Sensory Processing Disorder was a big aha! moment for me with my DS now 9. Up through first grade he had a lot of trouble at school, keeping his hands to himself, the rough play and crashing that CCN mentions. For my ds once we recognized his sensory needs (we had him evaluated by an OT and he had therapy for this for about 6 months), things became more manageable, although he still has behaviors that drive me nuts (but like your son is able to "save" them for home now).
Two things really helped our understanding. First, as a sensory seeker he literal craves contact so instead of punishing him or getting frustrated with him for this behavior we sought out alternative acceptable contact activities. Does your son enjoy sports? This has been fantastic for our ds. At the risk of appearing like the overinvolved sports parent, we keep him enrolled in something constantly because it just helps his overall mood and calmness. Even if sports isn't the thing for your ds, any kind of regular physical activity, especially things that involved pushing/hitting seem to help. And its not about aggressiveness but more like he has this need to feel his body make contact with something. He also really likes jumprope/shooting baskets/push-ups/sit-ups, things like that.
The second observation that helped was that part of SPD is often being unaware of where your body is in space and difficulty gaging strength of contact. So DS used to have trouble with peers because he would bump into them (sometimes rather hard) and they would think he was doing it on purpose when he really just couldn't gage how far away he needed to be to get past. And since he is a seeking he would often hug or put his arm around his friends, but because he couldn't gage the strength of his movement he would do it too hard and they would feel like he was being aggressive rather than affectionate. Thankfully, this has significantly improved over time.
Overall, the therapy helped some, but I think the big difference was our ability to recognize the source of the behaviors and to intervene differently. Instead of seeing it as aggression or misbehavior we saw that it was because of this physical need and his inability to regulate his movement. We were also able to explain this to him, especially as he got older, and that made a big difference. As he has matured he has developed more self control and is able to understand when and why he needs to turn to different activities (at 9 this still isn't perfect, but he has made tremendous improvements!).
So, while in 1st grade I was a mess trying to figure out why my kid was in the office all the time and having meltdowns in class, now in 3rd grade his behavior at school is fantastic and I no longer live in dread of the phone call from the school.
I also think that in 1st grade his intellectual needs were grossly ignored by his teacher which added an additional level of frustration for him in the classroom.
And the last thing I wanted to say was that, for my DS there does not appear to be another diagnoses such as ADHD or ASD attached. All of the "ADHD" like behavior he exhibited seems to be explained by the SPD and he never really exhibited any ASD characteristics. So, unless there is something else specifically that would lead you to suspect those other diagnoses, it might be worth addressing the SPD first and seeing how much of a difference it makes. It used to be thought that SPD was only found in kids with these other diagnoses, but more recently they are suggesting that SPD does often show up on its own. It also seems to be related to giftedness along the lines of the physical overexcitabilities, etc. On its own, it may be dismissed as quirkiness, misbehavior or aggression though. And I think alot of kids and families learn to address it without really recognizing the disorder. I am pretty sure, for example, that my DH also has SPD but took up weightlifting in junior high as a way to fill the physical needs he had. I also have a pet theory that kids that sensory seekers are probably over-represented in football, wrestling, and sports like that! lol
I totally feel your frustration with the behaviors, believe me. It is NOT an easy thing to deal with, especially if you have other children. But the bright side is that he IS able to control it at school. This shows maturity and significant self control. If you think about how much it must take out of them to keep it together during the day, it makes it a little easier to understand what's going on at home (but doesn't necessarily make it less frustrating in the moment!).
