessarily connect that same sense to that same behavior in the next autistic person, because we know as a default, that autistic brains are wired differently than neurotypical brains. But that’s not necessarily to say that every autistic brain is wired the same to each other.
Matt: The exact same, okay.
Lia: Right. So it’s like they all have families of similarities. So they’re all in the same family of having sensory disorders, or they all are in the same family of having sensory deficits and social deficits. But where exactly those wires are crossing to impact what exact social deficit or what exact sense is not the same from autistic person to autistic person.
Matt: Okay, that makes sense. I mean, as far as you can have an infinite number of how someone’s falling within the hyper-sensitive or hyper and —
Lia: Hypo.
Matt: Hypo-sensitive. I mean, I would assume that there’s a spectrum within just one sensory, let alone all the sensories. So it would be I mean, almost like an infinite number of possibilities there.
Lia: Exactly. And that’s why they say like, when you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person, because it’s really difficult to find two autistic individuals who share the exact same profile, same experience, and all of that. So that’s what’s really cool about the sensory system and the fact that we are able to actually see some of these differences in things like EEGs and other sort of brain activity scans. It’s actually pretty cool.
Matt: But then I guess the other thing that I’m interested in, I usually think of smell closely related to like food, so I wasn’t sure how that would kind of relate to kind of your picky eater who wants bland foods versus like both of our daughters love like lemons, for example. And I wasn’t sure if any of that ties together or how that kind of all correspondence.
Lia: I actually have learned a little bit about this in my background. So I don’t know any specific studies, I might pull some up for the show notes after I find them. But I just know from my background, that the sense of smell definitely impacts your ability to sense taste. So there’s like a strong correlation between the two. They’ve done studies where they’ve like plugged people’s noses, for example, and then they’ve had them rank flavors and tastes and see like how much they can taste and they basically have found that once your nose is plugged, you have to add way more flavor to get the same level of taste as you would. And if you think about it, when people are trying to eat something that they don’t like, what do people instinctively do — they tend to plug their nose, exactly.
Matt: Or if you are the fancy people where they do like the wine tastings.
Lia: Yeah, you sniff it.
Matt: Where they kind of swirl it and smell it before they actually try and like, taste it.
Lia: Right.
Matt: So I mean, let’s us see like the strong correlation or —
Lia: Relationship.
Matt: Relationship.
Lia: Yeah. So there’s a very strong relationship between the sense of smell and the sense of taste. So it makes sense that if your child is struggling with a sense of smell, it might then affect their ability to taste. And because of that, what you might be seeing on the other end is your child refusing to try new foods. Or if they are the type of kid who just likes bland food, it might be because they can’t tolerate the smell, it might not even be a texture thing or a taste thing, it might be a smell thing.
Matt: So if your kid is seeking out bland foods, it could be not necessarily because of the taste, but because of the smell. So if you’re making dinner with a lot of seasonings, that can be extremely overwhelming. So it might not just be what it tastes like at the end. But it could just be the smell is way too overwhelming for them to even try. So, therefore, they might tolerate more bland foods that have less seasoning just by nature.
Lia: Yeah, like if you just think about a lemon, rosemary, chicken.
Matt: Right.
Lia: Usually, to us, that’s kind of like a mild flavor. So it’s not so much about the flavor. But rosemary and lemon both have a really strong scent.
Matt: Right, if you’re hyper-sensitive, and you can just pick up on that I can imagine trying to eat some, especially if you don’t like the smell of it. So if you don’t like the smell of something, and then you’re trying to eat it, that would just be a nightmare.
Lia: Right. And you know, something that kind of reminds me about it. So it helps me understand it a little bit is like when I was pregnant with both of the kids. Part of the side effect that a lot of women experience when they’re pregnant is a heightened sense of smell. And I remember for me, I could not tolerate a ton of smells, especially the smells of meat. And grilled chicken, that one was terrible. I could not stand the smell of grilled chicken. And because of that it affects your ability to eat those things. Because if you can’t tolerate the smell, there’s no way you’re going to tolerate putting that in your mouth and eating it.
Matt: Right or you’d have to I mean, you would actually have to leave the room or I mean, we flat out stopped making chicken for —
Lia: Yeah.
Matt: — for the duration of your pregnancy. Yeah, it was that that bad, like I, I had to sacrifice my chicken tearing your pregnancy because it couldn’t be in the same house.
Lia: I remember when we were visiting my mom’s, I would literally go on the third-floor level and go all the way into like a bathroom within a room and close the door. So I was like three doors behind just to avoid the smell of the food that was being cooked. I can kind of feel like that might be a little bit of what these individuals are experiencing.
Matt: But then at the same time, it’s even worse because you’re an adult. So you have the option to remove yourself from that environment. If you’re a young child who’s basically instructed like, oh, here’s dinner, like eat your dinner, you know, I mean, you suddenly don’t might not have the option to leave and not partake.
