Sensory Disorder Quotes

Empaths feel more deeply, more intensely, and more persistently than those around us. We even feel what other people are afraid to feel within themselves.

Many women latch onto language from popular psychology, such as "panic attack," when often they are instead experiencing sensory overwhelm.

Many empaths are diagnosed with chronic illnesses such as fibromyalgia, CFS, lupus, and various autoimmune diseases, as well as psychological disorders such as agoraphobia, social anxiety, ADHD, depression, sensory processing disorder, among many others.

I do not believe ADD leads to creativity any more than creativity causes ADD. Rather, they both originate in the same inborn trait: sensitivity. For creativity, a temperamental sensitivity is indispensable. The sensitive individual, as we have seen, draws into herself the unseen emotional and psychic communications of her environment. On some levels of the unconscious, she will, therefore, have a deeper awareness of the world. She may also be more attuned to particular sensory input, such as sound, color or musical tone. Thus the sensitivity provides her with the raw materials her mind will rework and reshape. Thus sensitivity contributes to the emergence of attention deficit disorder, as well as to creativity. Colin,

And that vulnerability, many thought, was really an issue with “sensory gating,” or the brain’s ability (or inability) to correctly process incoming information. A sensory gating disorder was the most common explanation for the schizophrenia experienced by John Nash—the Nobel Laureate mathematician depicted in A Beautiful Mind—who was able to detect patterns no one else could, and yet also was prone to delusions and visions of beings who were out to get him. Both of those aspects of Nash’s personality were said to be products of the same hypersensitivity

Further evidence for the pathogenic role of dissociation has come from a largescale clinical and community study of traumatized people conducted by a task force of the American Psychiatric Association. In this study, people who reported having dissociative symptoms were also quite likely to develop persistent somatic symptoms for which no physical cause could be found. They also frequently engaged in self-destructive attacks on their own bodies. The results of these investigations validate the century-old insight that traumatized people relive in their bodies the moments of terror that they can not describe in words. Dissociation appears to be the mechanism by which intense sensory and emotional experiences are disconnected from the social domain of language and memory, the internal mechanism by which terrorized people are silenced.

The major goal of the Cold War mind control programs was to create dissociative symptoms and disorders, including full multiple personality disorder. The Manchurian Candidate is fact, not fiction, and was created by the CIA in the 1950’s under BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE mind control programs. Experiments with LSD, sensory deprivation, electro-convulsive treatment, brain electrode implants and hypnosis were designed to create amnesia, depersonalization, changes in identity and altered states of consciousness. (p. iii) “Denial of the reality of multiple personality by these doctors [See page 114 for names] in the mind control network, who are also on the FMSF [False Memory Syndrome Foundation] Scientific and Professional Advisory Board, could be disinformation. The disinformation could be amplified by attacks on specialists in multiple personality as CIA conspiracy lunatics” (P.10) “If clinical multiple personality is buried and forgotten, then the Manchurian Candidate Programs will be safe from public scrutiny. (p.141)

This child did not need to “change his behaviors.” We needed to understand his behaviors and what they suggested as the probable underlying reason for the behaviors. We needed to remember that behaviors are a message, a symptom—not a diagnosis.

curing’ victims of multiple-personality disorder is actually tantamount to serial murder. The issue has remained controversial in the wake of recent findings that the human brain can potentially contain up to one hundred forty fully-sentient personalities without significant sensory/motor impairment. The tribunal will also consider whether encouraging a multiple personality to reintegrate voluntarily—again, a traditionally therapeutic act—should be redefined as assisted suicide. Cross-linked to next item under cognition and legal.

brain, flooded with multiple bits of sensory data, thoughts, feelings and impulses, cannot focus, and the mind or body cannot be still.

The programme into which Cheryl was inducted combined all the different ways the intelligence community had learned could cause intense psychological change in adults and children. It had been learned through the use of both knowledgeable and 'unwitting' volunteers. They were subjected to sensory overload, isolation, drugs and hypnosis, all used on bodies that had been weakened from mild hunger. The horror of the programme was that it would be like having an elementary school sex education class conducted by a paedophile rapist. It would have been banned had the American government signed the Helsinki Accords. But, of course, they hadn't. For the test that day and in those that followed, Cheryl Hersha was positioned so she faced a portable movie screen. A 16mm movie projector was on a platform, along with several reels of film. Each was a short pornographic film meant to make her aware of sexuality in a variety of forms...

The cerebral cortex in the frontal lobe is not able to perform its job of prioritizing, selection and inhibition. The brain, flooded with multiple bits of sensory data, thoughts, feelings and impulses, cannot focus, and the mind or body cannot be still.

The memory feats of food-caching animals that can remember the location of hundreds of food stores are highly similar to the ability of some people with autism to memorize every street in a city. My theory is that savant-type skills occur when memories are sensory-based instead of language-based. Language leads to abstractification and loss of detail. Animals naturally lack language and autistic people have language problems because of a disorder, but in autistic people and animals the cause of sensory-based memory is the same: thinking and remembering in pictures instead of words.

