One morning, our son, Seb, and I were watching a cartoon together, Disney’s Little Einsteins. The Little Einsteins were traveling through a city of enormous buildings painted with a dazzling array of contrasting colors. Both Seb and I stared at the complicated cacophony of color. The images posed a small-scale brilliance similar to Hundertwasser paintings. We were captivated by the magenta, peach, lime, and scarlet display of architecture.
The Little Einsteins traveled through a city scape that reminded me of Hundertwasser’s 151 Bleeding Houses.
Suddenly, my boy experienced an involuntarily reaction. His body contorted itself, as if a nerve had been pinched. His upper lip went right, his lower lip left. With his face in a grimace, his arms, elbows and wrists twisted into the shape of a pair of pterodactyl wings. He flapped momentarily. I was beside myself as he blurted out, “Turn it off! Turn it off!” Although I quickly flicked off the cartoon, Seb continued to hobble around the room in an awkward manner, unable to right his disfigurement.
Most of us tolerate unusual arrangements and patterns of color, but Seb does not. He is challenged by sensory dysfunction. Sensory dysfunction is an apparent problem, or a host of apparent problems, with the brain’s processing of neurological information acquired via the senses. In other words, it’s an obvious dysfunction exhibited by inappropriate reactions to sensual stimulation. Also known as a Sensory Processing Disorder, it’s an abnormal experience of everyday sights, touches, sounds, scents, and flavors. It can be debilitating to a child’s balance and capacity to plan and carry out movements in response to everyday life. Seb’s innate reaction to seeing the cartoon is a symptom of his brain’s sensory dysfunction.
A couple of tests, or sensory processing measures, may be applied to a kid to qualify his ability to coordinate his body with sensory input. These sensory processing measures are administered by a registered occupational therapist either at school or in a clinical setting. The kid’s ability is qualified by his responses to typical sensual stimulation. Does he like to flip light switches on and off repeatedly? Does he jump a lot? Does he seem to enjoy sensations that should be painful? The test results might show that a kid can process one sense well enough, and another not at all. To put it simply, the slower, more lacking and otherwise more inappropriate a child’s response to sensual input, the higher the degree of sensory dysfunction he experiences.
Sensory integration therapy may be an effective treatment for sensory dysfunction in toddlers with a comorbid diagnosis of the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). But what is sensory integration therapy and how can it help? Medical experts disagree on what sensory dysfunction is, its causes, and its mitigation requirements, so sensory integration therapy is not always prescribed. As a parent of a kid diagnosed with ASD and sensory dysfunction, I can say that the dysfunction is real.
Why I Watch the Wheel
Children diagnosed with ASD seem to be fixated on the acquisition of certain kinds of sensual data. On one hand, many kids with ASD are fascinated with spinning objects and focus their eyes on the blades of spinning fans, the spokes of spinning wheels, the saw teeth of spinning books, and the gangling edges of spinning television remote controls. I admit, I do not know why kids with ASD are fascinated with spinning things, but I suspect they seek the calming effect of a sort of hypnosis. Our kid will visually simulate the sensation of spinning, as he looks out the corners of his eyes while rotating his head about the neck. At times, he seems to find comfort in spinning himself in circles.
While he has learned that some visual stimulation is pleasing, he is also bothered by other kinds of visual stimulation, like the bright, flashing lights and coordinated sounds of prime-time television. As Seb regressed into autism at a young age, he was disinterested in typical toddler activities, like watching cartoons and other children’s shows. Whenever the television was on, he would look elsewhere or line up and park his toy cars. But, oddly enough, as he defied his autism every night after taking a bath. He would demand that we sit down for an episode of Wheel of Fortune. No doubt Seb was calmed by watching the wheel spin, whether the pointer poked at $350 or to Jackpot. Deep down, of course, I believe Seb just wanted to spend a couple of extra moments with Dad before bedtime.
The Terror of Noise
I am sure you have heard that kids diagnosed with ASD are special. Many of them have a lesser degree of tolerance for unusual noise. Perhaps, they have no tolerance at all and that, for instance, the noise made by hand dryers simply scares the bejesus out of them. While Seb seemed drawn to spinning things, he was violently opposed to harsh sounding things. The noise of an automatic hand dryer absolutely frightened Seb.
But, really, what is the big deal about the sound of a hand dryer frightening someone? I mean, let’s be honest, who enjoys hearing the sound of one of those enamel-coated, wall-mounted hot air blowers? No one. Who hates it? Everyone. Now, who tolerates the sound? Anyone who wants to walk out of a public bathroom without flapping their hands dry. Most people have tolerated this noise long enough for industrial engineers to, at last, once and for all, advance automatic hand drying technology to eliminate the over-the-top air force of a veritable reverse vacuum cleaner.
Seb was so frightened of hand dryers that he would forego Happy Meals to avoid hearing one. Within sight of the Golden Arches, he would run in the opposite direction. Once inside, unfazed, he would scream a bloody war cry out to everyone, all of the McDonald’s employees and customers, against hand dryers. His protests attracted quite a lot of attention. De-sensitizing Seb to the noise of a hand dryer required patience and a willingness to deflect the daggers of scorn being thrown at me by my neighbors. I once carried him from the door of the playground, across the entire restaurant, to the exit door, as he screamed in terror. His sole fear was that he’d have to walk past a restroom. In our wake, a crowd of concerned mothers and annoyed fathers.
Telltale Signs
Symptoms of sensory dysfunction are not always obvious. Our son simply had to be reminded and prompted multiple times to complete simple tasks like dressing or undressing. His attention span seemed to be very short. Telltale signs emerged, making it clear that Seb experienced significant sensory dysfunction. Some of Seb’s behaviors we later recognized as symptoms include walking everywhere on tippy-toes, a penchant for spinning himself in circles, and his habit of repeating again in whispers the things he says out loud. Of course, treatments exist to lengthen short attention spans, and we would have sooner considered feeding our boy drugs than taking him to a sensory integration therapist, if it had not been prescribed by our son’s pediatric neurologist.
What Now?
Someday I would like to be able to say, “Even after all this therapy and effort to help him, maybe Seb was normal. Maybe he did need a little more time to develop than most kids.” Until then, these sensory challenges are difficult to ignore. Once we were able to recognize these telltale signs as symptoms of sensory dysfunction, we needed to act–and fast. Soon I will share some of our mitigation strategies regarding how we have helped Seb develop his processing ability and foster an acceptance of his senses.
The Meandering Sidewalk 