Lia: right. And the difficult part of that is that if you have a nonverbal child, or you just have a young child or a child with an intellectual delay, they might not necessarily have a way to communicate that with you. Or they might not even understand that that is the thing that is triggering them. They just know something about this is making me feel nauseous or gross. And I don’t, I don’t know what it is.
Matt: Right, I don’t feel right, I can’t regulate myself to feel better. I’m just kind of stuck in this environment. I mean, that might be one of the reasons why you get a picky eater, for example.
Lia: Right. And that kind of ties into our last episode about the taste where we talked about how to try to expand foods with your child. So sometimes it’s not a taste thing. And when you go through that process of trying to expand their food, and if you don’t force them to eat it, you might find out that it’s actually not a taste or flavor thing. Maybe it’s a smell thing, if you observe your child and see how they’re reacting while you do that.
Matt: Now there was an activity that I believe that you — or a technique that you had learned at some point through this, this journey regarding different scents and how to kind of like practice with the different scents. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to kind of —
Lia: Yeah, so the great thing about all of this is that you can always — I always say go to your OT. I am such a big fan of occupational therapists. I feel like we have been able to solve so many of our like problem areas with an occupational therapist.
Matt: Well, especially if you have a great relation — well first off if you have a good occupational therapist, but then if you build a great relationship with that one then I mean, they’re your go-to.
Lia: Yeah, definitely. And so one of the activities that I learned about for the sense of smell is actually kind of like an exposure therapy type of thing. So what you do is get a bunch of jars and then in those jars, put a bunch of different scents and each scent can be like from your herb drawer. What do you call it?
Matt: A spice rack.
Lia: A spice rack, yeah! An herb drawer, where’d that come from? And so what you do is you get some of these stronger scented ones and some that are milder scented, but you’re going to want probably more of the stronger scented ones if your kid is hypo sensitive, and then probably the other way around if they’re hypersensitive. But what you’ll do is you’ll take them so you take things like cumin, rosemary, lemon pepper, these type of scents that have both a strong scent and then just kind of like a hint of a scent, and you put them in different containers. And then you can put like a cheesecloth on them or something that’s a little bit porous so that the scent isn’t super overpowering, but you can still kind of get some out of it. Or if they’re hypo-sensitive and they’re under-sensitive, you can probably just put it more open face so that they get more of it because they need more input. But basically, it’s exposure therapy and you kind of like play a guessing game like, oh, guess this scent, what do you think this is. Or play matching games where you offer them two different scents, and then you offer them a third scent, and then you say, okay, see if you can match one of these two with this third scent, and see if they’re able to determine which scent is the correct one. And that would be kind of an exercise that you could do repeatedly every other day or something like that, to see if you can kind of train them into being able to decipher scents a little better over time.
Matt: Plus, it’s also good on the other level is if you’re able to identify a sense or smell that they flat out hate or dislike, then you I mean, you know. I’m not much of a like Chef or anything so I might not know what a specific spice is. But if I smell it, and it’s absolutely repulsive, I would be able to say, oh, I hate that scent, please don’t use in any food. So you might be able to get lucky in that sense and find out oh, my kid doesn’t like lemon pepper. For example. Maybe I’ll cut back or not use lemon pepper whenever I’m making them dinner and then maybe you can avoid a struggle down the road.
Lia: Yeah, exactly. You might accidentally identify something that was causing your kid to not eat in the process. So that’s super helpful and beneficial.
Matt: So a win-win!
Lia: If you’re not into like the food version of it, there’s also like milder versions you can do like if your child is having an issue tolerating bathtime it’s the same thing. Maybe one of the reasons they’re not tolerating them is not because of the water. It might be the smell of the soaps for example. So you could try doing it with like different scented bath soaps, different scented bubbles, if you wanted you could even go to like a candle store and do different scented candles or different scented candle wax or things like that and kind of make it a fun little game.
Matt: Yeah, I remember you mentioned like the bath time, but even like our daughter brushing our teeth, she didn’t like the smell of one of the kids toothpaste and we wouldn’t even be able to get it in her mouth because she would smell that it wasn’t one of the berry ones that she had before. And she refused to even brush her teeth with it. We had to go get the other one because that’s how strong the association was.
Lia: Yeah, exactly. Sometimes that sense of smell, you will notice it once they start pushing back on certain things. So I just think that when it comes to the sense of smell, although we haven’t actually run into too much of it just a little bit here and there.
Matt: Yeah, it peaks up I would say the other senses, the different senses are more prominent than smell in our case.
Lia: Yeah. So we basically notice at least that they have more differences, and hypo and hypersensitivities with the other senses. And the sense of smell tends to be kind of more neutral with our kids. But again, that could just be because they’re not letting us know. And we can’t really tell when there’s an absence of a sense or a presence of a sense. So it’s kind of a harder one to pin down.
