Exploring My Level of Overstimulation

This past week was spring “break” for us. I use the term loosely because it had not been very “breakish”. We’ve been very busy all week. Not that that is a bad thing, but we are very tired. We ended up having something to do just about every day, doctor’s appointments, play dates, trips to local attractions – you name it.

For the first time, I bit the bullet and took the girls to meet some friends at Chuck E Cheese. The one and only other time I’d been in one was when I was about 11. I was away on a soccer tournament and my billet (do people still do this??) hosts took us there. It was dark, smelled bad, the food was nasty and the everything had a sticky slime on it. Disgusting.

So, I reluctantly agreed to go this week. A friend and her kids wanted us to join them, and so we did. It was bright, generally clean and over all ok. Not as grungy and nasty as that time 20-something years ago. The food was below mediocre, but disturbingly, the girls ate it. I’m hoping it was just that they were hungry and therefore would eat poop on a stick if it was all that was offered, but not because it really was their preference. The girls seemed to enjoy the games and rides and loved that they could do most of it themselves. Overall we had a pretty good time. I won’t be rushing back, because really, this isn't my thing, but it was ok.

I did notice, not unexpectedly, was that the girls were wired by the time we left. There was a huge change in their behavior - more whining than normal, a wild look in their eyes and verging on meltdowns, so naturally, I suspected that they were over stimulated. What surprised me was just how easily *I* am over stimulated.

Well, I guess most people get over stimulated in a noisy bright place like CEC, but well, for me, I was over my limit after about 11 minutes. I got a head ache, cranky, panicky, and just wanted OUT OF THERE. The noise of the stupid mouse thing badly lipsyncing 80’s pop songs clashing with the noise from the games, rides and all the kids was just too much for me. And then, checking out with the ridiculous tickets to choose a bunch of crapola?! Good grief! What a pain in the ass. I wish that my girls weren’t told that you could turn in your tickets for stuff. I would have just ditched the tickets and left.

I spent the rest of the day recuperating from that experience. I felt like every nerve had been jangled and any noise (which is hard to avoid with a 5 and 2 year old) was like a jack hammer on my system.A nap and some alone time was out of the question, so the end result was that I was short tempered and cranky. Not fun.

I was surprised to learn just how sensitive I am to this. I knew that crowds and enclosed spaces (like museums with lots of people) bothered me, but I seriously did not know how strongly this affected me.

Fortunately, the girls seemed to recover pretty easily, but I’ll definitely think twice before doing this again.