Working simultaneously, though seemingly without a conscience, was Dr. Ewen Cameron, whose base was a laboratory in Canada's McGill University, in Montreal. Since his death in 1967, the history of his work for both himself and the CIA has become known. He was interested in 'terminal' experiments and regularly received relatively small stipends (never more than $20,000) from the American CIA order to conduct his work. He explored electroshock in ways that offered such high risk of permanent brain damage that other researchers would not try them. He immersed subjects in sensory deprivation tanks for weeks at a time, though often claiming that they were immersed for only a matter of hours. He seemed to fancy himself a pure scientist, a man who would do anything to learn the outcome. The fact that some people died as a result of his research, while others went insane and still others, including the wife of a member of Canada's Parliament, had psychological problems for many years afterwards, was not a concern to the doctor or those who employed him. What mattered was that by the time Cheryl and Lynn Hersha were placed in the programme, the intelligence community had learned how to use electroshock techniques to control the mind. And so, like her sister, Lynn was strapped to a chair and wired for electric shock. The experience was different for Lynn, though the sexual component remained present to lesser degree...

Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, which may be described in some cultures as an experience of possession. The disruption in identity involves marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning.

It helps when young people know that their family thinks they’re great and loves them, no matter what. It helps to have frequent, positive interactions with family members in order to figure out what’s fun and safe to do with peers, especially when parents aren’t looking. It also helps to pay attention to other people’s social customs and sensory preferences, not just our own. This all takes resolve and work—and the reward of a satisfying social life is worth all the effort.

I am very against physicians labeling high sensitivity as a sensory processing “disorder” instead of a gift with its own set of challenges. Medicine too often pathologizes anything “different” that it doesn’t understand. Empaths have special traits that exist on the normal continuum of human experience. They exemplify the wonderful diversity of our species. The problem with conventional medicine is that it lacks a paradigm that includes the body’s subtle energy system. This concept has been central to many healing traditions for thousands of years cross-culturally, including traditional Chinese medicine. What is subtle energy? It is the vital life force that penetrates the body and extends inches to feet around it.

neurophysiologist Olaf Blanke, who came across the phenomenon unexpectedly. He had triggered it with electrical stimulation to the temporal parietal cortex of a patient’s brain while trying to locate the focus of a seizure.8 He has also studied a bevy of patients who complain of an FoP. He found that lesions in the frontoparietal area are specifically associated with the phenomenon and are on the opposite side of the body from the presence.9 This location suggested to him that disturbances in sensorimotor processing and multisensory integration may be responsible. While we are conscious of our location in space, we are unaware of the multitude of processes (vision, sound, touch, proprioception, motor movement, etc.) that, when normally integrated, properly locate us there. If there is a disorder in the processing, errors can occur and our brains can misinterpret our location. Blanke and his colleagues have found that one such error manifests itself as an FoP. Recently, they cleverly induced the FoP in healthy subjects by disordering their sensory processing with the help of a robotic arm.10

More Activities to Develop Sensory-Motor Skills Sensory processing is the foundation for fine-motor skills, motor planning, and bilateral coordination. All these skills improve as the child tries the following activities that integrate the sensations. FINE-MOTOR SKILLS Flour Sifting—Spread newspaper on the kitchen floor and provide flour, scoop, and sifter. (A turn handle is easier to manipulate than a squeeze handle, but both develop fine-motor muscles in the hands.) Let the child scoop and sift. Stringing and Lacing—Provide shoelaces, lengths of yarn on plastic needles, or pipe cleaners, and buttons, macaroni, cereal “Os,” beads, spools, paper clips, and jingle bells. Making bracelets and necklaces develops eye-hand coordination, tactile discrimination, and bilateral coordination. Egg Carton Collections—The child may enjoy sorting shells, pinecones, pebbles, nuts, beans, beads, buttons, bottle caps, and other found objects and organizing them in the individual egg compartments. Household Tools—Picking up cereal pieces with tweezers; stretching rubber bands over a box to make a “guitar”; hanging napkins, doll clothes, and paper towels with clothespins; and smashing egg cartons with a mallet are activities that strengthen many skills.

When a high IQ-test score is accompanied by subpar performance in some other domain, this is thought "surprising," and a new disability category is coined to name the surprise. So, similarly, the diagnostic criterion for mathematics disorder (sometimes termed dyscalculia) in DSM IV is that "Mathematical ability that falls substantially below that expected for the individual's chronological age, measured intelligence, and age-appropriate education" (p. 50)- The logic of discrepancy-based classification based on IQ-test performance has created a clear precedent whereby we are almost obligated to create a new disability category when an important skill domain is found to be somewhat dissociated from intelligence. It is just this logic that I exploited in creating a new category of disability- dysrationalia.T he proposed definition of the disability was as follows: Dysrationalia is the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence. It is a general term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in belief formation, in the assessment of belief consistency, and/or in the determination of action to achieve one's goals. Although dysrationalia may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (e.g., sensory impairment), dysrationalia is not the result of those conditions. The key diagnostic criterion for dysrationalia is a level of rationality, as demonstrated in thinking and behavior, that is significantly below the level of the individual's intellectual capacity (as determined by an individually administered IQ test).

