s/o - sensory processing disorder - DC

wifeofadam · January 2014

I didn't want to clog up the other post on this topic, but I wanted to talk about it a little more with you.

It sounds like our LO's have the same type of processing problem. Auditory processing problems tend to run in my family and my MIL thinks that DH could have been classified as having an SPD similar to DS2 if diagnoses like that happened when he was little.

DS2 has always been like this. When he was a baby he would often stiffen up a lot randomly. He has a constant need to touch people and hug people, not realizing that it's often at inappropriate times. It's endearing in a way and what makes him, well, him - he's intense in every sense. He loves passionately with his strong hugs and overwhelming kisses, but also can be physically dangerous when he's unhappy. And he'll randomly knock things over out of nowhere, including the baby if she's sitting in the middle of the room. He'll walk up to her and grab her face and squeeze her too tightly. He just doesn't realize how hard and rough he is.

I feel so bad for him because he has spent so much more time than the other kids in time out for playing too rough or knocking stuff over and breaking it on purpose. I worried a lot last year that he was starting to become a self-fulfilling prophecy - "I'm always in trouble and therefore the bad one, so I'll just be the bad one." Since learning about SPD I've been trying to keep it in mind during punishments. I've also learned that if I touch him or hug him tightly while trying to talk to him I get a better response.

Anyways, I just found out about SPD last fall. It's interesting to me that we're both battling with children with food allergies and now this. A lot of my research in food allergies has to do with the gut and there is all of this interesting research out there about the role of the gut in other things like autism and ADHD. Perhaps SPD is one of those conditions that would benefit from a similar healing diet, like the one I'm doing with my oldest son. Maybe I'll put him on GAPS too. What diet are you trying with your son?

wifeofadam · January 2014

That's really interesting. Well, perhaps the diet DS1 and I are on WOULD be good fro DS2 since we've eliminated all grains.

I get the cooking issue. Do you do separate meals for people or everyone the same thing? I tried to do separate for a while when DS1 was younger and decided it was too much. Now with the whole GAPS thing I've been trying to cook the same thing for everyone, but sometimes DH and the other kids want some grains or potatoes and stuff like that.

At this point DS1 can't have dairy or peanuts for allergy reasons. I can't have soy. Now we've eliminated all grains, sugar, and starches. So really that leaves me with meat, eggs, veggies, fruit, and nuts. It's probably how we should be eating anyways. Sometimes I wonder if the allergies and my Crohn's Disease are a blessing rather than a curse, because they have forced me to research real nutrition and get my family healthy.

wifeofadam · January 2014

Thanks for the book rec. I'll order it today, as I've been looking for some new books to read now that I have the beginning of my evening free with the baby in the crib

Have you considered doing GAPS or something similar? I know that they say that true anaphylactic allergies are rarely healed through diets, but at this point I have nothing to lose with my son. There are anecdotes all over the internet of people who have been healed, so it's worth a shot for me. Between me with my Crohn's, DS1 with his allergies, and DS2's behavioral problems, I'm starting to think that our particular systems just don't respond well to grains. Have you read Wheat Belly? It's another good read that talks about this issue. Kind of like the HFCS and other additives you're avoiding, the grains our culture produces are a recipe for inflammation and disease. The information in the book might be helpful for you as you look for healing diets for your son.

My kids just woke up too, so I have to go, but I'd love to keep this dialogue going as you come across more info. I'm excited about the book rec, so thanks

wifeofadam · January 2014

Oh my goodness. You're dealing with a lot of food challenges in your house. I'm pretty lucky that DH isn't very picky. He's allergic to sweet potatoes and blue cheese, but since we can't eat the sweet potatoes on our diet and DS1 is allergic to dairy, DH's issues don't really affect us at all.

Tonight we're having meatballs in a red sauce with a spinach salad. If food wasn't an issue I would have pasta with it and incorporate some kind of cheese, but we make do with what we can.

