During Carson's first year of life, we bagan noticing that Carson was very good at gross motor activities (walking, climbing, running, etc.,). Compared with all of other boys of similar age, he was always the first to walk and run. However, his speech was very delayed compared with his peers. At about 1 year old, his behavior became more challenging for us. At his 18 month checkup, I spoke with the pediatrician about his speech and I thought that it needed to be evaluated further. He agreed and we proceeded to have the Children's Therapy Center evaluate his speech. When he was tested, he was delayed (1.4 standard deviations), but not delayed enough to qualify for assistance (>= 1.5 SD). As a result, we began weekly speech therapy appointments and paid for it out of our own pockets (since our insurance did not pay for speech therapy (ST). While we were doing ST, our speech therapist at the time noticed that Carson always did things very hard. For example, he would play with playdoh in a very rigid manner, hitting it hard. He wasn't soft with things, he always did things with force and vigor. This is how he played as well. He was a risk taker (jumping from slides, climbing things, etc.,). As a result, our SLP recommended that he be evaluated by an occupational therapist (OT). We did and he was then diagnosed with sensory seeking sensory processing disorder (SPD) (check out the "links" section of this blog to learn more about SPD). His behavior continued to escalate and he was very difficult to control (having very irrational fits and difficult to console). To us, this was our "normal", this was our first and only child and we didn't know any different. As the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place, things started to make sense! I was continually talking with our ST/OT therapist about his behavior and he was finally tested again. As a result of this testing, he finally qualified for the SKIP program (South King Couty Early Intervention Program). He could finally get therapy that he needed that the state could help us pay for.
Carson's speech continued to improve. We were using all kinds of signs that we learned in order to communicate with him. This helped with some of his frustration, but he continued to be a very frustrated little boy. Out of sheer desparation, we started behavior therapy trying to learn some skills to help us better parent Carson. We continued this therapy for about a year. We saw some results, but continued to have difficulties with him.
Once Carson turned 3 years old, his therapy is managed by the school district. This is what early intervention is all about...getting him ready for learning in school and being successful in life! So, at 2 1/2 years old we began testing him again to see if he would qualify for the developmental preschool program with the school district. The qualification factors are much more rigid that qualifying for the SKIP program. Since SPD is not a recognized diagnosis (not in the DSM manual), this cannot be one of the qualifying factors. He definitely qualified for behavior and he kept falling thru the cracks with qualifying for speech. He understood words and could say them, but just didn't articulate them well. Finally, with some further testing, he qualified under speech articulation (thank you Becca for your dedicated testing to qualify him!). So, on his 3rd birthday, he began attending the preschool program at the local elementary school. This is a 2 1/2 hour program 4 days a week. He is transported to school by a school bus. You can imagine how frantic mom was when they are driving off with my little boy on a school bus! He did marvelously! He has learned so much just by being in a very structured environment working with him on his social skills, speech articulation, etc., He loves it!
Meanwhile, along comes baby Logan...George boy number two! As Logan grew up, we saw a lot of similarities with him compared with Carson. He was also high motor functioning and began also having some speech delays. In addition, Logan was falling a lot, constantly bonking his head on anything and everything and was excessively drooling. He couldn't seem to keep his balance. At 18 months of age, he was also evaluated for speech delays and immediately qualified for the SKIP program (thank God!). He also has sensory seeking SPD. While we began working with Logan, our speech therapist recommended that we try a SPIO suit. SPIO stands for Stabilizing Pressure Input Orthosis (check out http://spioworks.org for more information) is basically a full body compression suit (shirt and pants). He wears this suit all day, every day. What it does is provides compression to his body. In turn, his body sends signals to his brain to tell him where his body is at in space. Now, that sounds kinda weird but here's an analogy for you. You know when your foot falls asleep and you have to move it to know where your foot actually is? Well, that's the same thing that happens with SPD. Once your brain knows where your body parts are, you are better able to control them. As a result, Logan's balance issue dramatically improved. He wasn't falling and bonking his head nearly as much as before. It also helped him with drooling. He was able to work on projects (hard work for him) and still know how to swallow his saliva at the same time (some things you just take for granted)! His demeanor kind of changed as well. He was much more content with life once he started wearing his SPIO suit. As Logan continued to wear his suit (we call it his superman suit), we began seeing changes in his speech. He was saying words that just came from nowhere! WOW...what a change! We were just amazed.
I kept thinking that if we have seen such a big change with Logan, what would happen if Carson started wearing the SPIO suit? We had previously tried it with Carson, but he just wouldn't tolerate it...he would fight us and fight us. At the time that we tried it, we just weren't up for another battle with him, so we gave it up. But, now that we saw it's potential, we decided that Carson was no longer a "voting member" in the decision to wear the SPIO suit. We weren't sure how we were going to pull it off, but we owed it to Carson (and ourselves) to try it again. So, we saved the challenge for the weekend. We got up that morning and told Carson that he could go to Home Depot with daddy if he wore the superman suit. We told him that it would give his body hugs all day and that it would feel really good. He fought us a bit, but we did get it on him. We then put his clothes on top of it. We were off to enjoy our day. After the inital challenge of getting the SPIO suit on Carson, it instantly became a "non-challenge." At one point, Carson took off his clothes and was just wearing his SPIO suit. He loved the feel of it (so soft and slick). By that evening, Carson DID NOT want to take it off! He actually went to bed wearing it! Wow...what a change from our original expectation! As time went by, we started seeing big changes in Carson...mostly in his demeanor and behavior. His behavior went from "irrational" and out of control fits to "rational" fits! It's hard to explain what we were seeing other than to say that we began being a much more happy family together! Carson's behavior has changed so dramatically that he is a happy boy and we are a happy family. Don't take me wrong...we continue to have our challenges, but life is so much better now! We owe our lives to SPIO and are so thankful that we learned about SPIO!
As we continue to learn more about SPD, we begin to learn more about why the boys act the way they do. My hope is that this blog helps you to learn about SPD and how we are moving to overcome SPD and it's challenges. Please check out the links section of this blog to learn more about SPD.
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