Just how important a close moment-to-moment connection between mother and infant can be was illustrated by a cleverly designed study, known as the “double TV experiment,” in which infants and mothers interacted via a closed-circuit television system. In separate rooms, infant and mother observed each other and, on “live feed,” communicated by means of the universal infant-mother language: gestures, sounds, smiles, facial expressions. The infants were happy during this phase of the experiment. “When the infants were unknowingly replayed the ‘happy responses’ from the mother recorded from the prior minute,” writes the UCLA child psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, “they still became as profoundly distressed as infants do in the classic ‘flat face’ experiments in which mothers-in-person gave no facial emotional response to their infant’s bid for attunement.” Why were the infants distressed despite the sight of their mothers’ happy and friendly faces? Because happy and friendly are not enough. What they needed were signals that the mother is aligned with, responsive to and participating in their mental states from moment to moment. All that was lacking in the instant video replay, during which infants saw their mother’s face unresponsive to the messages they, the infants, were sending out. This sharing of emotional spaces is called attunement. Emotional stress on the mother interferes with infant brain development because it tends to interfere with the attunement contact. Attunement is necessary for the normal development of the brain pathways and neurochemical apparatus of attention and emotional selfregulation. It is a finely calibrated process requiring that the parent remain herself in a relatively nonstressed, non-anxious, nondepressed state of mind. Its clearest expression is the rapturous mutual gaze infant and mother direct at each other, locked in a private and special emotional realm, from which, at that moment, the rest of the world is as completely excluded as from the womb. Attunement does not mean mechanically imitating the infant. It cannot be simulated, even with the best of goodwill. As we all know, there are differences between a real smile and a staged smile. The muscles of smiling are exactly the same in each case, but the signals that set the smile muscles to work do not come from the same centers in the brain. As a consequence, those muscles respond differently to the signals, depending on their origin. This is why only very good actors can mimic a genuine, heartfelt smile. The attunement process is far too subtle to be maintained by a simple act of will on the part of the parent. Infants, particularly sensitive infants, intuit the difference between a parent’s real psychological states and her attempts to soothe and protect the infant by means of feigned emotional expressions. A loving parent who is feeling depressed or anxious may try to hide that fact from the infant, but the effort is futile. In fact, it is much easier to fool an adult with forced emotion than a baby. The emotional sensory radar of the infant has not yet been scrambled. It reads feelings clearly. They cannot be hidden from the infant behind a screen of words, or camouflaged by well-meant but forced gestures. It is unfortunate but true that we grow far more stupid than that by the time we reach adulthood.

Suggestions to Develop Self-Help Skills Self-help skills improve along with sensory processing. The following suggestions may make your child’s life easier—and yours, too! DRESSING • Buy or make a “dressing board” with a variety of snaps, zippers, buttons and buttonholes, hooks and eyes, buckles and shoelaces. • Provide things that are not her own clothes for the child to zip, button, and fasten, such as sleeping bags, backpacks, handbags, coin purses, lunch boxes, doll clothes, suitcases, and cosmetic cases. • Provide alluring dress-up clothes with zippers, buttons, buckles, and snaps. Oversized clothes are easiest to put on and take off. • Eliminate unnecessary choices in your child’s bureau and closet. Clothes that are inappropriate for the season and that jam the drawers are sources of frustration. • Put large hooks inside closet doors at the child’s eye level so he can hang up his own coat and pajamas. (Attach loops to coats and pajamas on the outside so they won’t irritate the skin.) • Supply cellophane bags for the child to slip her feet into before pulling on boots. The cellophane prevents shoes from getting stuck and makes the job much easier. • Let your child choose what to wear. If she gets overheated easily, let her go outdoors wearing several loose layers rather than a coat. If he complains that new clothes are stiff or scratchy, let him wear soft, worn clothes, even if they’re unfashionable. • Comfort is what matters. • Set out tomorrow’s clothes the night before. Encourage the child to dress himself. Allow for extra time, and be available to help. If necessary, help him into clothes but let him do the finishing touch: Start the coat zipper but let him zip it up, or button all but one of his buttons. Keep a stool handy so the child can see herself in the bathroom mirror. On the sink, keep a kid-sized hairbrush and toothbrush within arm’s reach. Even if she resists brushing teeth and hair, be firm. Some things in life are nonnegotiable.