It makes sense that timeouts don't work. That explains why DS2 can come in and out of timeout ten times in a day for the same thing over and over again.

It's funny, after the kids woke from naps I was getting their snacks ready and DS2 ran into the kitchen and pushed the baby over out on nowhere, While punishing him I asked him why he did it and he said "my brain told me to do it". Sigh. I don't even know how to deal sometimes. Maybe your book rec will help.

jdilorenzo · January 2014

I don't mean to but in..... My sister in law was having so much trouble with my niece. She read the out of sync child and worked with my niece and now she is a different child. My SIL said it was hard to make changes at first but it made such a difference My niece is now 5 and such a sweet axing little girl.

wifeofadam · January 2014

@jdilorenzo - Thanks for sharing! I'm really excited to read the book. As DC mentioned, I have days where I fear I'm going to lose my mind. The more I learn about his needs and how his mind works, the more capable I feel. Sometimes when we're having a bad day I feel like a total failure, like I should know how to deal with this stuff.

I guess in general, it makes me feel better to know I'm not alone in this.

light52 · January 2014

Sorry to butt in but my oldest is special needs. We started with and SPD diagnosis and then added ADHD and this fall added autism. All of these are interlinked and it is actually very rare for a child to just have SPD.

The baby has a gluten allergy and my husband is allergic to everything so we've recently gone completely gluten free in our house. The verdict is still out if it is helping my oldest because it hasn't been very long. I want to try dairy free too but he eats so little and milk is one of the few ways we can get the calories in him.

I know one of you mentioned Wheatbelly. Right now audible.com is offering a one month free trial and one free credit. I've had that book on my to read list for ages so I just downloaded it from audible and will listen to it as I can throughout the day.

wifeofadam · January 2014

@light52 I've always said that if my son were in a formal school setting he would totally have an ADHD diagnosis. I think the SPD goes hand-in-hand with it. Fortunately, I'm able to deal with his hyperactivity at home and try to do more kinesthetic learning activities for him to burn energy. I'm not even kidding, during the winter we sometimes have to put him on the treadmill and let him briskly walk for 10-15 minutes just so he can burn some energy. His need to squeeze and play roughly seems to multiply is he hasn't had a chance to be active and burn it off.

So many people shrug this stuff off and say it's just him being "a boy" and in many ways, I want to agree. I mean, he's a young boy who likes to move around. But he often takes it to a while new level. And I can't blame it on diet because he doesn't eat any sugar or food dyes or other additives. He doesn't drink milk, but he does consume other dairy products like yogurt and cheese. And he has a tiny amount of gluten each day (DS1 and I don't eat it, but I sometimes give the other kids a piece of toast for breakfast). I need to get the entire family eating grain-free. I think this thread has convinced me to give it a try,

TarheelMama202 · January 2014

@DC2London, out of curiosity (and I hope you don't mind me asking)-- when did you first start noticing signs with your oldest of his SPD?

vrlc1403 · January 2014

Sorry to butt in... A good friend of mine has a 3 yr old son who behaves very much like the way you have described your children (knocking things over, breaking things on purpose, hugging too tightly, no regard for consequences, and he FLIPS out at loud noises) His pedi has mentioned SPD, but its all still very new and not much has been done to help yet. Coincidentally, he also has peanut and egg allergies. I am going to tell her about that book, too. Hopefully it helps her, she is so overwhelmed right now. Thank you for sharing!

BBS! · January 2014

I highly recommend getting your child evaluated and not going off a self diagnosis. Sensory processing disorder is typically a symptom of a larger condition and subsequently doesn't even have a diagnosis in the DSMs-the book that psychologist and psychiatrists use for diagnosing. I'm not saying that a larger problem exists but that it could at least rule out other issues or help you understand why he is behaving this way. Sorry if I overstepped but I always get weary when I see things self diagnosed that are controversial.

wifeofadam · January 2014

Thanks, BBS. DS2 has a well-child visit at the end of the month and I plan to bring these issues up with his family doc and then go from there if she suggests it. I'm not terribly concerned about this issue, but I think it is worth getting the input from some professionals. I think I would be much more concerned if he were in school because there is no way he would sit still all day and would be one of those kids constantly in trouble for being too rough on recess or acting out in class.

