Archive for 'Sensory Processing Disorder'
Isn’t it fascinating when you see your child leaping forward developmentally with apparent abandon? That is when I know God is working mightily.
The past two weeks have been such for Edward.
Last week we went swimming with two slightly older friends–one who is a fairly skilled diver and swimmer. Edward watched this friend absentmindedly, attempted dives halfheartedly, and later annoyed the friends by splashing them and simultaneously blathering “blah blah blah” in an cloying voice.
I was so thrilled when this most patient child finally told Edward that what he was doing was “dumb” and held up a kick board to shield himself. Edward actually garnered enough self control to stop his mind-numbing action immediately. This is big for him.
A few days later, Edward shocked me beyond belief by laying out a decent dive into the deep end of our neighborhood pool. Apparently, when I thought he was in “La La Land,” he had been watching his friend. His swim coach was equally surprised when he claimed he knew how to dive and then dove off the diving board to prove it.
At swimming lessons the next day we saw a dear friend from kindergarten days. He was with another boy and the two were lounging by the pool watching the lessons, dangling their legs into the cool water.
Edward sauntered up to the pool, took keen aim, and laid out a perfect dive in front of the two boys.
The new boy turned to Edward’s friend and admired, “Wow, that dude’s good! Who is he?”
The friend replied, “That’s Edward. He’s my friend!”
I blinked back tears behind my sunglasses.
Edward is a dude who’s been “good” at multiplication, reading and memorizing. He’s a dude who I’ll wager knows more about the Tudors than most adults. Yet I think this was the first time Edward had ever been genuinely admired by a peer for something athletic.
Then the child who has been terrified to stand on his head and flip over at gymnastics, a child fearful of somersaults and a child who would never consider a backward handspring, began doing back flips under the water in rapid succession.
The next day at gymnastics he garnered more shock and awe by doing an assisted back handspring.
Something is going on in that brain of his, and I am beyond awe.
Still, isn’t that the way God works? He wants to bless us so much more abundantly than we can ever imagine, and so often He comes through so mightily just when life has begun to look rather bleak.
“If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” Matthew 7:11.
I have more stories of Edward’s progress that I will share next week. In the meantime, I am going out of town for the long weekend and will be back Tuesday!
Peace!
Thanks to Kia, again, for making Monday manageable again!
1 – Number of teeth Edward lost last week. “My incisors are gone! All I have are molars and canines! I can no longer say the word ‘the’ beautifully! I have no front teeth. The train traveled…hmmm.”
H texted me this up-to-the-minute conversation while I was having dinner with Ashley of Many Sparkling Gems. She looked at me so quizzically, as I’m sure you are too.
Translation: Edward has now lost all four front teeth and can no longer make the “th” or “tr” sounds just like Cindy from Brady Bunch, who employed a tongue twister book in her own cost-effective form of speech therapy. (Would that we all had it so easy!) Later Buddy Hinton, a bully who plagues Peter throughout this episode, aptly entitled “A Fistful of Reasons,” asks to borrow Cindy’s book after Peter knocks out his two front teeth. “The train traveled” was part of a tongue twister. The grand part of this tooth loss is that it brings Edward $5.00 closer to paying me back for the games he downloaded to my cell phone. (Sort of like reading The Wasteland with the notes?)
450 Number of times per day I tell my children not to ‘W” sit…that it will lead to knee and hip replacements in later years…
10 – Number of days my neighbors are gone to the beach and are therefore unable to address the pool water seepage I discussed last week.
6 – Number of days before the “Big Easter Egg Hunt” held at my house…in the mud and pool water seepage. Bring out yer rain boots!
3 – Number of times Edward asked the hostess at our local Mexican restaurant the definition of a composite number. “So, how many composite numbers do you think you could name?”
5 – Number of clay items other children completed during a 6-week pottery class.
1 1/2 – Number of items Edward completed during the same class because he chose to harness all his creative energy into the one “pig-mouse” pictured here. Understandable. (There is also a claim of a penguin, which is the white lump next to the “pig-mouse.” Since it has never been painted, I’m hopeful he’s created the amazingly rare “albino” penguin…)
Behold, the “Pig-Mouse!”
I can’t wait for it to grace my mantle!
Edward to woman in Publix sporting a Scooby Doo shirt: “I like your shirt.”