SENSORY AVOIDERS – SENSORY DEFENSIVENESS “And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?” -Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) Imagine a day inside Jenny’s skin. The morning alarm goes off and she startles, her heart races, her body tightens, her breathing quickens.  Her husband turns to get out of bed, grazing her foot, and she cringes, her bodily rhythms speed up another notch and her body tightens further. He sees that she seems annoyed about something and affectionately strokes her cheek. She bristles and, when he turns around, rubs where he touched her. She slowly arises to get out of bed, as she feels a bit dizzy, and quickly puts on her soft cotton house slippers, as the feel of the carpet makes her recoil, and walks into the bathroom. The bright lights her husband has left turned on assault her. Her eyes squint painfully. She quickly turns off the lights and turns on a small lamp on the sink counter. Her already overloaded system gets further destabilized. She starts to brush her teeth but the toothbrush is new and the bristles tickle her uncomfortably. She leans over to spit out the toothpaste and feels a sudden loss of balance and a surge of panic engulfs her. She steadies herself and turns on the shower. The soft spray of water from the showerhead feels like pelts of hail hitting her body. Her already stressed system is accelerating fast into overload. And her morning has only just begun!  She still has to figure out what clothes to put on, as most textures annoy her and feel uncomfortable on her body. She has to figure out what to eat for breakfast, as anything soft, mushy, or creamy repulses her. Worst of all, she has to figure out how to face the world outside that, for her, is like maneuvering through a sensory minefield. Jenny is an avoider or what is commonly known as sensory defensive (SD), a common mimicker of anxiety and panic. The sensory defensive feel too much, too soon and for too long, and experience the world as too loud, too bright, too fast and too tight, becoming easily distressed by everyday sensation

While the visual areas of the brain are active, other areas involved with smell, taste, and touch are largely shut down. Almost all the images and sensations processed by the body are self-generated, originating from the electromagnetic vibrations from our brain stem, not from external stimuli. The body is largely isolated from the outside world. Also, when we dream, we are more or less paralyzed. (Perhaps this paralysis is to prevent us from physically acting out our dreams, which could be disastrous. About 6 percent of people suffer from “sleep paralysis” disorder, in which they wake up from a dream still paralyzed. Often these individuals wake up frightened and believing that there are creatures pinning down their chest, arms, and legs. There are paintings from the Victorian era of women waking up with a terrifying goblin sitting on their chest glaring down at them. Some psychologists believe that sleep paralysis could explain the origin of the alien abduction syndrome.) The hippocampus is active when we dream, suggesting that dreams draw upon our storehouse of memories. The amygdala and anterior cingulate are also active, meaning that dreams can be highly emotional, often involving fear. But more revealing are the areas of the brain that are shut down, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (which is the command center of the brain), the orbitofrontal cortex (which can act like a censor or fact-checker), and the temporoparietal region (which processes sensory motor signals and spatial awareness). When the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is shut down, we can’t count on the rational, planning center of the brain. Instead, we drift aimlessly in our dreams, with the visual center giving us images without rational control. The orbitofrontal cortex, or the fact-checker, is also inactive. Hence dreams are allowed to blissfully evolve without any constraints from the laws of physics or common sense. And the temporoparietal lobe, which helps coordinate our sense of where we are located using signals from our eyes and inner ear, is also shut down, which may explain our out-of-body experiences while we dream. As we have emphasized, human consciousness mainly represents the brain constantly creating models of the outside world and simulating them into the future. If so, then dreams represent an alternate way in which the future is simulated, one in which the laws of nature and social interactions are temporarily suspended

Today our minds are almost entirely free to choose whatever sensory experience we can imagine; we can and do innovate to our heart’s content. But the price we pay is excruciating. For those who suffer with crippling anxiety, depression and disordered attention, living apart from habitat will never be a path to health, performance or spiritual happiness. We need our habitat to make us whole.

With SPD one can be over-responsive or under-responsive.

Those with SPD may:   •       Be overly sensitive to sights, sounds, movement or touch. •       Be under reactive to sights, sounds, movement or touch. •       Be easily distracted. •       Have emotional or social problems. •       May have an activity level that is unusual, i.e. too high or too low. •       May have difficulty making transitions from situation to situation. •       Lack self-control. •       Be clumsy or careless. •       Have difficulty calming down. •       Poor self-concept. •       Delays in speech or language. •       Delays in motor skills.

