Sensory Processing Disorder Awareness Month

As many of you may have noticed I changed my avatar and my signature for the month to raise awareness for SPD. Now @blountforcetrauma asked me about it last night and to start a thread in the Watercooler to give some background into SPD. Sensory Processing disorder is a disorder that falls within the Austic Spectrum but is on the very low end of the spectrum. Most kids that have autism has some sort of sensory issues but not all kids that have sensory issues are autistic. SPD deals with how the brain interprets and processes all the sensory data that the body receives every second of the day, all sensory data! For kids and some diagnosed adults these signals can be confused and misinterpreted. If your child has SPD think of them as being in a totally dark room, under a blanket with a blindfold on. I sometimes feel that using that analogy doesn't convey what SPD is like to most adults so I like one I read just recently.

Hold your arm at your side, now perform the relatively easy task of raising that arm to chest level and holding it, now return it to your side. Now think about the millions of sensory cues involved in just that simple movement that you never give a second thought to. The feel as your arm moves from spot to the next, the air resistance on each hair of your arm, the smells , the textures, the muscle cues to tell you to stop, everything that goes into that simple movement. Now imagine if a quarter of those or half don't get processed right by your brain. How do you know where to stop your hand? How do you know if it is moving or not? That is what SPD can be like for children.

My son Preston was diagnosed with SPD two years ago when he was three, as with all things early detection is key because it helps with getting corrective actions down before a childs young mind begins to form permanent path ways. In Preston's case and is often the case with SPD kids some form of trauma can trigger SPD to become more prominent for the child, with Preston it was getting bullied at his first daycare. WE didn't know what was going on at first but it did cause his SPD to become more pronounced. He has trouble with loud noises, often describes every day feeling like rain on his face as a color, when first diagnosed his fine motor skills and core muscles were at the same level as an 18 month old instead of a 3 year old. He has problems with food textures and has about three or four meals that he likes and new food can cause physical pain when he eats it unless he is given time to adjust. Most people hear that his is on the spectrum and jump to conclusion about intelligence or that he is autistic and start thinking Rainman. Preston is incredibly smart he just has issues with how he deals with his sensory cues. most of the things on this chart are true for him










As I said early detection is key as well as getting Preston therapy help for the bullying and trying to remove the trauma aspect of his SPD he also works with a childhood Occupational Therapist to work on his fine motor skills, core muscle groups and his coping mechanisms to deal with times when he gets sensory overload so that he isn't acting out or "throwing fits". He started kindergarten a month ago and hasn't had any huge problems but some small challenges along the way. As he gets older having these strategies in place will help him cope with his world and has led to my wife and I being advocates for sensory kids and bringing SPD awareness more into the main stream.

 

I'm pretty sure my wife's cousin's little girl has something like this. Last year they had came over to give us something for one of the kid's birthdays or something and his little girl was playing with my little girl who was probably about 2 at the time. Well she went to do something to almost knock Natalie off the couch and I just reacted instantly and in like a sort of surprised and startled way said "NO!" I didn't mean it to be mean or anything but it realllllly hurt their little girl's feelings. That's when they told me that she had something that causes her to not really process what people are trying to convey to her and she thought she was gonna get in really bad trouble and that I was mad at her or something. Actually just yesterday at church her mom was telling me that she's still having issues with it. Do you think that might be sorta like something that your son has? Also me and my wife were arguing the other day and I was saying that autism is a form of mental retardation and she was saying it wasn't. I thought aspergers was too. (not sure if I spelled that right or not) but are they considered a form of that or something else? Her cousin and her yesterday were talking about it and he said that most kids with those diseases or whatever they would actually be called are actually generally really "smart" but just socially awkward. Man you have no idea how bad it burns me up that your little boy got bullied. I know it's not necessarily the kid's fault that was doing it since he probably came from an awful environment but it still ticks me off. At least you know what the problem is now though. We met a family at Disneyworld a few years ago and their little boy had a service dog that was a poodle that helped with his autism and it was there to help him understand issues he had with "space". Like he would just walk out in traffic and not realize the danger without the dog.

 

I think and don't quote me that when you talk of mental retardation it covers more of the brain not developing enough and causing issues. I don't think autism falls within the definition of mental retardation but rather that there is some miss wiring of the brain its self.

For Preston looking back my wife and I saw the signs that there could have been something wrong, he loved to be swaddled and would sleep all day long wrapped up tight like that. He totally destroyed the rail on his crib by chewing on it, should have been a huge cue that he has an oral tendency in SPD. the other stuff would have been harder to spot like he had very little grip strength or he would fall down and we would think he was clumsy or just being funny. Yeah the bullying sucked but something came out of it that was good for us.

One of the things with Pres is that is so amazing to me is that he has no sense of time. How he stores information and retrieves it isn't based on sensory cues like for you and me hearing something or a smell brings up a memory. For him everything happened yesterday, his last two birthdays were yesterday, that fun day at the pool was yesterday and he stores that information like a complete picture. He will say daddy I want this toy and I will tell him I don't know where it is and he will tell me it is in the closet and I put it there yesterday and it was six months ago but there it is.