“Yes, I love Scooby Doo and so do my grandchildren,” the sweet woman countered, smiling at the curly-headed child sporting a soccer t-shirt, shorts and snow boots.
“Well, do you love Barak Obama?” he challenged.
“Well now you’re changing the topic, young man. Yes, I like Barak. I like him a lot!” she asserts, smiling and looking around the crowded store for support.
“So are you a Socialist?”
“Well…no…I mean…No…” she stammers, looking hopefully at H who is busy loading groceries onto the conveyer belt, conveniently ignoring where this conversation is going.
“Do you know the Iranians are building a nuclear weapon?” Edward quizzes. “There are two ways to attack them. One is to use radar. The other is to use bullets.”
“Well, what about talking? I would prefer talking,” the seemingly reasonable woman suggests.
“Are you crazy? Don’t you know Ahmadinejad? Don’t you know he loves evil? Just what do you think you can talk to him about?” Edward challenges.
(It seems Annette Bening hasn’t gotten very far…)
“My, you sure seem to know a lot,” the poor woman murmurs, squirming as she enters her pin number on the console.
To his credit, Edward finally senses the controversial nature of this conversation. He counters with something appropriate for a first grader to discuss with a grandmother-type at a deep South grocery store:
“So, have you seen Star Wars: The Clone Wars?”
During our foray into DC before the Holidays, we stayed at this rockin’ hotel called the Helix. Quite Duran Duran. And child-friendly with bunkbeds that had their own TV/Video Game combo. Add free wine from 5-7 pm for the parents and you have a winner!
I am capable of spending 7 hours in the Museum of Natural History if I can come home to this simplicity.
The place even had child-sized leopard robes, which, of course, Edward had to don and do a fancy dance on the round faux leather coffee table. Good times friends, good times!
It’s no shotgun shack.
And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? Let the days go by….
Same as it ever was.
Where have I been? When my dear friend, Kia, sent me the message: “Dood, where’d you go?” I started to wonder myself where the last two weeks have gone, and I’ll have to admit, the wondering stumped me in a frightening way.
So tonight, while my husband has gone cougar hunting (for the real animals, people) with friends for the weekend, I am feeding my children popcorn and donuts, and allowing them to watch 102 Dalmations (mild violence) while I try to catch up. (Thank you KinniKinnick for your awesome GF/CF cinnamon sugar donuts!)
(Yes, I did say cougar hunting. Apparently cougars can be quite a menace, although H has never killed another living thing since, as a young boy, he shot a bird with a bow and arrow crafted out of a windshield wiper blade. I feel confident regarding the cougar population’s longevity.)
So I decided to run through my calendar and pictures for the past two weeks and see what all I actually did accomplish. Here’s the short list:
1. Help Edward prepare for City-Wide Home School Spelling Bee, which included words like “suet” and “concentric,” while simultaneously adjusting to a new developmental psychologist. “What are you drawing, Edward?” she asks as he draws circles encircled by circles, endlessly. “Oh, those are concentric circles…you know c-o-n-c-e-n-t-r-i-c…Sort of reminds me of the little poem, ‘A Thief in the Night, t-h-i-e-f!’ “Yes, well…I…” She looks at me, puzzled. “Why is he spelling everything?” she whispers, scribbling furiously on her notepad. (Glory be, she’s found yet another diagnosis!) “Oh, he’s just preparing for a big spelling bee,” I encouraged. He then regaled her with a long discussion of Cuba and communism followed by questions about positive and negative cognition. “There’s just so much dyssynchronous development going on here…such an amazing cognitive ability while the social…” “Yes! Dyssynchrony!” Edward chortles! “I can’t spell it but I know it means ‘uneven’!”
2. Teach children how to use a napkin properly.
Did I mention we have a new puppy?
3. Celebrate Joseph’s 9-year-old birthday with a trip to Olive Garden. (Remember, it’s a chain-obsessed town.)
Did you know new puppies don’t sleep well at night? And if they sleep in your child’s bed, they will relieve themselves at the corner of the bedspread?
4. Receive training in how to administer growth hormone shots to Edward. Give growth hormone shots to Edward. Every. Single. Night. Possibly. For. The. Next. Ten. Years.
Were you aware that new puppies get sick when fed too many raisins and popcorn? Not to mention the gas that particular combination creates in the newborn canine digestive system…
5. Attend Sue’s “Muffins with Mom” celebration at her preschool while darting out every three minutes to check on the other two boys who are found, red-faced and sweating, pummeling each other with pillows in the youth room while five calm, homeschooled girls watch Little House on the Prairie videos.