on its own, without

counselors, often confuses stages, states, and lines. He mentioned that clients could move through all four stages (sensorimotor to formal operations) in a single counseling session. People do not actually develop through four (or even two) stages in a day. Rather, different lines of development may be differentially developed, so that a client may appear to exhibit very rudimentary development in one aspect (for example, morality) and advanced development in another (scientific or mathematical thinking). Similar phenomena (clients’ appearing to exhibit the qualities of different stages of development) can be accounted for by distinguishing between stages and states of consciousness. For example, a client may have a developmental center of gravity that hovers around the formal-reflexive mind but experience a state of panic or intense depression during which he resorts to the type of illogical and contrary-to-evidence thinking that characterize preoperational thinking. There are a few places where Ivey seems to distinguish between stages and states, as when he is describing a concrete operational client with whom the counselor finds various deletions, distortions, overgeneralizations, and other errors of thinking or behaving that “represent preoperational states” (1986, p. 163, italics added). This is an important point. The basic structures are not completely stable; otherwise, they would endure even under extreme stress. Hence, developmental waves are conceived of as relatively stable and enduring—far more stable and enduring than states of consciousness, but also far from rigidly permanent structures. Levels and Lines of Development Ivey also wrote of how clients cycle through Piaget’s stages of cognitive development: Each person who continues on to higher levels of development is also, paradoxically, forced to return to basic sensori-motor and pre-operational experience… . the skilled individual who decides to learn a foreign language … must enter language training at the lowest level and work through sensori-motor, preoperational, and concrete experience before being able to engage in formal operations with the new language. (Ivey, 1986, p. 161) People do not revert from the capacity for formal operational thinking to sensorimotor, except perhaps because of a brain injury or organic disorders of the nervous system. Piaget was very emphatic that cognitive development occurs in invariant stages, meaning that everyone progresses through the stages in the same order. At the same time, it is true that just because an individual exhibits formal operational thinking (a stage or level of cognitive development) in chemistry and mathematics does not mean that she automatically can perform at mastery levels in any domain, such as, in this case, a foreign language. This is another example of the utility of Wilber’s (2000e) distinguishing the sundry lines

Just as the discoveries of medication and surgery led to therapies to relieve a staggering number of conditions, so does the discovery of neuroplasticity. The reader will find cases, many very detailed, that may be relevant to someone who has, or cares for someone who has experienced, chronic pain, stroke, traumatic brain injury, brain damage, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, autism, attention deficit disorder, a learning disorder (including dyslexia), a sensory processing disorder, a developmental delay, a part of the brain missing, Down syndrome, or certain kinds of blindness, among others.

I first met this young client when he was eight years old. He was very shy with a calm disposition. He had been diagnosed with a sensory processing disorder and his parents had hired a special tutor. His mother and father were already clients of mine, and his mother was very conscientious with his diet. She was most concerned about his extreme fatigue, how difficult it was to get him up in the morning, and how difficult it was for him to fall asleep. He was also falling asleep at school. In addition, she was concerned he was having difficulty remembering his schoolwork. With sensory processing disorder, children may have difficulty concentrating, planning and organizing, and responding appropriately to external stimuli. It is considered to be a learning disorder that fits into the autism spectrum of disorders. To target his diet and nutritional supplementation, I recommended a comprehensive blood panel, an adrenal profile, a food sensitivity panel, and an organic acids profile to determine vitamin, mineral, and energy deficiency status. His blood panel indicated low thyroid function, iron deficiency, and autoimmune thyroid. His adrenal profile indicated adrenal fatigue. His organic acids test indicated low B vitamins and zinc, low detoxification capacity, and low levels of energy nutrients, particularly magnesium. He was also low in omega-3 fatty acids and sensitive to gluten, dairy, eggs, and corn. Armed with all of that information, he and I worked together to develop a diet based on his test results. I like to involve children in the designing of their diet. That way they get to include the foods they like, learn how to make healthy substitutions for foods they love but can no longer eat, and learn how to improve their overall food choices. He also learned he needed to include protein at all meals, have snacks throughout the day, and what constitutes a healthy snack. I recommended he start with a gut restoration protocol along with iron support; food sensitivities often go hand in hand with leaky gut issues. This would also impact brain function. In the second phase of his program, I added inositol and serotonin support for sleep, thyroid support, DHA, glutathione support (to help regulate autoimmunity), a vitamin and mineral complex, fish oils, B-12, licorice extract for his adrenals, and dopamine and acetylcholine support to improve his concentration, energy, and memory. Within a month, his parents reported that he was falling asleep easily and would wake up with energy in the morning. His concentration improved, as did his ability to remember what he had learned at school. He started to play sports in the afternoon and took the initiative to let his mom know what foods not to include in his diet. He is still on his program three years later, and the improvements

14 Ways to Encourage Playfulness

Ice Cube Fun

Mitten on a Bottle

Water Play Games

Where Am I Touching?

Playing with Your Food

Texture Play

He had sensory processing disorder—something we didn’t know about back then—and was highly sensitive to smells.

