As sensory moms, we worry. We worry about our kids. We worry for our kids. We worry about what is and what might be.
Today on the Voices of SPD series, Jennifer from The Runaway Mama shares the invaluable lesson she learned from her son’s Sensory Processing Disorder.
What My Son’s Sensory Processing Disorder Taught Me
I never know whether to say my son has or had sensory processing disorder (SPD). It’s been two years since he met all of his occupational therapy goals. His body is healthy and strong, he’s social, smart, and manages new people and environments well, and he’s as normal and ordinary (i.e. peculiar and strange!) as any other seven year old boy.
Now, as we skip easily and happily through most days, it’s hard to believe any of it happened at all. Don’t get me wrong. There are still hurdles. Focus and attention span, visual processing, and food aversions/avoidance are issues we encounter daily. But there’s something very different about our present day sensory challenges.
Me.
I don’t particularly enjoy thinking about everything that was once wrong with my son. In fact, it’s hard for me to go back and read my blog posts from that time period. It’s not that I regret writing them.
I’m fortunate that I had the creative outlet to express myself when I felt so isolated in my experience, and I’m grateful that in the process of writing, I connected with other parents dealing with SPD and helped them (and me) feel a little bit less alone.
Still, it doesn’t mean I don’t cringe a little bit when I realize just how lost and vulnerable I was.
It’s emotionally and physically uncomfortable to think there was a time – a very real and very difficult time – when my son’s fears of things like “Finding Nemo,” hand dryers, chicken, automatic flushing toilets, pants, the neck hole of shirts, swings, and bounce houses turned our lives upside down.
What’s even more painful is how I handled it. I don’t mean to beat myself up. I did the best I could, but, at the time, my best included a lot of anxiety, anger, guilt, and impatience.
I wallowed in the setbacks.
I feared the victories because the next battle was imminent.
I agonized over what I could’ve/should’ve/would’ve done differently.
And I worried about everything.
Around this time last year, I had a frantic and irrational conversation with our occupational therapist a few weeks prior to the first day of camp that went something like this:
Me: “I’m not allowed to pack his lunch for camp. He’s going to starve.”
Her: “He’s not going to starve.”
Me: “Yes, he will.”
Her: “He’ll find something to eat.”
Me: “No, he won’t.”
Her: “Let him figure it out.”
I followed her advice (as best as I could), and, as usual, she was right. He ate a peanut butter sandwich for lunch every day for six weeks, and if anyone asked him about camp, he said it was the best summer ever. Period.
When the Extraordinary Happens
Recently, something extraordinary happened.
My husband and I took the kids bowling. That’s not the extraordinary part, although it was astonishing (we’re not the family that bowls together type). The extraordinary part was when my sensory eater unexpectedly tasted a French fry. A French fry!
A few years ago, I would’ve flipped out. I would’ve cried, cheered, begged him to eat more, and fantasized about ordering French fries at restaurants all over the world. Then, I would’ve been heartbroken when he refused to take another bite or said, “I don’t like it” (after one teeny taste).
This time, I was overwhelmed with pride and hope, but I simply said, “That’s awesome. French fries are awesome. You’re awesome.” Then, we continued bowling.
He didn’t taste another French fry for the rest of the night, but it was okay because I appreciated the moment. I didn’t drown in anxiety about the time before or after he tasted the French fry. I just relished the singular moment in which he did.
It’s not entirely accurate to say that I’m what’s different about our present day sensory challenges. My son is different, too.
He was two years old when we first noticed oddities, or symptoms, of what would take almost three years to finally diagnose as SPD. He was a baby!
Now, that little boy is a whopping seven years old (if you ask him, almost eight), and he has as much power to make choices for himself as I have the power to accept each one of them without dwelling on what came before or what happens next.
When he started camp this summer, I was way more worried about him tying his sneaker laces all day than eating too many peanut butter sandwiches.
In fact, he surprised me one afternoon with the news that he ate a cheese quesadilla for lunch. A cheese quesadilla!
I felt as giddy and lightheaded as the night he tasted the French fry at the bowling alley, but I simply gave him a calm and composed high five and asked him about the rest of his day.
As we plow ahead into adolescence, the conundrum of whether or not my son had or has SPD and the mystery of whether or not he’ll ever eat another French fry or cheese quesadilla (or fill in the blank) again is far less important than the invaluable lesson we’ve both learned along the way, which is to take each moment – good or bad – as it comes and then let it loose like a balloon in the sky and watch it float up and away until the next one comes along.
This post originally appeared on The Runaway Mama. You can read more from Jennifer there.
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This is me, too.. My son is 9 and we are in a similar place as your family.. Thanks for sharing this part of your SPD story.
I’ve been there — when you’re afraid to celebrate the victory because you wonder what might happen later.
It’s a day by day thing, isn’t it?
But, like you, my son, and I, have come a long way this year. It’s amazing how much difference a year can make!
My son has come so far with his occupational therapy and PCIT(parent child interaction therapy). Yes I would agree that it’s still very nerve racking when I am forced to take him around loud noises, sports events, even things that children should be excited about and enjoy such as Chuck-E-Cheese, carnivals, the circus etc., or things that terrify him to a heart breaking melt down of pure trepidation and fear such as bugs, Halloween monsters/zombies etc., but I am so grateful that with his therapy we have both learned to cope with these fears and now face them together with courage instead of hesitation or fear, which would have stripped him of the experience all together had I not learned that we can work together through the loud noises or “scary things” that once paralyzed him with fear. Occupational Therapy and PCIT(parent child interaction therapy) eventually taught him as well as myself that he CAN and will be okay. I am so excited to watch him become less fearful and more proud of himself for figuring these coping skills out on his own, it has taught him to be very self sufficient, compassionate and brave. I always say that we as parents think that we are supposed to be teaching our children to grow, but I must say that I have learned more from my child with SPD than I could ever teach him myself.
… so relate to every sentence here. My wife and I have two boys and it means it’s double the fun!
We live and learn with each moment. Can’t do more than that. Thanks for sharing what is a mirror image of our experiences x 2