The Journey into SPD

I still vividly remember the day we went in for an annual checkup. My son had a thing about squeezing his arms and, of course, they checked his blood pressure for the first time that day. It undid him. So the rest of his appointment was spent trying to console him and get him to calm back down. The doctor was making friendly banter with the kids...Will I find Cookie Monster in your ear? It works. They laugh. But, when we mentioned some of our concerns with our son, you could actually see the shift in her demeanor as she went straight into doctor mode. A litany of questions followed. The two that I most remember:

-Do tags on his shirt bother him? (Yes.)

-Does he like so snuggle/hug? (Only with me.)

She gave us a referral to see an Occupational Therapist so they could observe him. I left the office feeling more afraid than when we got there. The doctor had just confirmed my fear. There was something different about him that we needed to address.

We had an appointment with an OT at Our Children's House. I have to admit, I was even more afraid when we got there. I felt completely out of my element as I wondered what in the world we were doing here. We were surrounded by children in wheelchairs that couldn't move, some that could barely speak, and some that had various tubes still attached to them. I had NO idea what an OT did, and even less of an idea as to what she might do for us.

Our OT was a woman about my age named Brooke. I am so thankful to have met her and can not imagine a better fit for our family. She observed him for almost an hour and a half, making notes, doing small tests with him. We were still so new to this world, we had no idea what all she was looking for.

At the end of his evaluation, she pulled us into a room and told us that she was noticing some definite sensory behavior and that we would get our evaluation in the following weeks. We did leave that day with a name: Sensory Processing Disorder. I felt shell shocked, still not knowing what was going on and what this meant for my son's development.

When the evaluation finally came, it was so very hard to read it. He was significantly behind in fine motor development. He was four at the time, but had the coordination of a two year old in some areas. It was looking at that paper that broke my heart. What would that mean for the long run? Would he always have challenges? What would that mean for school? My husband has an amazing way of calming me down. He looked at the evaluation as a set of areas where we need to improve, whereas I saw it as everything my child lacked.

At this point we still didn't really know what was going on and what Occupational Therapy would do for him. But we committed to going back and soon began our journey into finding out all we could about Sensory Processing Disorder. I'll continue to share more about our discoveries, challenges, and victories as we made our way into that world.