Neurodivergent Checklist Time Blindness: Many neurodivergent people have trouble properly perceiving time as it passes. It either goes by too quickly or slowly. The perception of time depends on the level of stimulation the neurodivergent person is dealing with. It also can vary depending on what you’re focused on. If you’ve ever found yourself unable to account for time, you may be neurodivergent. Executive Dysfunction: This is what you experience when you want to accomplish a task, but despite how hard you try, you cannot see it through. Executive dysfunction happens for various reasons, depending on the type of neurodivergence in question. Still, the point is that this is a common occurrence in neurodivergent people. Task Multiplication: What is task multiplication? It happens when you set off to accomplish one thing but have to do a million other things, even though that wasn’t your original plan. For instance, you may want to sit down to finish some writing, only to notice water on the floor. You get up to grab a mop, and on the way, you notice the laundry you were supposed to drop off at the dry cleaners. Stooping to pick up the bag, you find yourself at eye level with your journal and remember you were supposed to make an entry the previous day, so you’re going to do that now. On and on it goes. Inconsistent Sleep Habits: This depends on what sort of neurodivergence you’re dealing with and if you’ve got comorbid disorders. Most importantly, neurodivergent people sleep more or less than “regular” people. You may also notice that your sleep habits fluctuate a lot. Sometimes you may sleep for eight hours at a stretch for a week, only to suddenly start running on just three hours of sleep. Emotional Dysregulation: With many neurodivergent people, it’s hard to keep emotions in check. Emotional dysregulation occurs in extreme emotions, sudden mood swings, or inappropriate emotional reactions (either not responding to the degree they should or overreacting). Hyperfixation: This also plays out differently depending on the brand of neurodivergence in question. Often, neurodivergent people get very involved in topics or hobbies to the point of what others may think of as obsession. Picking Up on Subtleties but Missing the Obvious: Neurodivergent people may struggle with picking up on things neurotypical people can see easily. At the same time, they are incredibly adept at noticing the subtle things everyone else misses. Sensory Sensitivities: If you’re neurodivergent, you may be unable to ignore your clothes tag scratching your back, have trouble hearing certain sounds, and can’t quite deal with certain textures of clothing, food, and so on. Rejection Sensitivity: Neurodivergent people are often more sensitive to rejection than others due to neurological differences and life experiences. For instance, children with ADHD get much more negative feedback than their peers without ADHD. Neurodivergent people are often rejected to the point where they notice rejection even when it’s not there.

In Silver’s model this injured filter system, which is regulated by the catecholamines, doesn’t screen out irrelevant information and sensory stimuli as efficiently as it should, thereby letting everything that registers at the desk of the reticular activating system arrive in the rooms of the frontal regions of the brain. The individual is bombarded, taking care of ten thousand guests in a hotel built for one thousand, on overload all the time, receiving messages about every minute aspect of his or her experience. It is no wonder, then, that the individual would be distractible or, as Silver would argue, inclined to withdraw from it all and shut the damned hotel down.

I often hear adults telling children to give them a hug, which I find curious. We ask children to do things that violate their boundaries every day. We entitle ourselves to their personal space without consideration for who they are, and how they like to experience closeness. Embracing or laying a hand on a child’s shoulder can be more about us than about them, rather than how they need or want to be handled.  To sensory-affected and children with spectrum disorders, touch can feel alarming. Consider asking a child if you can give them a hug and be open to the answer being no. An embrace is a gift we give someone else. Not all children or adults like to be hugged or fondled, particularly by strangers. We don’t need to take it personally; what we need to do is honor what others want. Giving kids a choice in the matter will be carried through adolescence and into adulthood and help them do what it takes to protect their bodies by setting boundaries. Set the standard for yourself and for children that it is okay to create one’s own signature gesture of love or greeting, and an entirely new chain of respect can begin.

Every child is occasionally out-of-sync. Careful diagnosis is imperative to determine which symptoms are related to sensory processing problems, and which are not.