 

Man that is pretty amazing how his mind works like that.

 

Do they have any clue,whatsoever, as to what causes it? Autism or any of it?

 

I've heard they think that having kids when you're older can cause down syndrome. I wonder if they think there's a link to autism in cases like that as well?

 

I just wondered about that because my buddy at work has an autistic son and him and his wife were quite older when he was born. Also my wife's cousin is the same way. I highly doubt the whole "vaccination" thing because people have been getting vaccinated forever but autism and the other conditions like it seem to be rather new. Although it might be that it's just now being named but has existed for a long time too though huh?

 

Sorry I haven't had much time to check back into the thread. Did you find that some of the hardest people to convince of the issues he was having were your own family TTF? I thought my parents would be very open and understanding considering my younger brother is bipolar with severe social anxiety disorder but they struggled understanding at first. My in-laws just couldn't understand it because they saw he was just so smart and we have to continually remind them that his sensory issues don't affect his intelligence. This summer my Father in law had a big problem with Preston chewing on the end of his life jacket strap while they had him over the weekend at the lake(we forgot to send a variety of chew toys with them) and we had to calmly explain again that we he becomes over stimulated or nervous the need for oral stimulation is the first to appear and he has to chew on things. Once he starts to get that stimulation from moving his jaw and chewing on some of his sensory toys he can calm down and not be as worked up. I find that it is a constant struggle with family where as immediate friends can understand and grasp things and show greater capacity for understanding.

 

He will get better at handling his sensory inputs and his Occupational Therapist works will him to develop coping mechanisms so that when he is feeling overwhelmed he doesn't lash out.

The bullying part was a shock to us. His daycare provider was an older lady who had a tendency to let the kids run and play while she got busy doing other things, meanwhile a little girl organized the other kids and continually told Preston that he was a bad kid and that we didn't love him and that Barb(daycare lady) was going to spank him. It was the closest I have ever come to yelling at a child and making them run and cry. The day we pulled both kids out of the daycare I gave that little girls mother a piece of my mind and actually wished her children felt what it was like to be bullied like that. Not my finest hour but when it comes to my kids I sometimes tend to lose the mild mannered me and the poppa bear comes out.

 

He means well and he loves his grandkids so I can't fault him. I think it is just outside his experience so he has trouble relating to it. Heck I have trouble some days.

 

Another thing about that your father in law is that it's probably also a "generational" thing. My mamaw is one of the best hearted people you will ever meet but she is so incredibly "unfiltered" that it makes her appear as though she is really callous. She's not but she just doesn't understand how she comes across sometimes. I've had to flat out tell her to cool it on some of the ways that she puts things in front of the kids. It's not that she cusses because she doesn't. She's a devout baptist and my papaw was a deacon for almost 40 years and she is just a really old fashioned southerner. But she will say things about people's weight or personal life or bad decisions they have made and it's things that really would just be left unsaid or at least if they were gonna be said they could maybe use a little more "tact". I know it still would be awful to feel like someone was looking down their nose at your kid even if they weren't.

 

We actually decided to send our kids to private school because I thought it might help us avoid some of this stuff. Our school system here is terrible and the sad thing is that it's not the kid's fault because they are just a product of their environment. I just felt like if we went with a baptist private school that we might get a better quality of parent. Ironically, though, one night during the Tee Ball season a little boy on Ben's team started messing with him in the dugout and I saw it and Ben told him to stop and he didn't and Ben told him louder and he didn't and so finally I sternly raised my voice and said "CLAY" and he stopped and looked at me and I said "DON'T". His mom was watching the dugout and she looked right at me. Then after the game Ben had actually won the gameball that night and the coach was about to present it to him and the little boy took his hat off and REALLY smacked him in the face with it! Well his aunt was right there and she WENT OFF on him for it and made him apologize. So I went to the coach and told him about it privately and he said he would deal with it. Well that little boy's dad and mom were people I graduated with and they are GREAT people. So a few days later his dad called me and asked me about it and apologized profusely and we even had prayer before we hung up the phone. The funny thing though was that this kid also went to the same private school we are sending the kids too! So it was just sort of a wake up call for me that it can happen anywhere. But at least when you're dealing with more level headed parents you can get it taken care of more peacefully. The little boy just needed a little guidance about things and that's what all kids need. I feel sorry for bullies because there's obviously a deficiency somewhere that's causing it in most cases.

 

I definitely think it is a generational thing. If my grandparents were still alive I'm sure they would have no frame of reference when it comes to stuff like this because it was a different time and different circumstances. Heck I look at my own parents and my older brother and I, my younger sister somewhat too, got spanked when we misbehaved but by the time my younger brother was born I parents had become some what enlightened about discipline and stopped spanking and moved into timeouts. To which I say thanks a lot mom and dad where was this enlightenment when I had a thick wallet and rolled my butt check into the paddle lol