For our family maturity, lifestyle changes and dealing with underlying anxiety seemed to all be more helpful than sensory integration therapy.
I don't see how it is possible to deal with the underlying anxiety without getting help for the underlying problems that are causing the anxiety. SPD, dyspraxia and hypotonia affect so many aspects of my son's life. I am trying to find help so that he can be successful when he needs to do physical activities in front of other people. He can't trust his body to perform the way he wants it to. It is like he has to find alternate ways of learning things like dance routines or anything that requires motor memory. I think he has to compensate by either converting steps to verbal memory by naming each physical step and memorizing those steps or some other kind of memory, but this takes extra time and slows him down. This is why group lessons don't work well for him.
How does he overcome his anxiety with his history of difficulty with physical things, with the memories of things like the choreographer and acting teacher making all the kids in the musical theater group go over the dance routines until my son could get it when they were tired and they got it a long time ago and the teacher pointing out to the group that they are having to do it again because of him. Or the group swimming lessons each year where all the other kids actually learned to swim and it took him most of the lesson just to get used to the water temperature and to get over the fear of putting his face in the water and that feeling of making very little progress compared to the other kids. I feel like I need to find a way for him to achieve success in something physical and this has been difficult for us.
My son went to Boy Scouts yesterday and there was a lot of talk about the swimming test the rest of the boys are scheduled to take, but he knows he can't do it because he doesn't know how to swim and it is not for lack of trying. It seemed like everything they talked about was physical and just another reminder of things my son can't do. I couldn't figure out how to teach him to do things that I just did without thinking and yes that causes me to have anxiety. Unless we can get help for these difficulties, how can I possibly be less anxious? My son has no trouble at all learning academics and anything to do with the computer but for this, he is labeled a geek or nerd. How is he supposed to fit in with the average boy scout that he is nothing like. Can he really have that much fun at a camp if he doesn't have much in common with the other kids?
He went to his friend's birthday party last weekend and the rest of the boys at the party were 3 and 4 years older and some of them were scouts, but they hadn't met my son. They played a lot of video and computer games at the party. My son said he didn't use any SAT words, but one of the older boys who heard him talk called him a technological nerd or something like that and when my son didn't react to the comment he said he guessed my son must have heard that a lot.
My husband asked one of the Boy Scout leaders yesterday if our son should be working on badges independently and the leader said the kids earn most of the badges at camps. It is like they want all the kids to earn the badges together, and they are only working on those that require physical skills and not the ones my son would be interested in working on, the ones that might help him feel successful.
I do think if he could manage to be successful in something like swimming, then he might be more confident in trying new physical things, but we have to find private lessons and they are very expensive.
I think a lot of people think I should just let him go to a week long scout camp with his anxiety over trying new physical activities when he has a history of great difficulty and just let him sink or swim. Let him sit on the side of the pool and watch the other boys as they swim so they know he is the only one who cant, let him see on his own if he can overcome the fear of the dark, the phobias, the inability to sleep because he hears every little noise, the fear of the other boys discovering his weaknesses and making fun of him, the bad headaches that cause him to be even more sensitive to light and sound which I do have experience with--migraines run in my family, the muscle aches that seem to be inevitable when he tries to keep up with the other kids.
Sink or swim. Common sense tells me not to put him in a sink or swim situation until he feels ready. With SPD and dyspraxia there is a higher risk of sinking and I don't think sinking will help him feel more confident. I think we need to work on being successful in one activity at a time until he can be successful and replace those negative memories with positive ones.