hypothesis that psychically sensitive individuals may somehow, through some as-yet-undiscovered “psychic retina,” be detecting large, rapid changes in entropy as bright beacons on the landscape ahead in time.24 May’s argument makes a certain amount of sense given the classical equivalence of time’s arrow with entropy. Things that are very rapidly dissipating heat, such as stars and nuclear reactors and houses on fire, or even just a living body making the ultimate transition to the state of disorder called death, could perhaps be seen as concentrated time. But steep entropy gradients also represent a category of information that is intrinsically interesting and meaningful to humans and toward which we are particularly vigilant, whatever the sensory channel through which we receive it. An attentional bias to entropy gradients has been shown for the conventional senses of sight and hearing, not just psi phenomena. Stimuli involving sudden, rapid motion, and especially fire and heat, as well as others’ deaths and illness, are signals that carry important information related to our survival, so we tend to notice and remember them.25 Thus, an alternative explanation for the link between psi accuracy and entropy is the perverse pleasure—that is, jouissance—aroused in people by signs of destruction. Some vigilant part of us needs be constantly scanning the environment for indications of threats to our life and health, which means we need on some level to find that search rewarding. If we were not rewarded, we would not keep our guard up. Entropic signals like smoke from an advancing fire, or screams or cries from a nearby victim of violence or illness, or the grief of a neighbor for their family member are all signifiers, part of what could be called the “natural language of peril.” We find it “enjoyable,” albeit in an ambivalent or repellent way, to engage with such signifiers because, again, their meaning, their signified, is our own survival. The heightened accuracy toward entropic targets that May observed could reflect a heightened fascination with fire, heat, and chaotic situations more generally, an attentional bias to survival-relevant stimuli. Our particular psychic fascination with fire may also reflect its central role as perhaps the most decisive technology in our evolutionary development as well as the most dangerous, always able to turn on its user in an unlucky instant.26 The same primitive threat-vigilance orientation accounts for the unique allure of artworks depicting destruction or the evidence of past destruction. In the 18th century, the sublime entered the vocabulary of art critics and philosophers like Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant to describe the aesthetic appeal of ruins, impenetrable wilderness, thunderstorms and storms at sea, and other visual signals of potential or past peril, including the slow entropy of erosion and decay. Another definition of the sublime would be the semiotic of entropy.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My husband, for all the backrubs he gives me, the double-chocolate muffins he bakes, for the kisses, the gentle teasing, the pep talks, and the patience he displays whenever I am stressed, irritated, angry, or grumpy about uncooperative characters and plots. Thank you for listening to my theories about true crime shows and for being a magnificent DM for our D&D group. My brave, funny, fierce daughter, whose persistence and strength in the face of multiple challenges, including spina bifida and clubfoot, inspires me every day, and my sweet, sensitive, story-loving son, who has worked so hard to learn coping strategies for his sensory processing disorder. “Allo” you both with all my heart, babies. Thank you for inspiring me, for keeping me laughing, for asking for so many kisses and hugs every single day, and for having absolutely zero interest in my stories because they don’t feature any trains. D, for helping with my children during a pandemic when no one else is available, and for reading a thousand books to them and “playing Star Wars” with them so enthusiastically. My family, for helping so much with my children and supporting my career’s success however you can. Love you guys. Dani Crabtree, for being the most understanding and flexible editor in existence. If this book has errors, they’re mine. (I like to add extra things after she’s seen the book.) My dear, lovely, generous readers—thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading and loving my books. I couldn’t do it without you. The stories only come alive with your imaginations, so with you all to imagine them, our beloved characters would only live in my head. I’m thrilled to share them with you. Thank you for all the notes you write me and the emails you send. Your words make a difference, especially when I’m struggling to remember what I love about this job (usually during a particularly stubborn first draft.) I love you all!

sensory processing disorder;

What is sensory integration therapy? This form of occupational therapy helps children and adults with SPD (sensory processing disorder) use all their senses together. These are the senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. Sensory integration therapy is claimed to help people with SPD respond to sensory inputs such as light, sound, touch, and others; and change challenging or repetitive behaviours. Someone in the family may have trouble receiving and responding to information through their senses. This is a condition called sensory processing disorder (SPD). These people are over-sensitive to things in their surroundings. This disorder is commonly identified in children and with conditions like autism spectrum disorder. The exact cause of sensory processing disorder is yet to be identified. However, previous studies have proven that over-sensitivity to light and sound has a strong genetic component. Other studies say that those with sensory processing conditions have abnormal brain activity when exposed simultaneously to light and sound. Treatment for sensory processing disorder in children and adults is called sensory integration therapy. Therapy sessions are play-oriented for children, so they should be fun and playful. This may include the use of swings, slides, and trampolines and may be able to calm an anxious child. In addition, children can make appropriate responses. They can also perform more normally. SPD can also affect adults Someone who struggles with SPD should consider receiving occupational therapy, which has an important role in identifying and treating sensory integration issues. Occupational therapists are health professionals using different therapeutic approaches so that people can do every work they need to do, inside and outside their homes. Through occupational therapy, affected individuals are helped to manage their immediate and long-term sensory symptoms. Sensory integration therapy for adults, especially for people living with dementia or Alzheimer's disease, may use everyday sounds, objects, foods, and other items to rouse their feelings and elicit positive responses. Suppose an adult is experiencing agitation or anxiety. In that case, soothing music can calm them, or smelling a scent familiar to them can help lessen their nervous excitement and encourage relaxation, as these things can stimulate their senses. Seniors with Alzheimer's/Dementia can regain their ability to connect with the world around them. This can help improve their well-being overall and quality of life. What Are The Benefits of Sensory Integration Therapy Sensory integration treatment offers several benefits to people with SPD: * efficient organisation of sensory information. These are the things the brain collects from one's senses - smell, touch, sight, etc. * Active involvement in an exploration of the environment. * Maximised ability to function in recreational and other daily activities. * Improved independence with daily living activities. * Improved performance in the home, school, and community. * self-regulations. Affected individuals get the ability to understand and manage their behaviours and understand their feelings about things that happen around them. * Sensory systems modulation. If you are searching for an occupational therapist to work with for a family with a sensory processing disorder, check out the Mission Walk Therapy & Rehabilitation Centre. The occupational therapy team of Mission Walk uses individualised care plans, along with the most advanced techniques, so that patients can perform games, school tasks, and other day-to-day activities with their best functional skills. Call Mission Walk today for more information or a free consultation on sensory integration therapy. Our customer service staff will be happy to help.

