Seb has made much progress in overcoming his intolerance for hand dryers, yet he pleads that all the windows in the house be closed whenever the sprinklers are watering the landscaping. It seems he cannot stand for the incessant sizzling sounds of spraying plant drink. He begs us to turn them off.
Our current mitigation plan includes closing all of the downstairs windows while the sprinklers quench the thirst of parched palms. As the summer continues to heat up, open windows cool the house. To optimize the watering schedule, keep the windows open and the house cool, I am about to reprogram the sprinklers to go off at a time when Seb is fast asleep. Meanwhile, we are patient that we’ll soon have a chance to explore potential long-term solutions to help Seb increase his tolerance for treble.
So many interventions are available for toddlers who’ve been diagnosed with ASD, the search for appropriate treatments can be baffling. My wife and I struggle to find appropriate sensory integration therapy, otherwise known as Occupational Therapy (OT), for our son. We sort through services available from public and private agencies. We find the right therapist by calling and interviewing them. Sometimes we need to pay for a trial evaluation. If we think we have a match, then we scramble for funding for frequent sessions, which might include a necessity to endure a grueling 45-day process to obtain pre-approval through our health insurance. Moreover, we know not all interventions are created equal.
Seb is slowly learning to embrace the sounds of life. At the History of Music Museum in Carlsbad, for the first time ever, he picked up the drumsticks.
Shopping for therapies is not like sampling desserts at the end of the frozen foods aisle of Costco. We cannot take one home, try it out, and if we don’t like it, return to Costco the next day to sample another. True, a single session with a therapist might tell us if we’ve bitten into something nasty.
Then again, a single session will not tell us if we have struck it rich and found an effective treatment. Therapies must be explored and tried out over the course of a month or more. Sometimes, we need to put our son on a wait-list that can take more than six months before an evaluation may even be made. Other times, the benefits of a particular therapy are not revealed for as long as a year. For instance, successful parents of ASD kids tell us that hyperbaric oxygen therapy might require almost a year of sessions before a breakthrough occurs. After a lot of time, patience and many payments to the health care provider, they finally experience results.
With various types of sensory integration therapy available, a kid with sensory dysfunction might need one or more of them, depending on his needs and the results of evaluations. Some are more effective for kids on one end of the spectrum, and less effective for those on the other. Some good for small kids, others perfect for big ones. Some more effective for your kid, less effective for mine. Fortunately, a wide range of intensities for sensory integration therapy exist to correct specific deficits in sensory processing.
Sensory Integration Therapies
Here is my brief description of sensory integration therapies that either have worked for our kid or we would like to try in the future:
Fast Forword: Fast Forword is a scientifically designed series of computer-based games that aid a child to process sounds, specifically those associated with language and communication. The program is typically administered by a speech pathologist over the summer, every day for about an hour. If playing computer games on an iMac were not exciting enough, as an incentive to play the games, the administrator of the program Seb took, Wings Speech and Lanugage Center, implemented a token economy. Seb saved his tokens and was rewarded with a small prize at the end of each week.
In one game, a child learns to listen and recognize all of the sounds of a single word. This game has a tic-tac-toe grid of the same drab, blobby shape, for a total of nine blobs. Obviously, the grid is designed to facilitate the player to focus on sounds, rather than on graphic presentations. The game begins by sounding a control word, a word that must be recognized to score points. Our son listens with headphones to the stretched control word. The software stretches and thereby lengthens the word’s sounds. Then each of the nine shapes sounds either the control word or a similarly sounding word. When Seb recognizes the word, he clicks the mouse to acknowledge and scores points. The points measure his progress and help him attain rewards.
Seb and Ashley make monkey bars out of the playground equipment. The goal of sensory integration therapy is to help Seb turn the world into his own personal jungle.
