Everett gets 1 hour of therapy with a trained therapist per week. We rotate biweekly between occupational therapy and feeding therapy/yoga. What does that mean? The other 167 hours in the week are ALL ME. Granted, he sleeps for part of that, so lets say approx 100 hrs a week, I’m focusing on what I …
The Birmigham Children’s Theater started doing sensory friendly shows this year. I was so freaking excited when I learned this. I was already thinking about reaching out to them to do a review and I just happened to meet part of their marketing team at Everett’s school. She invited us to come to their first …
Living Life On The Spectrum: Navigating Sensory Friendly Plays Read More »
Living Life On The Spectrum: Navigating Live Shows I’ve decided to start a new series about tips & tricks to navigating live shows when you’re taking an SPD/ASD kiddos to them. I’ll be covering both sensory and non sensory friendly shows. The posts will encompass the pros/cons of the show and how we prepared for/handled …
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As you may remember, we received Everett’s official autism diagnosis last week. It’s weird. Nothing has changed but a label, but everything feels so different. While I had an idea that Everett might have autism, I felt like I could explain most of his behaviors away with the SPD and being a toddler. Now I …
My child is autistic. There, I said it. I brought up the elephant in the room. I said the “A” word you whisper about, out loud. Yet when you say it out loud, I mentally cringe. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to hearing someone else say it. If it will ever feel like …
With Everett starting a school type program next week, I got with his therapist and started making a plan. You might remember that Everett was enrolled in a Waldorf school last year…and sort of kicked out. This was pre-diagnosis, so they weren’t able to handle him without a plan. This time I was determined to …
And the years are short. That is the mantra of my life. You know the 3 fast forward options on the remote-slow, medium, and lightning speed? I stepped into adulthood and someone pressed the fast forward button, then they pressed it again when I had Everett, and again when I had Finn. I blink and …
Beautiful Chaos If you would have asked me to describe myself before becoming a mother, I would have probably used some sort patched together vision of myself that involved words such as random, quirky, adventuresome, easy going, care-free, and fun-loving. I always knew that I wanted to have children of my own, but I didn’t …
Everett gets 1 hour of therapy with a trained therapist per week. We rotate biweekly between occupational therapy and feeding therapy/yoga. What does that mean? The other 167 hours in the week are ALL ME. Granted, he sleeps for part of that, so lets say approx 100 hrs a week, I’m focusing on what I need to do to balance Everett’s therapeutic needs with everything else, like Finn and my husband. I’m not going to lie, sometimes I lose sight of that bigger picture, but I’m working on stepping back and taking a breath when we get frustrated and overwhelmed.
Therapy. Aside from the questions I get about SPD, the other set of questions I get asked the most about are Everett’s therapy.
Most people don’t realize that there is therapy for kids like Everett, so they always ask what exactly it entails and if it will “fix him.”
First and foremost, let’s talk about what “sensory integration therapy” is.
Sensory integration therapy aims to help kids with sensory processing issues by exposing them to sensory stimulation in a structured, repetitive way.
The theory behind it is that over time, the brain will adapt and allow kids to process and react to sensations more efficiently. So no, it will not “fix” Everett, but it will help him integrate better into societal norms.
So I’ve answered the what and why, let’s talk about how therapy works.