Have I mentioned that we have a new puppy and she’s learned how to bark. Really, really loudly?
6. Spend one day at a City-Wide Homeschool Spelling Bee followed by carpooling followed by borrowing every electronic hand-held game known to man in preparation for nine-year-old having two spots removed at a local dermatologist known for two-hour waits. Sit with 3, 7 and 9-year-old in a waiting room while a TV monitor drones endlessly about the latest psoriasis treatments…field endless psoriasis questions: “Do you have psoriasis? Did I ever had psoriasis? Do you think that lady has psoriasis? Look how gross the psoriasis looks on that TV screen! Are those things scabs? Will that Humira help? What does that girl have? Do you think she has eczema? Doesn’t she look like a babysitter we had once? I know I had eczema and so did Joseph! Did we take Humira?”
The questions are wearing me down: “Why can’t you play with that hand-held Star Wars thing? Isn’t that why we borrowed it? Why aren’t you playing it?”
“It’s out of batteries. I think it needs to be recharged. Did you borrow the charger? You know it comes with a charger.”
I rifle through the bag. “There’s no charger! Just watch the psoriasis show until they call our name!”
“Do you think I will ever get psoriasis? Why is the ‘p’ silent in psoriasis? Is it a Latin word? What’s your favorite Latin word? Do you have to know a lot of Latin to be a dermatologist?”
Did I mention we have a new puppy? (Yes, she is peeing.)
Gone cougar hunting. Check ya later!
Yes, almost 10 days late, I finally coerced H into drawing a name for the winner of this grand Sensory Processing periodical.
And the winner is:
Adonya has a wonderful web site, and has also recently written a book so please check out her blog!
Edward woke up during this drawing and is pictured here with his beloved Webkin, “Jet.”
I know. Who sleeps in a golf shirt? (We do…when it’s convenient.)
Thanks for playing!
OK, I’m copying 9,000 other people who have given away this magazine already but I did get an email from this group offering a free copy so I thought I’d do a drawing in honor of Sensory Processing Disorder Month!
If you’d like to be in the drawing, just leave me a comment here and make sure there is an email included so I can notify you if you win.
I’ll keep this open until November 5th to give people plenty of time to enter and vote!
One thing I have learned during the approximately 4 months since we received our diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder, is that fine-tuning and remaining diligent about my child’s sensory diet makes all the difference in the success and failure of any particular day.
Edward’s needs, like that of any child with sensory issues, change from week to week, and keeping up with home OT and diet are, at times, trying, exhausting, time-consuming and stressful.
This is not meant to be a “doom and gloom” SPD post, but rather a snapshot of how a day can go when I don’t keep up my part of the SPD bargain. I supposed it’s fitting that this wretched day transpired smack dab in the middle of Sensory Processing Disorder Month.
Here’s a recipe for doom:
Wake up late–rush to drop three-year old off at PreK; drop in BK for tater tot and apple fry breakfast because you are out of gfcf bread and bagels and had no time for eggs. Rush in to a 6-hour science camp filled with liquid nitrogen-dipped bananas, multi-colored (read Red dye 5 and Yellow Lake 3) marshmellows dipped in liquid nitrogen, 37 other children swarming each experiment and a scientist comparing everyone in the room to a team of 5-year-old geniuses who read at 3 and and now do Calculus. (”But Mama, I read at three and I know all about the quadratic equation; why can’t I go to their genius class??”)
Your 2e child answers the question about Kelvin (absolute zero) and is the only person beside a 16-year-old in the room who knows the answer. The Ph.D. genius-engineer-talent-searcher-person quizzes you about how your 6-year-old knows the answer.
And then he watches your 6-year-old begin to pick pieces of paper off the floor. And then he comes over to you and says, “You told him the answer, didn’t you.” “No, I did not,” I assert. “He’s an avid reader.”
The Ph.D. smiles sweetly but condescendingly and moves on. In his mind I’m just another mother who wishes her darling was gifted. The problems is, my darling *is* gifted; he’s just also has other issues that affect others’ perception of his giftedness.
Then your SPD 6-year-old is dismissed and hurt.