Matt: Yeah, exactly.
Lia: But that’s that’s all the information we really have for you guys on the sense of smell. I hope that you guys learned a little bit here.
Matt: We sure did.
Lia: We definitely did. Because again, this was not one we were super familiar with. If you guys have any cool like sense of smell stories or anything like that, let us know on Facebook, like leave us some comments under the podcast episode because I’d be really interested to see or hear or learn more about the sense of smell when it comes to autism and what your kiddos are experiencing.
Matt: And don’t forget to leave us any questions that you might have at podcast@autismwish.org
Lia: Awesome. Thanks, guys. We’ll see you again next week.
Matt: Bye.
Outro:
Lia: To summarize, we discuss how scientists can identify autism and children 80% of the time based solely on their sniff responses, how your child’s reaction to food may be due to smell rather than taste, and how you can work with an OT or at home to help your child to just overwhelming smells for fun games such as guessing and matching spices.
Lia: Tune in next time as we go over the sense of hearing and answer questions such as why does my child panic or cover their ears when they hear loud noises? Why doesn’t my child respond to their name and how can I get them to respond? This is Embracing Autism.
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Resources:
Olfactory sense in Autism
Relationship between smell (olfactory) and taste (gustatory)
Show Notes for Embracing Autism Podcast — Ep. 205
Introduction:
Lia: Today we will chat about the sense of smell and its newfound relationship with autism. We will discuss interesting findings from recent studies linking the sense of smell to social ability in autism, as well as some activities you can do at home to help your child adjust to overwhelming smells.
Lia: Welcome to Embracing Autism, a podcast for parents of autistic children seeking advice and support while spreading awareness and acceptance of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Lia: I’m Lia —
Matt: And I’m Matt!
Lia: And each week, we’ll discuss our journey with autism and talk about how to embrace your child’s individuality while providing guidance, tips, resources and sharing our personal stories.
Lia: This is —
Lia & Matt: Embracing Autism!
Discussion:
Lia: Hi everyone, today we’re going to be talking about the sense of smell, which honestly, we don’t have as much experience with but we’re gonna try to let you know as much as we can.
Matt: Yeah, after the last episode, Lia and I actually sat down and we were kind of thinking, Okay, what have our girls really come across with smell. And we’re actually coming up a little bit short, our stories might be a little bit limited.
Lia: Yeah, so I think that to make up for the last episode, which was almost an hour long, this one will be a little bit shorter.
Matt: It’ll all even out.
Lia: So with the sense of smell, our kids didn’t really show much when it came to that in terms of any sort of hypersensitivities to smell. The thing is they may have some under-sensitivities to smell and we just don’t notice because an under-sensitivity would present in that they’re not being reactive to a smell.
Matt: Right, it was I think relatively neutral. Like there wasn’t any discomfort or any struggle when it came to smell directly. We had the different concerns when it came to taste, but smell was kind of one that was kind of elusive.
Lia: It may honestly be because we haven’t looked into it too much with our kids. But it may honestly be that they aren’t smelling things as strongly as we are because they don’t necessarily bring up smells. So like if I’m cooking something like if I’m baking brownies in the oven or something like that. They never make any sort of remarks about it. They’re not like, ooh, smells good or anything like that.
Matt: They do sometimes, but I’m not sure if that’s because they learned how to say like, it smells good. Like when we have them smell like a flower, for example.
Lia: Right, but that is specifically when we’re teaching them because they do that with fake flowers, too.
Matt: Okay, but that also wasn’t sure because sometimes I think like if you’re making like brownies or something, you’ll ask like, Oh, does it smell good? Or does it smell bad.
Lia: And that’s the problem is that we’ve kind of like pre-conditioned them into what their reaction should be when it comes to the sense of smell like they know, if you’re baking something, you’re supposed to react by saying it smells good. So we don’t know if their reactions are genuine and authentic at this point. Or if it was that we essentially taught them those reactions.
Matt: To trust the two and three-year-old on their smell ability or not?
Lia: Right? I mean, if you think about it, though, for example, our kids like whenever they have — they’re still in diapers — so whenever they have like a dirty diaper it doesn’t ever seem to faze them. And I don’t think it’s just the touch sensory component. Kids will usually say like one of the first things they say is, oh, it’s stinky. You know, like when they’re one, two. And our kids have never said that.
Matt: But I think they have because we’ve basically we’ve said it to them, like oh, like you have a stinky diaper. And then now they’ve learned that if they poop, they are supposed to say, Oh, I have a stinky diaper. Or they’ll say that their sister has a stinky diaper or whatever.
Lia: Right? So we basically have had to train them.
Matt: But as far as like what they actually smell, we’re not 100% if that’s a genuine response, or if it’s basically they know how to respond to it.
