Our Journey with SPD

While reviewing my last few posts, I realized that I start off almost every one of them with “It’s been a long time since I last updated…” – so no excuses this time. I’m just going to just jump right in…

On May 23rd, at the advice of our pediatrician, we got Connor developmentally tested. What does that mean exactly? It means that my sweet baby was subjected to a four hour evaluation by five different doctors (pediatrician, psychologist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, speech therapist). We literally sat in a room with a two way mirror, video camera and a microphone set up in the corner and they ran him through a series of tests to gauge his fine motor skills, gross motor skills, cognative development, social development etc.

It was intense and Connor did well. It was not his best performance ever, but who can blame him. After an hour of being poked, proded and challenged – he was done. He kept asking to go home - but we still had another three hours to go.

At this point, you’re probably asking yourself several questions. 1. Why did our pediatrician feel that this level of evaluation was necessary? 2. What was the outcome?

We’ll first; we’ve been worried about Connor’s development for a long time. He has always been a little delayed but we started to notice that these delays were getting in the way of his ability to relate to his peer-group at school. Example: each morning Connor would run into his classroom and sit down to join a group of kids who were playing with blocks or cars. He would immediately jump in and start playing with the same toys that they were. However, if they were playing cars then Connor would pick up the car, turn it over, start spinning the wheels and stick the whole thing in his mouth to feel the vibration.

As his peer-group got older this type of behavior became unacceptable. They started thinking it was gross to put toys in your mouth and they knew the “correct” way to play with cars, etc. Connor began to be ostrascized. Please rest assured that this is not the only reason, but it gives a fairly solid example of what was going on in his world.

So that leads us to the second question, “what was the outcome of the evaluation?”

The panel of evaluators felt that Connor has Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). SPD is a condition that exists when sensory signals don’t get organized into appropriate responses. It can be likened to a neurological “traffic jam” that prevents certain parts of the brain from receiving the information needed to interpret sensory information correctly. So in the example above, Connor’s nervous system was seeking the vibration caused by the car with spinning wheels.

Essentially, they felt that Connor would benefit from regular visits with an Occupational, Physical and Speech Therapist to help retrain his nervous system to respond correctly to signals from his environment.

So fast forward several weeks, Connor is full swing into his therapy sessions (1x per week OT, PT and ST) and he’s doing GREAT! I’ll talk more about his therapy in another post, but when I asked his OT if she felt that Connor would be able to overcome this challenge and function in normal school settting, she said YES!! She does not feel that this is something that will hinder him throughout his life. With the proper therapy, Connor will be able to fully integrate with his peer group and learn how to accurately process sensory signals from his environment.

I have always been so proud of my baby boy! He is a fighter and when life get’s hard, he finds a way to get through it with a smile on his face. He is my inspiration and I am prepared to help him overcome this latest challenge. I love you Connor!!!