DC - I didn't start noticing that anything was "off" with DS2 until he was closer to age 3 and playing in large social settings. It seemed that every family gathering we would go to where he was playing with all of his cousins, he was the one that all the other kids were complaining about. All of my nieces and nephews kept complaining that he wasn't fun to play with because he was mean or too rough. We kept having to pull him out of play when things would get too wild and he couldn't control himself. For over a year I kept ignoring it and just blamed it on the fact that we homeschool and he isn't regularly around large groups of kids, so he just doesn't know how to act, AND that he is "all boy". Eventually, just this past year, a good friend heard me complaining about this behavior and told me that DS2 reminded her of another friend's son who has SPD. I ignored it the first time, but when she brought it up the second time this past fall I decided to look into it and it all started to make sense.

light52 · January 2014

I think that it is great that you can homeschool DS and help him through his ADHD. I would love to do that with DS1 but he also has ODD (oppositional defiant disorder) and everything is a fight. His teachers can break through to him with learning way more than I can because they aren't mom too. I always knew he had more energy than his peers but it wasn't until around age 3 that I started searching more for answers because he started acting out more and more. Our pediatrician told us he was just a boy and my first child so I didn't really know the difference and he would outgrow it. I still pushed for an evaluation though. He wound up in OT for awhile and that is where we discovered SPD. A few months later our insurance changed and within minutes of seeing our new pediatrician he asked if we had ever considered ADHD or autism. We knew then that we had the right doc for us. Our doc pushed to get us in quickly to the autism clinic (new ped happened to be the head doc and my husband works for the hospital system so a few strings were pulled). That eval came back as severe ADHD and ODD. It wasn't until this fall that we finally got the autism diagnosis. I suspected it the whole time but they said the ADHD was so out of control that it was hard to tell what was lack of focus, what was age, and what was something else. As we got the ADHD under control and he grew older, it became more and more obvious.

I tell both of you all of this simply to let you know it is a process to figure out what is going on. Some kids are clear cut on what is going on and some are more complicated. Use your mom gut to decided where to go on each stage of the journey. I sit in a therapy waiting room three days a week (two oldest are in various therapies) and hear all kinds of stories but almost all of the parents talk about what a long process this journey is.

TarheelMama202 · January 2014

DC2London said:

I do not mind you asking, not a bit. I'm just not entirely sure how to answer that. My experience with SPD in the past has always been with children on the Autism spectrum. And, also, Jack is my firstborn. I didn't really have a yard stick, KWIM? What I now recognize as probable SPD symptoms are things that I always knew about Jack, but didn't necessarily put together, or identify as SPD. I had a few concerns around the time of Rhys' birth, but I always chalked it up to adjusting to a new sibling. Watching Rhys develop is what has made me really dig into what is going on with Jack. His response to Rhys crying is disproportionate at best. I was explaining it away before--he's annoyed, he needs attention, he's overtired. But I actually had the opportunity in the car recently to just observe what happens to him when Rhys cries and it is none of the above. It's something....more. So, I picked up a book on SPD and as I read, more and more and more things about Jack came to light as possibly being explained by SPD.

I don't know if any of that makes sense, it is kind of rambly. I didn't become "concerned" until he was 3 years old.

Thanks so much for answering! My experience with kids who have SPD has also always been in conjunction with autism. DS definitely has some little quirks that make me wonder, but I also know that I'm a paranoid FTM and that it could all very well be a phase. I am interested in reading the book you mentioned, though. I think it would be very helpful not just as a parent but also in school settings!

Want a personalized experience?

s/o - sensory processing disorder - DC

Re: s/o - sensory processing disorder - DC

Choose Another Board

Search Boards