For those of you who know what SPD is you are probably saying "yes, sort of."
SPD is the acronym for Sensory Processing Disorder. For those of us with children that respond in extreme to everyday sensory experiences, we know it is real. But, recently a band of professional psychiatrist who are able to add, delete and revise mental diagnosis from the DSM manual, decided they weren't sure it truly was a "disorder."
At first upon reading this, my hackles went up. I already have to deal with "professionals" quickly labeling my kids as ADD. Why do I resist this label so much? I guess the number one reason is that as a teacher I see little to no real accommodations made for kids with this label, because it is far to broad and flippant and 90% of the time is solely "managed" with medications, not action, or diet changes, or change of scenery, management of space/noise ect. Anyway, this particular facet of the argument could go on and on, because as a society we do find it quite convenient to label so if SPD was truly acknowledged but change was not made then what a waste of time and energy. Once again, I digress from why I am writing this post in the first place.
Mind you I have two five year old, special needs, adopted children from other countries. My oldest swings wildly from sensory seeking in the parts of his life that he is creating, and sensory avoiding, when someone else is creating the sensation. For example, when he hugs, he does it with gusto usually knocking over the person he is hugging. When he sits, he is like a dog that is unhappy with its bedding and must keep moving and squiggling until the combination of his body and the item he is sitting on is just right. If he chooses to watch something, or play something he can enjoy the sounds, so long as he can walk away or turn it off. But, the whole thing changes when he is subjected (doesn't it for all of us?)
This weekend I got to watch many other kids like Emerson have similar reactions to sensory input that many other kids present in the same place did not even seem to notice. The biggest stressor was the lovely design of marketing at the resort to place a large, noisy brightly lit Las Vegas style arcade between the rooms of the hotel and the water park/swimming pool. In order to get to the pool you had to go through it. For Emerson this was Hell. He would cover his ears, cower towards me, start breathing heavy and stay on high alert once through the chaos. Isaac my trauma sensitive child just noticed all the dangers, like the game with a real life size dummy holding a machine gun pointed towards the walkway. He could not walk by this with out speeding up and pointing out to me that "that man has a gun, those are dangerous."
Fast forward to my "adult only night out." We have agreed to meet at a bar (the only one there that was open past 11pm.) Because this is a real bar for the masses, there is lots of loud dance music, and for ambiance there are disco lights. The topper is not that the music is so loud that I can barely talk to the person next to me, but that one of the lights keeps rotating to shine directly in our eyes. The people I was sitting with started joking that they they must be catching SPD from their kids because they/I could just not handle the noise plus the lights.
Then I got to thinking about this in a calmer environment. Maybe the panel of psychologist are correct. Maybe it is not a disorder. What struck me, was that the sensory experiences that were being inflicted upon me were not natural, and also intended to manipulate me and my behavior. Of course Isaac should have noticed and been afraid of the "man" with a gun. Of course Emerson should have blocked out the noises from the arcade. Of course the music and lights should have made me leave the bar when I wanted to have a meaningful conversation with adults for my one and only night out with adults.
My "aha moment" was when I walked past a man laying on the floor unconscious as I was retreating to the quite of my room. In my overstimulated state, I walked passed and barely noticed a 300 lb. man laying unconscious in a pool of blood. Now that is messed up! Fortunately I woke up a few steps later when I noticed the security guard shaking the man trying to wake him up. I am a Wilderness First Responder and EMT, I knew this was wrong. I ended up taking charge of the situation until the paramedics showed up. Once I started helping two nurses who were nearby also stopped to help and another man stepped up and started diverting the crowds away from the man.
The whole point of all of this is that SPD is really just a reaction to forced chaotic stimulation and mass marketing of ideas that are wrong or harmful. Yes, that is a real person laying on the floor, no that is not a real man holding the gun, no none of those sirens and flashing lights really mean an emergency even though that is what you have been taught.
So, in a nutshell, no SPD is not contagious, many aspects of it are natural and helpful and the message to me is loud and clear. We need to be surrounded by real things, real food, real air, real light, and real people.
I'm just saying...
I get what you are saying and it makes sense. Those who can tolerate those things have simply become accustomed to them from exposure. They are not natural and so they are things that should raise some sort of alarm or alert in us. We have only been conditioned to see these things as normal. Our kids who were locked away from the world have not.
ReplyDeleteBut....
These are not the only things that trigger or present SPD. My son cannot stand to be lifted into the air. He really, really, REALLY cannot stand to be turned upside down. He cannot be on a swing because the movement affects him in a negative way. Again these are all things that we are conditioned to accept. But we are conditioned to them because it is natural for a parent to lift a child in the air and for kids to hang upside down and swing. It was the deprivation of these very natural things that caused connections in my son's brain to never be made (which is the true nature/cause of SPD).
Only through therapies that expose him to these things that should have been done throughout his infancy and earliest childhood does he stand a chance of ever overcoming any of this. Even then it is only a small chance and without continued therapy the progress will be lost. I know because he had made progress and when the money for therapy ran out he regressed.
It is for that reason that I am upset that the so-called experts have deemed SPD as "not real." For without the label, without the stamp of legitimacy from those "experts", there is no way insurance will ever pay for the necessary therapies.
Kim you are totaly right and that is why I stated that many of the ways SPD manifest instead of All. It is extremely unforutnate for kids to not allow this diagnosis technicaly, because what is much more important (and the point I hope to make) is that we address the underlying causes and triggers than just another broad label where all people aflicted would be treated the same way (like we currently do with ADD.)
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