Bells, whistles and LIGHT BULBS!

by Dianna
(Georgia)

Hello everyone!

I have two daughters, almost 9 (Lily) and 6 (Leah).

Leah is the one who has had issues most of her life.

Physically, She had sinus issues and ear infections constantly as an infant, finally had tubes put in around 1-1/2 to 2 years of age. Ended up having a tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy when she was 4.

Moving to school issues - she didn't start even wanting to pick up a crayon or color or anything having to do with fine motor movements until she was in pre-K AFTER she had the T and A. She also had some social issues in pre-K, as she was wanting to keep to herself and didn't interact with her peers much. Seeing as her birthday is in July, she was a very, very young pre-K person, so we attributed this to her age, etc. She is in special ed at school - not all the time, just a few hours a week as well as speech - question of expressive/receptive language disorder??, and the school puts her under a generalized "learning disabilities" umbrella until the age of NINE!

Kindergarten got a bit better, she came a long way with her fine motor skills (spent a TON of money on different things to help with that as well as exposing her to a lot of things in her environment, the names of things, etc.). Now she is in first grade, and there are still issues going on. My three year old great niece has INORDINATELY better speech skills than Leah, who is 6. Thought she would have to repeat kindergarten and had NO qualms about doing that, but they said they saw no real reason to hold her back.

1st grade - HORRORS. She is having SO many problems. So many "DNM" grades which means did not master. I have no doubt in my mind she will be repeating first grade. And through ALL of this, there has always been a nagging suspicion in this mom's heart that SOMETHING was going on with her. So I decided to take action steps to get her hearing tested to make sure nothing was going on there and also get a referral for language. Autism didn't fit, Asperger's didn't fit, so many things just DIDN'T FIT!

Move to tonight. I was putting her to bed, and all of a sudden "sensory integration disorder" pops into my head. I work in the medical field, so I knew this was a real thing, but didn't know much about it as I was there getting her to go to sleep. Came out and could not WAIT to get on the computer and then I found this marvelous web site. And the bells, whistles and lightbulbs that went off were ENORMOUS!

She has hypersensitivity to sounds (covers her ears with toilets and will not even GO in bathrooms with automatic flushing toilets) AND hyposensitivity to sounds (all points but ONE on that list!). Really keyed in on the item in parenthesis on the list above - (no diagnosed hearing problem). She has hypersensitivity to oral input (picky eater does not begin to describe her - and it is NOT that she is being willful and obstinate and just refuses! There is a REASON!). Fear of the dentist, toothpaste. Hypersensitivity to smells, auditory language processing dysfunction list is HUGE for her - and also some items in the emotional list fit her as well.

I feel so relieved that there appears to be an ANSWER for what is going on with her. So will be calling my PCP tomorrow to get input from them on what is the next step, get a referral to an OT - whatever it takes to get her the help she needs! I am no longer waiting on the school to determine what is wrong with her!

For all those parents out there - TRUST yourself and KNOW that you KNOW your child better than ANYONE! Don't let anything stop your search.