Amanda Introduction/ODD

Hi, I’m Amanda. I’m a 29yo SAHM of two boys. I’m happy to be here. I’ll be relating life with a child who has Oppositional Defiant Disorder. At least that’s my son’s official diagnosis. He has many traits of other behavioral disorders, but not enough to change his diagnosis at this point. Life with an ODD child can be very challenging at times. It takes over a huge chunk of family life. Part of the trick to the balance is that you have to not let the child know they’re controlling what is happening with the family, but yet their disorder does control much of the way you parent and run your household. Very catch 22.

I knew around the time my son was 18 months old something was different about him. He was still communicating in cave man grunts mostly, and was pretty aggressive when he didn’t get his own way. His pediatrician insisted that as long as he was communicating that it was just a phase and the physical things would subside as my son developed his language skills. She was wrong. Finally, at age 3 1/2 I got a doctor to see that it was not a phase, and to refer us to a psychologist. Here we are 4 years later, and it’s still a struggle at times. I think the hardest part is that my son is older, but acts so immature for his age. We expect him to act 7, but do to a lack of impulse control, he acts more like his 2yo brother.

I’m happy that Stefanie brought me on to talk about ODD and my son’s other issues so that if nothing else I can let other parents going through the same thing know that they’re not alone. I also look forward to learning while I’m here. While not formally diagnosed, my son also has sensory issues.

My 5 yr old son has SPD, and he has come a long way. However, when he has a sensory melt down, it’s big! This past weekend was beautiful weather here in sunny San Diego, but he could not handle the heat or the brightness. And then when we put him in the shade he was bothered by the grass and fear of ants. I plan on putting many things in place to help him, but I am eager to hear any tips I can as the warm months approach. Any meltdown he’s had this year in Kindergarten has occurred on a hot day, so he is highly sensitive to it. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!!!

Introducing April aka MB’s mommy

My name is April and I been an Early Childhood Special Educator for over 12 years. Since I was a toddler I always loved babies and as I grew up I became a “child magnet”. Everywhere I went I ended of playing or loving on the children. As I grew older, I developed a “wonder” of wanting to “figure” kids out and to look at them for who they were and what they were able to “give”. I wanted to figure out how each one of them learned and what I could do as an educator to help them reach their own personal potential. So many times I have seen babies and toddlers be given a “stamp” or diagnosis or be judged on their “actions” or abilities, but didn’t see those same “stamp givers” set up a plan or try to help those children be successful.

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Shireen’s Intro

Hi, my name is Shireen and I am a speech language pathologist who has both professional and personal experience with SPD. Stefanie has invited me to this blog to help out with Therapy Thursdays and answer any questions that I can. I would like to tell you a little about myself and my experience with SPD. I became a speech language pathologist and worked in an elementary school for a couple years before my daughter was born. I loved my job and I quickly learned about SPD and many other disablities. However I had no idea that this job was really just the beginning of my training.

Interview: Lori’s Child

Giving your SPD child more options

So far to help her throughout the day we have been doing yoga ball exercises (explained here). This is something she really enjoys and seems to really help her.

We are also getting her “control book” ready. I took pictures of all her things: things she eats, things she plays with, things that are in our schedule and so on. So starting, hopefully tomorrow, we will be able to let her have more control over what she wants. So tomorrow I will sit her at the table and give her two choices. I’ll show her a picture of cereal and a picture of a bagel and let her pick which one she wants. Now this will be a little tricky because Little Miss doesn’t point to things that she wants. She does, however, sometimes point to things that she wants us to look at but just not at whatever it is that she is trying to get.

Then at playtime I’ll show her a picture of her little toy phone and a picture of her stuffed animal and let her choose which one she wants to play with. This lets her have more control over things throughout her day, which in turn will make her feel happy because she got to choose what *she* wants.

We will also show her pictures and explain what is going to happen next. Like a picture of the bathtub, “Ok Little Miss, now Mama is going to put you in the bathtub and (showing her a picture of her ducky) you get to play with your duck.” Then at bedtime, “Little Miss now it’s time for bed. Let’s say goodnight.” This lets her know what’s coming, helps her put words with actions and routines *and* prepare herself for the next step.

