Making Sense of SPD

I tried to write my own checklist or questionnaire to enable other parents to check their child’s symptoms and to decide whether they may have a sensory processing disorder. I could not write it better than on the Sensory Processing Disorder.com website. It is the most comprehensive list that I can find of all the behaviors that may be exhibited under each sensitivity/category.

When I was told that my child may have some sensory processing problems, I did as much research as I could. I printed out the checklist, filled it in, studied the results and kept it around to refer to and maybe even checked a few more boxes when I realized that he was actually exhibiting some of the behaviors on the list that I didn’t think meant anything when I looked the first time; things such as, cracking his knuckles or the occasional head banging. I’m not sure why I didn’t think that the head banging was important, I think it’s just that he only did it occasionally. However, the times that he did, the circumstances were very similar.

The checklist helped me to really understand and anticipate his behaviors. I knew not to take him to the mall at the weekend. However, if it was absolutely necessary, I found that making a list of what I needed to buy and only concentrating on that shortened the time. Taking plenty of my child’s favorite snacks gave him something to chew on and focused his mind. The bribes or treats thing at the end never really worked. If the noise or lights bothered him he was going to act up whether he got his treat for ‘being good’ or not. He couldn’t help his reactions, ‘being good’ was asking the impossible here; his environment was painful for him so getting a treat was irrelevant. It would be the equivalent of telling an adult not to scream if they trapped their fingers in the car door.

My child dislikes hair brushing and nail cutting so I find that if I do it while he’s watching TV it doesn’t bother him as much. I even clean his teeth sometimes in front of the TV, not just because he complains less about the physical act of cleaning, but also because if I’m running late we don’t have to go through the whole countdown thing to help with transitioning. “In 10 minutes we are going to clean our teeth” “In 5 minutes we are going to clean our teeth” etc. It’s not a solution but it makes life easier.

I learnt that if my child is sensitive to something, say he doesn’t like his new sweater, he says it’s uncomfortable, and has got distressed about it and he doesn’t want to wear it, his other senses will be heightened too. He sits in the car on the way to school clearly bothered by the sweater, pulling at it, but also complains about his siblings making too much noise or the sun shining through the window.

Sometimes if he gets so distressed with his environment and is bothered by the noise/lights/close proximity to others/waiting in line such as at the mall, he has trouble regulating his body temperature, so will usually feel cold even in hot weather. Consequently, I always make sure I carry a sweater for him; he likes one with a hood, where he can hide away.

There is always a reason why my child does or doesn’t do something outside the obvious explanation. Because of his young age of 5, he doesn’t always understand why he is feeling the way he does. He also finds it very hard to talk about his feelings. Not understanding his emotions means he cannot compensate for them. To give an example, one Saturday night we were eating dinner in the kitchen (a smaller, brighter lit room than the dining room) we had extra guests and we were all laughing and joking, kind of fooling around rather loudly. My child decided halfway through the meal to pick himself up without saying anything and walk away from the table to another room and put on the TV. At first, you may think that he was being rude, perhaps disrespectful and what about eating all of his dinner? I realized that I had missed the obvious signs; he had gone very quiet (he could not concentrate on the conversation), from time to time was touching his ears to block sound and was squinting to avoid the lights. It was distressing for him to be in that loud, brightly lit environment, in close proximity to people and consequently the noise. To exasperate his sensitivities he did not understand the humor. However, sensory defensiveness does not account for all of his avoidance behaviors, not understanding humor at the dinner table, or his resistance to engage in tasks that are not interesting to him, are not due to sensory regulation issues.

For my child, his difficulty regulating sensory input can lead to an overly stimulated and more disorganized state. Think about it, if you were anxious, nervous or didn’t like to be around people on a particular occasion, maybe your shoes hurt your feet or your pants were too tight after a big lunch, you may have become uncharacteristically silent or very talkative, probably on edge and certainly keen to get home. My son generally becomes intolerably loud, climbs, jumps, even laughs. He does not cling or cry.

It has taken me a while to understand this. It has taken a while for other people who come into regular contact with my child to understand this. It is not easy to understand. The question is how do you truly know when he is having difficulty managing his sensory input and when he is just being a 5 year old boy?