Lia: It’s kind of funny, because prior to recording this episode, or prior to us actually thinking and talking about this episode, smell wasn’t really on our radar for our kids. And I didn’t really even think about it, I just assumed oh, you know, they must smell like we do because they don’t react in any sort of different way like they do with their other senses. But now in retrospect, it may just be that they are under-sensitive. And because they’re under-sensitive, we’re not realizing it. Because when somebody is under-sensitive, they simply don’t react, right? So if they’re not reacting, we’re not going to notice.
Matt: I think another thing was because we were so focused on the other senses because we could definitely tell oversensitive under sensitive. We were aware of them. And then at the same time, they would throw in what we had kind of taught them oh, it smells nice, oh, it smells stinky. And I just thought in my mind, like, okay, perfect, they’re neutral. They understand smells good, smells bad. But then when we’re thinking about it, maybe it’s not that straightforward.
Lia: Might be interesting as they get older, if they’re able to maybe communicate with us more effectively. Maybe someday we’ll be able to get a better idea of how their senses are and what they actually experience in the world. Because right now, this is just us with guesswork. We’re not actually really sure. So I’m hoping that as they get older, we’ll get a better idea.
Matt: And then did you notice as far as any of our girls like smelling things that weren’t traditionally that a neurotypical kid would smell?
Lia: So that’s one of the things that I’ve read a lot about. I’ve talked to other moms and parents of autistic kids and a lot of parents report that their kids will start sniffing things that a neurotypical kid wouldn’t. So I know like for our kid, initially, the oldest one when she was probably about one and a half or so she was pre-verbal at that time, she would actually go up to my arm and she would sniff my arm all the time. And then she would kind of rub her nose on my arm, and then she would sniff it. And I always thought that was kind of like weird, but that was before we knew that she was autistic. So in retrospect, that must have been like a sensory thing when it came to like the sense of smell.
Matt: So I guess the true question is, was that before or after a shower, so would you tell her that you smell good? Or you smelled bad?
Lia: I don’t know.
Matt: So I wasn’t sure if like, yeah, like, I don’t know if she was seeking or if she was smel l— I don’t know.
Lia: Yeah, I was I was like, giving off a strong scent. And she was like, Oh, that’s nice.
Matt: Or if it was something pleasant like a like body wash or like shampoo or something.
Lia: Yeah, it’s possible, or I could have washed my hands because it was kind of like my lower arm near my wrist.
Matt: I was thinking like armpit.
Lia: No, no, no, she wasn’t snipping my armpit. It was literally my arm, like my forearm. So sniffing my forearm, like near my wrist. And then she was, rubbing her hand, and that’s the area that usually you do wash very often when you’re washing your hands with like soap and water. So it’s possible that it was soap, some type of scent. Yeah, because I don’t remember if I had washed my hands right before or after, but I do remember that it was something that I felt was a little bit bizarre because she would run to me, and then she would just start sniffing my arm.
Matt: And I was trying to remember if our youngest — I have the vision of her either being on the carpet a lot, or the sofa, kind of like face down. So I’m not sure if she’s just trying to like lie face down, or if she’s actually trying to smell like the carpet or the sofa. And I wasn’t sure if that was another interesting object that she was trying to smell or trying to get a scent off of as well.
Lia: Yes, sometimes she would go up to the couch and kind of lean her face over it and kind of rub her nose on it. It’s hard to tell sometimes if that’s like an olfactory thing, like, is she trying to sniff it? Is it the scent? Is it the texture? Is it that she likes rubbing her nose on it? You know, like is it the sense of touch and not smell? We can’t really tell because she was so close to it that we don’t really know what’s going on.
Matt: And we honestly might not know until she’s older and she’s actually able to describe what she’s trying to do. I mean, because she’s still so little.
Lia: But with a sense of smell usually what happens is there’s that whole hypo and hypersensitivity thing again. So you get the two different types. So you get those that are hypo or under-sensitive and hyper, which is over-sensitive. This means for some autistic individuals going to a place — like let’s say like a chocolate factory type of thing where you go to like a bakery or goodie shop or something like that — if they are hypersensitive that could be torturous to them. They might be way overwhelmed by all the senses of smell and they might get stressed and want to leave because it’s just too it’s too much stimuli.
Matt: And I can understand that. I mean, just thinking of your typical person walking through Macy’s or whatever, scent section, whatever, the perfume section home and they’re spraying the different types of perfumes and just kind of the overwhelming like back and forth of the different scents. I mean for me, that’s kind of overwhelming. I try and walk quickly through that. But I mean, if you’re really hyper-sensitive, then that’d be just flat out overwhelming.
