A little less than a year ago, we took our four-year-old to her pediatrician for her four year well-child check. At that appointment, I indicated that we were noticing a lot of tantrums from our daughter and asked what I needed to do to fix that. I expected our pediatrician to tell me to continue offering limited choices and to pick my battles and those types of things… But thankfully our pediatrician was more perceptive than most and asked if she liked tags. In my naïveté, I thought she was asking if our daughter liked to play tag. She clarified that she noticed our daughter was wearing two different colored socks at her appointment and she was wondering if she liked tags in her shirt. I explained that no, our daughter doesn’t particularly like tags in her clothes, and the reason she was wearing two different colored socks was because one of them wouldn’t go on “straight” and it was just driving her crazy. Our doctor very briefly indicated that we might have some sensory processing issues to work through, and referred us to Pediatric Connections OT for an evaluation. Later that same day, I contacted PCOT and obtained the initial paperwork to schedule an appointment. I took the time to give as much information as I possibly could, because I didn’t really know what sensory processing disorder was, and I figured I should probably let them know everything so we could put the pieces together. We had our initial evaluation a couple weeks later, and it was discovered that our daughter had some reflexes that weren’t quite as developed as they should have been according to her age. We started coming to PCOT once a week and Ms. Jen established some goals that we wanted to meet and started working on tactile exercises. She continued to check in periodically on our goals, and steadily began working on reflex integration as our daughter begin to tolerate touch more calmly. In between visits, we did nightly tactile exercises and implemented recommended strategies to help our daughter transition from preferred activities to non-preferred activities. Over the course of the next 10 months, our daughter began to reliably dress herself in the morning, try at least one bite of new food and report whether she liked it or not, stayed dry through the day and night, and significantly reduce her amount of tantrums when having to perform non-preferred activities. We have recently “graduated” from OT, and I feel confident that with the exercises we learned from Ms. Jen on a weekly basis that if we continue implementing them in our regular routine we will continue to see our daughter be able to handle the sensory-rich world around her. I am so grateful to PCOT, and I am so proud of our daughter!
She asked to learn to dance so we switched from gymnastics to dance. There were sparkly scarves and pom poms at the first dance session. Gymnastics didn’t stand a chance!
JC, mother
