amazing discoveries

I learned so much in our one hour sensory evaluation yesterday, that I cannot even begin to put it all into words, but I will try.

First - I am now officially a huge sensory therapy addict! From just my ONE hour evaluation, it had such a huge impact on our life. Nearly everything that we have been troubled over is sensory related and can be helped.

For more sensory related info, join this site: www.sensoryplanet.org - become a member, join some groups, gather info, inform your brain, change your life!

Ok, so first our OT/PT (Sue) asked what areas am I the most concerned about. Wow, most concerned? Of course I have this huge gigantic list of sensory issues that I have discovered just from reading about it, but what am I the most concerned about? I had to keep telling myself "small steps, small steps". So, my most concerning issues would be his noise sensitivity (because it makes it so he can't eat lunch at school) and his handwriting/coloring (because well, just because I don't want him to keep struggling). I think she noticed me fretting over only having to select a few to start so she let me rattle off my entire list and took notes. Here are our key issues:

• noise sensitivity
• handwriting/coloring
• rocking, hair twirling, hand flapping
• chewing
• uses his hands to eat
  
• feel of things on his skin
  

She then had me complete a sensory profile to get a better gauge on where he was across the board, including things I had never heard of or read about -- super enlightening! While I was doing the "test", she was working with boy on handwriting, definitely an issue there.

Sue played a game with boy where he had to use his right hand (writing hand) to pick up dry elbow macaroni, only using his right hand. He had to palm the macaroni and then, still using just his right hand, he had to put each macaroni into a cup one at a time. This was extremely difficult for him and he kept wanting to use his left hand to help. He had no problems picking up the macaroni (using index finger and thumb coordination), but had a huge amount of difficulty using his index finger/thumb to manipulate the noodle from the palm of his hand, to his finger tips and into the cup. This is a game we will now play at home to help strengthen that motor skill.

*Using his hands to eat could be that he likes the feel or it could be lack of control over the utensils.

So, he lacks in the motor skill department, which I anticipated. However, what I did not realize is how the motor skills affect other areas. (I hope I can explain this as well as Sue did!). She took him to a huge play room with various swings hanging from the ceiling, bean bags, jumping ball areas, ladders, slides -- it was the coolest room. She told him that he could play with anything he wanted and she watched him react.

1. He did awesome transitioning to the new room, kudos!
2. After she told him he could play anything he wanted, he was super timid.
3. He asked "what does this do" pointing to a swing and she would only respond with "I don't know" and he would just stand there.
4. Finally, he decided he would try out the swing and stated that it looked like a swing (it was like a huge padded rectangular shape) and he sat on the swing.
5. After sitting on it and gently swinging he stood up and walked away from it.

This type of play continued. What Sue noticed from this was that he lacked the basic parts of motor skill development. Basically there are 3 things that happens with motor skills (which I hope I am calling it he correct thing) -

1. You get a new toy and you come up with a bunch of ideas on how you can play with it (new blocks - oh I can stack them, I can put them into the bucket, etc etc)
2. You execute and try out your ideas (ok I'm stacking the blocks, oh they don't stack well, that's not any fun...)
3. You move on to the next idea that you had with the toy (ok so stacking wasn't fun, lets put them in the bucket)

Processes 1 - 3 loop over and over. With boy, he sat on the swing and didn't think to do anything else with it. While I sat watching I thought to myself "stand on it, shake it side to side" and it doesn't appear he had any of those thoughts. Learning steps 1 - 3 are huge for motor development and later for handwriting development - being able to think out what you are planning to write, writing it, going back to the other ideas, putting it on paper, etc.

While we played in the sensory room, she rattled off tidbits of information about my other concerns.

His rocking and hair twirling can be many things; balance issues (vestibular), anxiety related or due to under stimulation.

For balance issues (which he doesn't like to be off the ground except while swinging) the auditory and vestibular nerves are close together. Sometimes children who have auditory issues (his noise sensitivity) will try to overcompensate by rocking and moving (vestibular).

For anxiety issues the rocking/hair twirling could be a way to self-regulate himself and calm himself. For most people, when we are anxious we are able to internally talk ourselves down, but for him he may not have that ability so he tries to achieve that by rocking/hair twirling.

For any of these, we must use him as a guide to figure out what he is lacking and change the behavior to one more appropriate.

There is so much more that I could report on and I am sure I will add to this post soon, but I think I will publish now before it becomes too large.

Overall, I am extremely excited for this new adventure. I feel like we are finally moving!!

Appointments are weekly, I will report everything we do at the appointments. Please let me know if anyone has any suggestions!!