Lia: Exactly. That’s actually a really good metaphor, because it’s true. It’s kind of like an onslaught to your senses. It’s a good example to be going through like a perfume store. And then there’s like those individuals who are hypo-sensitive, and the ones that are hypo-sensitive, are going to want to seek out that sort of extreme scent and smell, because their sense of smell is kind of stifled so they need a lot more of it to be able to smell it then your neurotypical person would. So when it comes to those sorts of behaviors, lots of times you will notice just by how they react, so if they if they seem to be avoiding places that have lots of scents so things can be like fairgrounds where they have like kettle corn popping, and they have what are those? What’s the thing, sugar flour thing?
Matt: Sugar flour thing?
Lia: The pancake, swirly thing.
Matt: Oh, the funnel cake. I was thinking of like this smoker with like the meats and things.
Lia: Yeah the meats, you have like this combination of like meats and sweets and the smoke from the grill. And then if there are animals around the of the smell of the animals and all this stuff, so it’s really like a huge onslaught of a ton of smells. And we kind of just tune it out but when it comes to autism, sometimes it’s really difficult to tune in at like, you just can’t tune it out.
Matt: Right, So I think it would definitely be something just to try and pay attention to because at the same time, if you have a young child who is very sensitive to that, I’m not really sure how they would display that if they would know enough to plug their nose to try and like limit the smells coming in. Or if they would kind of have more of like a meltdown reaction. I’m not really sure how that would actually appear in some of these settings.
Lia: Right. And that’s why it’s always important if your kid is appearing to have some sort of meltdown or tantrum. It’s always important to try to recognize what’s going on in the environment and try to pay attention to what may have triggered it. So we always say like, was there something that changed? And if so was it visual? Was it auditory? The smell what is something that I think would be trickier to pick up because you don’t necessarily know when a smell has changed if you can’t sense it the way they can.
Matt: And I agree, because I mean, if you’re — like we know like our kids, they’re sensitive to sound, for example. So when we go to a fair, for example, and it’s noisy, the rides, kids screaming, yelling, have a great time, we know that they’ll cover their ears, but we know enough to bring headphones. So we just put their headphones on, and then they’re perfectly fine going for a walk or like sitting on their wagon.
Lia: Yeah, but if you aren’t able to prepare in advance, and you don’t know to anticipate those needs.
Matt: Right, you could be caught completely off guard.
Lia: Exactly. So we always advocate for like a lot of like observation and just trying to pay attention and see if you can catch what’s leading up to it. See if you can see a pattern because once you identify a pattern, then you can put things into place to try to accommodate that, like earmuffs, or whatever. In the sense of smell, it might just be like, you just need to avoid those areas that had those smells. Or if your child is older, if they’re like a teenager or something like that, you can maybe give them some sort of like mask or something to kind of put over their nose so they don’t have to smell it.
Matt: Right now, like a mask might be kind of your best option or to just kind of avoid those places altogether.
Lia: Yeah, I know that. People also use nose plugs for like swimming.
Matt: Yeah, I guess you could but I was like-
Lia: It might be like another sensory issue with like touch and stuff.
Matt: Plus, it goes up in your nose. So that might be kind of-
Lia: Well, there’s some that just pinch on the outside.
Matt: Oh, do they?
Lia: Yeah, they just go around the outside of your nose and they just pinch.
Matt: Oh, I thought it was the ones you had to like push up in your nose. Okay.
Lia: No, something like that might work. But again, it just depends on the sensory needs of your child. And it depends on what they can tolerate more versus less.
Matt: True.
Lia: But I thought it was really interesting, because we started looking into some of the recent studies when it came to the sense of smell and there was a really interesting study that Matt actually found.
Matt: Of all people. I’m not usually the one for research.
Lia: That little bit of neuroscience came out.
Matt: I was gonna say, and Google, I suppose. Yeah, this study that we found it was actually analyzing both neurotypical kids as well as autistic kids that have been diagnosed to see how their I guess you would say smell receptors.
Lia: Yeah, which is like the olfactory system. The olfactory system is referring to everything that’s wired in the brain and in the nose to give you the sense of smell.
Matt: Right, so they had two studies, it was 18 children who were diagnosed with autism, and then 18 neurotypical children, and they ran the study 10 times and what they were trying to look for was different breathing patterns and smelling patterns when they were exposed to pleasant smelling scents versus gross things, basically.
Lia: Pleasant and unpleasant scents.
Matt: Right, so the pleasant sense that they had was a flavored shampoo, I think it was like a rose scent shampoo. And then the unpleasant smell was rotting milk and rotten fish.
Lia: That sounds so disgusting.
Matt: So kind of the two extremes. So I mean, I think most people would agree that you’d be able to smell one pleasant one unpleasant there. So they had each of the children watching cartoons while they ran the study. And they ran the study 10 times, and they said they were able to identify, I think with an 80% accuracy rate, just with the smelling — the change and breathing or sniff — if the child was autistic or not. So they found that the neurotypical children within .3 of a second being exposed to the rotten milk and rotten fish, they changed their breathing and sniffing patterns to kind of reflect that they were encountered with something that was very unpleasant and very pungent odor that they didn’t want to smell. But then they didn’t have the same reaction with the autistic children.