Letting your child have more options is great. And after they get the idea that you show them the picture, they pick and you give it to them then you can move onto step two of the ‘control book’ process. If your child is like mine then helping them put words together and begin to form those words is a huge, very important step. So after she gets it I will then start to hold up two different pictures for her to choose from and ask her, “Little Miss, do you want the banana? Or do you want the apple?” but when I ask her I will hold the picture up close to my mouth and over-exaggerate the words. “…b-a-n-a-n-a?” or “…a-p-p-l-e?” and hopefully after a while she will start watching my mouth and start trying to say, instead of point, to which one she wants.

I am going to laminate my photos for her so that they will last a long time. You never know, maybe after she gets all this down we can figure out some new thing to do with them. But for right now this is enough. If you decide to do this with your child I highly recommend saving yourself some laminating sleeves and doing pics of foods on one side and pics of objects on the back. That way you can turn them over to do the next picture instead of having 100 pictures all one-sided.

What are some things you have made for your child that help in your everyday life?

Stefanie’s Intro

Michelle’s Intro

My name is Michelle, and I am the 29 year old mother of 4 children, ages 13, 11, 4, and 2. For a little while, I had noticed that my 2 year old son had some issues that my other children never seemed to exhibit when they were that age. He always hated being dressed, and would take off his clothes or diapers, or complain about the tags in his clothes.. He didn’t like to touch certain toys if they had a bumpy texture, and didn’t like things like play dough, or anything with an overly soft texture. He just had a hard time with ANYTHING involving texture, senses, etc. He would get really overwhelmed in public places and just have a complete and total meltdown, and it would take him a few days until his body completely calmed down enough. I just knew something wasn’t right.

At his 2 year old check up, his pediatrician suggested contacting Early Intervention in our state. I was so scared, because I had no idea what to expect. I had done some research on Sensory Processing Disorder, but just couldn’t find a lot of information, and wasn’t sure if my son had it or not.

The day of our evaluation came, and halfway through, the evaluator pulled me aside and said “He clearly has Sensory Processing Disorder. We’ll do everything we can to help both of you work through this”

And that began our journey into Sensory Processing Disorder. It hasn’t always been easy, and it hasn’t always been pretty. It’s been a journey of discovering new information, new resources, and new friends.

I was SO happy to meet Stefanie and to find out that we both have a child who has SPD. What are the chances?! We’ve helped each other through hard times with our children, and have listened to each other vent about the frustrations that SPD brings. We hope to be here to listen to you vent as well!

We hope you will find this to be a place where you can come for information, support, or place a place to come where you know you’re not alone. I know sometimes when dealing with this, it feels like you’re the ONLY one out there that has to go through this, but I promise — there are others out there, and we’re all in this together!

Explaining SPD to others

Explaining SPD to people that know nothing about it and know nobody with it is a hard thing to do. I was faced with this when my oldest daughter (8) asked me what was wrong with her sister and what SPD was. ‘How do I explain this to an eight year old?’ I thought to myself. Hmm…well how else to explain it than simply and directly. So this is what I said and did.

I sat her down in front of me and said, “Honey, I’m going to do a bunch of different things and we’re going to see how you react to them. Ok?” She agreed and so I touched her arm, talked really loud, blew in her face and moved around.

“Honey, see you can hear, see, feel and smell me and your body takes all that information and sends it up to your brain. When all that information gets to your brain it is divided into different files and processed. Your brain can handle it and you do fine with all those different kinds of information at the same time. In your sister’s case her body sends all the information up to her brain and it doesn’t have enough files for her to process what’s going on so she freaks out and has a tantrum. She doesn’t understand why and she gets frustrated and that’s why she acts the way she does. Does that make sense?”.

And much to my surprise she said she understood. She then said, “Mama, are her files just too full?” lol My response was, “Well yes, kind of. Her files just can’t hold as much information as yours can. When her files get too full she doesn’t know how to react.”

Our first day having our Speech Therapist here I asked her why some days were worse than others. She said that she looks at it like a cup; each emotion, sound, touch and so on that she receives and takes in just keeps adding up until the cup is full and then it’s meltdown time. So we need to learn how much she can take and when to say when. It is difficult some days because some days she seems to wake up with her “cup” already half full. It could be something small like a noise that woke her up or she rubbed up against something and it irritated her and that could fill her cup up a little. So we really have to watch and learn her warning signs before a tantrum so we know that we need to do something to help empty the cup. Make sense?

How did you explain SPD to your family, friends and especially children? Please share.

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