Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Sensory Integration Disorder

Does anyone have any experience with SID or SPD? I'm having some issues with my Kindergartner who is probably also moderately gifted. He is struggling with school right now and when I read about SID, I felt like I was reading about my son.

Here is an article with one mother's perspective...

http://www.fivehens.com/adhd-maybe-not-spd/

It was a family friend/elementary teacher who mentioned this disorder when we described my son's behavior and the more I read online, the more I want to find out more. There are a lot of books on the topic too - does anyone recommend a specific one? I think if he has this, it is mild however it is interfering with his success at school.

My son was 'diagnosed' with Sensory Integration difficulties in 2nd grade, and got 6 months of private Occupational Therapy (paid for by insurance mostly)once a week and 2 times a week in a small group in school. It seems like it helped tremendously, and it certianly got him out of the classroom, which was very important at the time.

Some gifted kids have trouble due to their 'OverExcitabilities' http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/dabrowski.htm
sometimes it's hard to know if it's one or the other.

My thought is that if it is interfering with one's life, and you can afford the OT, give it a try! It seems like the younger the child is, the better the whole thing works. I wouldn't try to 'do it myself' from books if I had a choice about it, if it does seem to be a struggle for him.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

LOL - I commented on the article. That kid is gifted, and even if the OT work helps him stop acting out, it doesn't negate that he deserves to be taught at this readiness level. Thanks for the link!
G

We did therapy as well. It doesn't seem to go away, but there was noticeable improvements. Our insurance paid, but because it was causing motor delays and proprioperception problems. It has been our experience that sensory issues are worse when there are excitabilities present at the same time.

Who did the actual diagnosis?

His teacher called me today because she is concerned about him and she suggested I meet with her, the counselor, the gifted coordinator and the AEA person. I guess I'm just trying to educate myself first so I can advocate for my son and talk intelligently about the issues we are having. The teacher had never heard of SID.

We to struggle with this. We have the diagnosis through an occupational therapist. We were given a home program, exercises to work on at home since DS7 is homeschooled. I recommend the book "The Out of Sync Child" by Carol Kranowitz for starters. It helps to become aware of your child's behaviors/reactions to his environment. I agree with Grinity that you should have an evaluation if you suspect it and follow the plan they set up for you not a step-by-step in a book.

My son has the flight response as his primary coping strategy. When he cannot flee, he melts down. He is very intuned to when he needs to get away from stimuli. He is especially sensitive to loud noises, crowded places, encloses space. Funny story: We took him to an optometrist appointment. Enter small enclosed room, dark lighting, and a man putting a big round heavy object directly onto his face. He was squirming up a storm. After the exam the OD asked me point blank if we had ever had him evaluated for SID. When I told him we had the dx, he said his daughter (now a teenager) had gone thru occupational therapy. He said now he recognizes it in kids right away. Amazingly once the machine was gone and the lights turned on and the door open, DS7 calmed down and sat perfectly still. We have worked on coping strategies and while the behavior still rears its head, DS7 is learning to cope. He still wants to flee but his tolerance is going up. He never would have stayed in that room 8 months ago before therapy.

We do tons, tons, tons of hands-on tactile stuff: play do, clay, shaving cream, whipping cream, mud in summer, goo, slime, oil, etc. We do the bouncy ball, trampoline, hoola hoop (his latest), bike riding, and walks EVERY day. There is no quick fix. It is learning to understand your body's responses and a lot of stimuli avoidance, for us museums have to be 1-2 hours max, no movie theaters, understanding that certain stimuli require absolute alone time/quiet/down time afterwards.

DS7 lost a tooth last week. For 2 weeks prior he easily could have been diagnosed with ADHHHHHD. Yes tons of emphasis on the hyper part. Once the tooth came out-instant calm. We caught up on school work after that.

HTH.

Here is a better link but if you have experience with this you are probably already aware of this site...

http://www.spdfoundation.net/index.html

There is some great basic info in the About SPD link.

Hi,

Thanks so much for linking to our guest post about SPD. Our friend Cat was so kind to share her personal account with us and our readers and we're glad it's reaching a wider audience and bringing attention to SPD/SID.

Thanks again,

The Five Hens

My 11 year old son has it. He was very fidgety at age 5. He jumped up and down and did this thing with his hands that looked like he was trying to shake water off of them whenever he was really excited about something, which was often. He thought the world was an exciting place and he seemed to be interested in everything and he loved to talk about those things. He just loved to talk. He talked fast and used his hands a lot when he talked, but he also liked to use a lot of big words that the other kids didn't understand. He didn't go to preschool so most of his life he had been around adults who understood these words so having to dumb down his speech was an adjustment that he had difficulty making. He preferred being with kids who were three and four years older and his good friends were all older gifted kids.

My son loved to talk about interesting things he had heard and read that other kids were not interested in so he often talked to the teachers on the playground instead of playing. He felt safer there anyway. Since academic redshirting is very common here, all of the other boys in his class were older and bigger. Some of them liked to bully kids who were different in any way and because my son was smart, had sensory issues, and couldn't keep up with other kids physically, he was bullied.

But most of the other kids seemed to like him. Some of them would ask him to read things for them because they couldn't read yet. He felt good about that. He also liked to make other kids laugh. Because he enjoyed the social part of school, except for the bullies, I wanted school to work, but we were told by the principal and a teacher to homeschool because our small town school could not provide an appropriate education for a twice exceptional child. When the kindergarten teacher suggested that we hold him back in a transitional first grade the next year because he couldn't color in the lines even though his reading, comprehension, and math were above grade level I knew I really had no choice. We had tried to explain the hypotonia and the fine motor delays but it made no difference. This teacher really believed holding him back and making him practice coloring without OT of any kind would "fix" his problems. She didn't think he needed to learn anything the next year because his reading and math were advanced. My son wanted to learn so I had to homeschool.

My son liked kindergarten except for having to color in the lines which he found boring and difficult because his hands tired easily since he had hypotonia and I didn't know it at that time, but also motor dyspraxia. He wasn't eligible for OT because at 5 he was already reading at a 5th grade level and doing some multiplication. In our state you have to be failing in order to get OT and he was only failing to color in the lines.

My son's favorite thing to do in kindergarten was the puppet theater where he could make up his own show and do voices and make the other kids laugh. He could channel his energy into something creative that didn't involve fine motor skills. His kindergarten was only half-day and because of his sensory issues I think a full day would have been too much for him. He needed to take breaks to move around and when I homeschooled him the next year I let him move around while I read to him and let him practice spelling and math facts orally while jumping on a trampoline.

Yeah, there's a good idea. He already knows everything, so it won't hurt him to stay back and spend a year learning how to color. Good lord.

I'm pretty sure our DS7 has some of this SID thing, but I don't know anything specific and haven't really studied it. When he was very small, he would freak out if he got even a drop of water on his clothes, and would have to take them all off. Just about a year ago, he started getting upset with the tags in his shirts--but they hadn't bothered him before.

And of course, it really bothers me to be splashed, so much that kids' bathtime is the worst time of my day, so the apple didn't fall too far from the tree.