Lia: And when we say they changed their patterns, what they were doing is that they started all off with breathing out of their nose, kind of like how you typically do where you inhale from your nose, exhale from your mouth. And when they were exposed to the bad-smelling odors, the neurotypical kids started mouth-breathing, so they adjusted their smell so that they wouldn’t be inhaling through their nose. And they were taking shorter, more shallow breaths, whereas the children that were diagnosed with autism continued to breathe the way they normally do. So they didn’t change their breath pattern at all.
Matt: Right, they were able to identify 17 out of 18 of the neurotypical children for the study, which is around 94%. And then for the autistic children, they were able to identify 12 out of 18 as being autistic, which I think is somewhere like the 60%. But then when you combine that it’s about 80%, they’re able to recognize if they’re autistic or not. So the interesting thing that they were finding with this was, I think the youngest participant was four years old, but they were saying, if they were able to run this and find the same results with younger subjects, they might be able to easily have a strong pull one way or the other if your child might be autistic from a young age. And this isn’t an invasive procedure or anything. It’s basically just exposing them to unpleasant smells and pleasant smells, and then they’re only looking at the breathing patterns and how the child is reacting.
Lia: So the cool thing about that is the way that you breathe, it’s kind of like a neurological response. You don’t think about breathing it’s kind of like your heartbeat. You don’t think about having your heart skip a beat or anything like that it just happens as a reaction to your environment. So it’s kind of like the same thing with your breathing pattern. So what’s really interesting about that is that not only does this allow you to try to diagnose kids at a younger age, because the breathing pattern changes, regardless of your age, because you’re not doing it consciously. So you can theoretically expose toddlers or even babies to different smells, and just see how their breathing pattern changes. But the other cool thing about this is that they actually found that the breathing pattern was also associated with the social ability of the autistic children.
Matt: Right. And I still am still kind of scratching my head. I mean, actually, I’m literally scratching my head right now. Because I still, I still am kind of trying to figure out that connection between the social element in the sensory element regarding smell.
Lia: We mentioned a little bit in the last episode, we went over a little bit of how the brain works with tying the social aspect to different senses. But basically, what they found is that when it came to autism, those who had been diagnosed with more severe social impairments, specifically, they found that those that had more severe social impairments ended up having more severe olfactory impairments, or sense of smell. So it seems to be like there is a strong correlation between autistic individuals who have a more difficult time sensing smell, to also having a more difficult time in social situations. And what’s interesting about that is that the social part of the brain, there’s that whole like social complex of the brain. So it does seem to be tied to things like the sense of taste and other senses that we talked about earlier in the season. So now they’re finding that it is also associated with the sense of smell. So it just seems like as a general whole, each of the senses seemed to be strongly correlated with the social aspect.
Matt: Okay so, just kind of depending on where you’re falling on the spectrum, how that kind of pulls from your social interaction with the individual senses, how they each relate to the social element is that kind of?
Lia: Well, and that’s exactly why they say that Autism is a spectrum. So autistic individuals can have social deficits in different areas and different levels, just like they can have different sensory issues in different areas and different levels. You have people who are hypo-sensitive, yet people who are hyper-sensitive. And I think that the research tends to lean towards the reason behind this being the fact that it is all like complex cross-wiring. So if one string connects one sense to one behavior, it’s not going to necessarily connect that same sense to that same behavior in the next autistic person, because we know as a default, that autistic brains are wired differently than neurotypical brains. But that’s not necessarily to say that every autistic brain is wired the same to each other.
Matt: The exact same, okay.
Lia: Right. So it’s like they all have families of similarities. So they’re all in the same family of having sensory disorders, or they all are in the same family of having sensory deficits and social deficits. But where exactly those wires are crossing to impact what exact social deficit or what exact sense is not the same from autistic person to autistic person.
Matt: Okay, that makes sense. I mean, as far as you can have an infinite number of how someone’s falling within the hyper-sensitive or hyper and —
Lia: Hypo.
Matt: Hypo-sensitive. I mean, I would assume that there’s a spectrum within just one sensory, let alone all the sensories. So it would be I mean, almost like an infinite number of possibilities there.
Lia: Exactly. And that’s why they say like, when you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person, because it’s really difficult to find two autistic individuals who share the exact same profile, same experience, and all of that. So that’s what’s really cool about the sensory system and the fact that we are able to actually see some of these differences in things like EEGs and other sort of brain activity scans. It’s actually pretty cool.
Matt: But then I guess the other thing that I’m interested in, I usually think of smell closely related to like food, so I wasn’t sure how that would kind of relate to kind of your picky eater who wants bland foods versus like both of our daughters love like lemons, for example. And I wasn’t sure if any of that ties together or how that kind of all correspondence.