And then you are in a free-fall toward a full-fledged meltdown. Your sweetheart is the only person who knows some random answer about carbon monoxide (and he’s right) but the Ph.D. scientist demonstrator doesn’t hear him because, at this point, your overloaded 6-year-old is mumbling…sinking into his own despair.
Your SPD sweetheart grows increasingly frustrated when he is not called to participate in each experiment. You swoop up this sweetheart, give big hugs, deep pressure squeezes, head rubbings, hand massages–anything to try to calm him down. Finally you break for lunch.
Because you still have no gf/cf bread, you rush back to this wretched BK and purchase a “meat disk” and some of their apple fries. These are scarfed down hurriedly in the van with no ketchup.
You, incidentally, break one of your own molars on a bone hunk caught in your own disgusting cheeseburger; you save the molar and bone pieces in hopes of somehow using them as evidence to either a lawsuit or at the very least a purely copacetic accident policy claim. (At the very least you can use them during science class to look at through the microscope.)
Now you rush back to the science camp, against your better judgment.
Why?
Why not call it a day and dash off to the park to swing and work off some energy? Why press this stressed sensory-overloaded child with three more hours of science camp?
Because you committed to watch over a few other friends’ children? Because you wanted your own NT 8-year-old to garner this science experience? Or because in your own prideful frailty you wanted that Ph.D. engineer science man to know once and for all just how gosh-darn bright your little fellow is even if he does have sensory issues.
My science camp day ended with my tiny sweetheart bolting out the door of the church, into the yard, and toward a busy street before I caught him.
He just could not take one more minute. Not one more minute of sitting still. Not one more minute of not participating in experiments. Not one more minute of staring at some excessivly large clock which greatly upset him from a visual processing standpoint.
And you know who the culprit of this whole failed day was?
Me.
I knew better.
I pushed.
I learned.
Our son, Edward, who is six, has benefited greatly from the concept of a Sensory Swing as suggested by his occupational therapist. Similar swings are available in online catalogs; however they are quite expensive so we decided to craft our own and attach it to a tree in our own back yard.
Our occupational therapist recommended we conduct a series of swinging events each day: Once in the morning with 10 revolutions clockwise followed by a still waiting period of 20 seconds, followed by another set of 10 revolutions in a counterclockwise manner. We then repeat this sequence once more.
Toward the end of the day (but not too close to dinner time) we repeat this cycle. The goal of this therapy is to assist Edward’s vestibular development.
This swing is quite easy and affordable to construct as these “step-by-step” photos reveal. We estimate we spent approximately $35.00 on our sensory swing.
We simply bought two plastic toy buckets and slipped them inside each other.
Next, we drilled holes through both buckets at even intervals. H was an Eagle Scout so he is an expert knot-tyer:
Here you see the bottom knot:
Clearly scout-quality.
Here is a close-up of the carabiner (purchased at a local home improvement store) linked to the rope; these are all marine-grade items, which won’t rust, and are easily available:
Here you see another stellar example of knots that keep this swing swinging smoothly and safely:
Edward can easily hop in his spinny swing:
He can even hunker down and use the swing as a hiding place:
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches…
Please email us with any questions about construction of this swell swing. We have enjoyed it for several months!
Sunday night I had so much fun visiting a small local school devoted to serving the educational needs of 18 children with autism, ages 3-16. Our church’s “young” youth group, composed of children ages 7-11, hosted a party for the children at this school. This was such a perfect way to introduce “neurotypical” children to new friends while also educating them about autism.
This school’s Sensory Room was fascinating–not because it was constructed out of the latest therapy items from expensive catalogs–but because the parents and teachers at this unique school had used so much creativity in creating a cozy, safe space that honestly could be replicated by parents of children with SPD in their own homes.
These giant bear pillows are a great place to crash…a safe creature to bash…and a snuggly spot to read or relax.
All along the walls were high shelves (made with regular closet shelving) with lava lamps and other moving, oily, bubbly lamps. Very cool when the lights were off and high enough that (most) children could not reach them!
The ball pit was one of the coolest I’ve seen. Built with 2 x 4s, drywall scraps and covered in carpet and fabric, the bottom had lights that reflected through clear balls. This might be ambitious for your own home, but was a luminous effect!
Here it is without the lights (which would be much easier in a home setting).
This wasn’t a large room, either–probably the size of most small bedrooms. I left with many ideas for my own fledgling sensory playroom which is only in the beginning stages.
For more details regarding setting up your own sensory room, please see this informative article!