Big Fun Gymnastics: Big Fun Gymnastics is a provider of high-intensity sensory integration therapy. This therapy is administered in professional Olympic quality gymnasiums around the Los Angeles area and Orange County. The therapy incorporates competition-scale gymnastics equipment into exercises. The therapist utilizes balance beams, trampolines, parallel bars and gigantic foam shapes to build obstacle courses intended to challenge a kid with ASD. By training in the gym, our son developed motor planning skills by working through relatively complicated courses. Seb also demonstrated his rotational tolerance by sitting strapped into a swing and spinning like a top for several minutes. Once the therapist stopped the swing from spinning, Seb hopped down and proceeded to run in a straight line across the mat. This intensive sensory integration therapy helped Seb to develop a working memory, which is required to successfully approach and carry out novel, complex and multi-step procedures and routines.
Karate for All: Seb was recommended for this by his pediatric neurologist. This is a blend of martial art and occupational therapy that combines for an intensive sensory integration therapy. The chops, kicks, rolls, hops and blood-curdling Kiai of this martial art would certainly provide Seb with the kind of stimulation he naturally seeks. The discipline of this sport might help him with his focus. A group class might satisfy a need for our son to participate in community based activities, but individual classes are also available. Karate for All has two locations, one in Tustin and the other in Mission Viejo. If we were residing in any city in Orange County, we would be taking our son to Karate For All to give it a good try.
A Sensory Diet: A promise often made by school occupational therapists and teachers is that an appropriate sensory diet will be implemented in school to help kids with sensory processing dysfunction. A symptom of sensory dysfunction is a short attention span–really short, like, at times, a couple of seconds. Affected kids are easily distracted in a typical classroom. A sensory diet enables the kid to function in a learning environment without being distracted by the multitude of sights and sounds. It helps with reading, listening and otherwise sitting still and following directions in the classroom.
A typical sensory diet includes simple fidget toys that are handed to kids whenever they appear to be ready to bounce around the room. An example of a fidget toy is a balloon filled with sand. Squeezing it is supposed to calm the kid down. As a dad, I do not see a lot of value in fidget toys. While our son was in preschool, we requested that the occupational therapist place a small trampoline in the classroom. Whenever the teacher noticed Seb was walking on his tip-toes, she would encourage him to jump for a few moments and self-medicate with the pressure he was seeking on his lower extremities.
Seb and his pal, Shane, share jokes at the farm fest. Seb was known among his peers for coloring well outside the lines.
Our son had been picking his nose at school and experiencing several bouts of self-induced nose bleeds. These incidents were documented in a communications notebook that we keep for Seb, in which his teacher and all his therapists write highlights of the day. Aside from nosebleeds, other highlights have included fist fights, biting incidents, and benign trampoline exercises. After several problems with our son’s sensory integration in his Kindergarten class, an occupational therapist at one of Seb’s schools implemented what is known as a Drive Thru Menu program.
The Drive Thru Menu program is supposed to teach kids to become aware of the variance of their activity levels in class and regulate their behavior at school. As part of the program, kids are made aware of their bodies. Activity levels and moods are identified in stages as engine levels. If a kid is jumpy, his engine level is high. If a kid is in a daze, his engine level is low. Seb and his classmates were encouraged to review the Drive Thru Menu throughout the day and find ways to recognize and regulate their engine levels. It seems that the Drive Thru Menu program is tailored to the needs of the occupational therapist to efficiently manage a multitude of young children in the classroom without spending more than a few minutes in it.
Surfer’s Healing is probably not for everyone, but it’s one I’d like my son to try. The Surfer’s Healing is a therapy which combines a long board, swell waves and kids with sensory overload. The Surfer’s Healing includes an introduction to the calming power of the ocean, one-on-one surfing lessons, and some excitement for kids with sensory dysfunction. Like most kids, Seb loves the sand. He loves the ocean, and he loves to swim. Since we live within minutes of a few of the world’s renowned beaches: Silver Strand of Coronado, Moonlight Beach of Encinitas, and La Jolla Shores, we are destined to step onto a surfboard and embrace the waves. The Surfer’s Healing schedules multiple destinations throughout the year. Dude, camps fill up quick, so it’s best to sign up as soon as they are announced.
The Meandering Sidewalk 