Lia: I actually have learned a little bit about this in my background. So I don’t know any specific studies, I might pull some up for the show notes after I find them. But I just know from my background, that the sense of smell definitely impacts your ability to sense taste. So there’s like a strong correlation between the two. They’ve done studies where they’ve like plugged people’s noses, for example, and then they’ve had them rank flavors and tastes and see like how much they can taste and they basically have found that once your nose is plugged, you have to add way more flavor to get the same level of taste as you would. And if you think about it, when people are trying to eat something that they don’t like, what do people instinctively do — they tend to plug their nose, exactly.
Matt: Or if you are the fancy people where they do like the wine tastings.
Lia: Yeah, you sniff it.
Matt: Where they kind of swirl it and smell it before they actually try and like, taste it.
Lia: Right.
Matt: So I mean, let’s us see like the strong correlation or —
Lia: Relationship.
Matt: Relationship.
Lia: Yeah. So there’s a very strong relationship between the sense of smell and the sense of taste. So it makes sense that if your child is struggling with a sense of smell, it might then affect their ability to taste. And because of that, what you might be seeing on the other end is your child refusing to try new foods. Or if they are the type of kid who just likes bland food, it might be because they can’t tolerate the smell, it might not even be a texture thing or a taste thing, it might be a smell thing.
Matt: So if your kid is seeking out bland foods, it could be not necessarily because of the taste, but because of the smell. So if you’re making dinner with a lot of seasonings, that can be extremely overwhelming. So it might not just be what it tastes like at the end. But it could just be the smell is way too overwhelming for them to even try. So, therefore, they might tolerate more bland foods that have less seasoning just by nature.
Lia: Yeah, like if you just think about a lemon, rosemary, chicken.
Matt: Right.
Lia: Usually, to us, that’s kind of like a mild flavor. So it’s not so much about the flavor. But rosemary and lemon both have a really strong scent.
Matt: Right, if you’re hyper-sensitive, and you can just pick up on that I can imagine trying to eat some, especially if you don’t like the smell of it. So if you don’t like the smell of something, and then you’re trying to eat it, that would just be a nightmare.
Lia: Right. And you know, something that kind of reminds me about it. So it helps me understand it a little bit is like when I was pregnant with both of the kids. Part of the side effect that a lot of women experience when they’re pregnant is a heightened sense of smell. And I remember for me, I could not tolerate a ton of smells, especially the smells of meat. And grilled chicken, that one was terrible. I could not stand the smell of grilled chicken. And because of that it affects your ability to eat those things. Because if you can’t tolerate the smell, there’s no way you’re going to tolerate putting that in your mouth and eating it.
Matt: Right or you’d have to I mean, you would actually have to leave the room or I mean, we flat out stopped making chicken for —
Lia: Yeah.
Matt: — for the duration of your pregnancy. Yeah, it was that that bad, like I, I had to sacrifice my chicken tearing your pregnancy because it couldn’t be in the same house.
Lia: I remember when we were visiting my mom’s, I would literally go on the third-floor level and go all the way into like a bathroom within a room and close the door. So I was like three doors behind just to avoid the smell of the food that was being cooked. I can kind of feel like that might be a little bit of what these individuals are experiencing.
Matt: But then at the same time, it’s even worse because you’re an adult. So you have the option to remove yourself from that environment. If you’re a young child who’s basically instructed like, oh, here’s dinner, like eat your dinner, you know, I mean, you suddenly don’t might not have the option to leave and not partake.
Lia: right. And the difficult part of that is that if you have a nonverbal child, or you just have a young child or a child with an intellectual delay, they might not necessarily have a way to communicate that with you. Or they might not even understand that that is the thing that is triggering them. They just know something about this is making me feel nauseous or gross. And I don’t, I don’t know what it is.
Matt: Right, I don’t feel right, I can’t regulate myself to feel better. I’m just kind of stuck in this environment. I mean, that might be one of the reasons why you get a picky eater, for example.
Lia: Right. And that kind of ties into our last episode about the taste where we talked about how to try to expand foods with your child. So sometimes it’s not a taste thing. And when you go through that process of trying to expand their food, and if you don’t force them to eat it, you might find out that it’s actually not a taste or flavor thing. Maybe it’s a smell thing, if you observe your child and see how they’re reacting while you do that.
Matt: Now there was an activity that I believe that you — or a technique that you had learned at some point through this, this journey regarding different scents and how to kind of like practice with the different scents. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to kind of —
Lia: Yeah, so the great thing about all of this is that you can always — I always say go to your OT. I am such a big fan of occupational therapists. I feel like we have been able to solve so many of our like problem areas with an occupational therapist.
Matt: Well, especially if you have a great relation — well first off if you have a good occupational therapist, but then if you build a great relationship with that one then I mean, they’re your go-to.
Lia: Yeah, definitely. And so one of the activities that I learned about for the sense of smell is actually kind of like an exposure therapy type of thing. So what you do is get a bunch of jars and then in those jars, put a bunch of different scents and each scent can be like from your herb drawer. What do you call it?
Matt: A spice rack.
Lia: A spice rack, yeah! An herb drawer, where’d that come from? And so what you do is you get some of these stronger scented ones and some that are milder scented, but you’re going to want probably more of the stronger scented ones if your kid is hypo sensitive, and then probably the other way around if they’re hypersensitive. But what you’ll do is you’ll take them so you take things like cumin, rosemary, lemon pepper, these type of scents that have both a strong scent and then just kind of like a hint of a scent, and you put them in different containers. And then you can put like a cheesecloth on them or something that’s a little bit porous so that the scent isn’t super overpowering, but you can still kind of get some out of it. Or if they’re hypo-sensitive and they’re under-sensitive, you can probably just put it more open face so that they get more of it because they need more input. But basically, it’s exposure therapy and you kind of like play a guessing game like, oh, guess this scent, what do you think this is. Or play matching games where you offer them two different scents, and then you offer them a third scent, and then you say, okay, see if you can match one of these two with this third scent, and see if they’re able to determine which scent is the correct one. And that would be kind of an exercise that you could do repeatedly every other day or something like that, to see if you can kind of train them into being able to decipher scents a little better over time.
Matt: Plus, it’s also good on the other level is if you’re able to identify a sense or smell that they flat out hate or dislike, then you I mean, you know. I’m not much of a like Chef or anything so I might not know what a specific spice is. But if I smell it, and it’s absolutely repulsive, I would be able to say, oh, I hate that scent, please don’t use in any food. So you might be able to get lucky in that sense and find out oh, my kid doesn’t like lemon pepper. For example. Maybe I’ll cut back or not use lemon pepper whenever I’m making them dinner and then maybe you can avoid a struggle down the road.
Lia: Yeah, exactly. You might accidentally identify something that was causing your kid to not eat in the process. So that’s super helpful and beneficial.
Matt: So a win-win!
Lia: If you’re not into like the food version of it, there’s also like milder versions you can do like if your child is having an issue tolerating bathtime it’s the same thing. Maybe one of the reasons they’re not tolerating them is not because of the water. It might be the smell of the soaps for example. So you could try doing it with like different scented bath soaps, different scented bubbles, if you wanted you could even go to like a candle store and do different scented candles or different scented candle wax or things like that and kind of make it a fun little game.
Matt: Yeah, I remember you mentioned like the bath time, but even like our daughter brushing our teeth, she didn’t like the smell of one of the kids toothpaste and we wouldn’t even be able to get it in her mouth because she would smell that it wasn’t one of the berry ones that she had before. And she refused to even brush her teeth with it. We had to go get the other one because that’s how strong the association was.
Lia: Yeah, exactly. Sometimes that sense of smell, you will notice it once they start pushing back on certain things. So I just think that when it comes to the sense of smell, although we haven’t actually run into too much of it just a little bit here and there.
Matt: Yeah, it peaks up I would say the other senses, the different senses are more prominent than smell in our case.
Lia: Yeah. So we basically notice at least that they have more differences, and hypo and hypersensitivities with the other senses. And the sense of smell tends to be kind of more neutral with our kids. But again, that could just be because they’re not letting us know. And we can’t really tell when there’s an absence of a sense or a presence of a sense. So it’s kind of a harder one to pin down.
Matt: Yeah, exactly.
Lia: But that’s that’s all the information we really have for you guys on the sense of smell. I hope that you guys learned a little bit here.
Matt: We sure did.
Lia: We definitely did. Because again, this was not one we were super familiar with. If you guys have any cool like sense of smell stories or anything like that, let us know on Facebook, like leave us some comments under the podcast episode because I’d be really interested to see or hear or learn more about the sense of smell when it comes to autism and what your kiddos are experiencing.
Matt: And don’t forget to leave us any questions that you might have at podcast@autismwish.org
Lia: Awesome. Thanks, guys. We’ll see you again next week.
Matt: Bye.
Outro:
Lia: To summarize, we discuss how scientists can identify autism and children 80% of the time based solely on their sniff responses, how your child’s reaction to food may be due to smell rather than taste, and how you can work with an OT or at home to help your child to just overwhelming smells for fun games such as guessing and matching spices.
Lia: Tune in next time as we go over the sense of hearing and answer questions such as why does my child panic or cover their ears when they hear loud noises? Why doesn’t my child respond to their name and how can I get them to respond? This is Embracing Autism.
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Resources:
Olfactory sense in Autism
Relationship between smell (olfactory) and taste (gustatory)