The more empathic she is— sensory-aware—the more she shares others’ pain. The more sentient she is, the greater her need for “the pull” in order to close any separation. She feels the others’ pain. Is it through fear? Or is it through empathy? Is she living for herself or for others? One thing is for certain, during times of great tension and intra-psychic stress; there is greater susceptibility to imitating other people’s disorders. She doesn’t “catch colds and infections,” she merely imitates them.

(see figure 1) or the macro-steps of the day’s plans (see figure 4). The level of detail depends on the context and the child’s needs for communication support. To help encourage literacy and develop sight words at

the brain cannot do its most important job of organizing sensory messages.

Once young people with sensory challenges connect with others around them, SPD does not preclude friendships. Indeed, it may enhance them. An “aha” moment often occurs when it becomes abundantly clear that friendship doesn’t depend on ball skills, clothing preferences, or hairstyle. Rather, it depends on deeper qualities, such as kindness, compassion, and creativity. Coming to accept—and even embrace—SPD is an important step along the way to forming close friendships with diverse collections of true friends who appreciate one another for who they are.

When adults interpret sensory integration problems as deliberate behavioral choices, things can spiral out of control quickly. If a child legitimately cannot find a way within his neurological capabilities to do something a parent or teacher is insisting on — and lacks any sort of useful vocabulary for explaining why he can't — there is very little option but to explode in fear and frustration. Understanding that a child is trying his best and needs help to overcome challenges is an important first step in helping kids with sensory integration disorder.

Considering the mental domain privilege over the bodily is a long-standing bias of psychologists and philosophers, but it is not inevitable. More than a hundred years ago, John Hughlines jackson contemplated the relations of mental abilities to brain networks in patients with brain disorders and concluded that the separation of mental functions from sensorimotor made no sense. The brain evolved to regulate the motivational control of actions, carried out by the motor system, guided by sensory evaluation of ongoing environmental events. There are no "faculties" ―of memory, conscious perception, or music appreciation―that float in the mental ether, separate from the bodily functions. If we accept that the mind comes from the brain [the brain in ongoing interaction with environment], then our behavior and experience must be understood to be elaborations of primordial systems of perceiving, evaluating, and acting. When we study the brain to look for networks controlling cognition are linked in one way or the other to sensory systems, or to motivational systems. There are no brain parts for disembodied cognition.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a developmental disorder that generally consists of communication and sensory differences as well as repetitive behaviour. Spoiler alert: none of this goes away when we step into work.

Consciousness has three remarkable features. The first is qualitative feeling: listening to music is different from smelling a lemon. The second is subjectivity: awareness is going on in me. I am pretty sure that something similar is going on in you, but my relation to my own consciousness is not like my relation to anybody else’s. I know you are feeling pain when you burn your hand, but that’s because I am observing your behavior, not because I am experiencing—actually feeling—your pain. Only when I burn myself do I feel pain. The third feature is unity of experience: I experience the feeling of my shirt against my neck and the sound of my voice and the sight of all the other people sitting around the table as part of a single, unified consciousness—my experience—not a jumble of discrete sensory stimuli.

The insula not only evaluates and integrates the emotional or motivational importance of these stimuli, it also coordinates external sensory information and our internal motivational states. This consciousness of bodily states is a measure of our emotional awareness of self, the feeling that “I am.

Moruzzi and Magoun realized that the brain contains a system—which they called the reticular activating system—that extends from the brain stem and midbrain to the thalamus, and from the thalamus to the cortex. This system carries the sensory information from the various sensory systems necessary for the conscious state, and distributes it diffusely to the cerebral cortex (fig. 11.3). But while the reticular activating system is necessary for wakefulness, it is not concerned with the content of conscious processing, that is, with the content of awareness. Figure 11.3.

Neurodiversity supporters cling essentially to autism’s diagnostic criteria when challenging even mainstream critics, as we support acceptance of official autism domains of atypical communication, intense and “special” interests, a need for familiarity or predictability, and atypical sensory processing, yet distinguish between those core traits and co-occurring conditions we would be happy to cure such as anxiety, gastrointestinal disorders, sleep disorders, and epilepsy.

Intuitively we all know that it is better to feel than to not feel. Our emotions are not a luxury but an essential aspect of our makeup. We have them not just for the pleasure of feeling but because they have crucial survival value. They orient us, interpret the world for us, give us vital information without which we cannot thrive. They tell us what is dangerous and what is benign, what threatens our existence and what will nurture our growth. Imagine how disabled we would be if we could not see or hear or taste or sense heat or cold or physical pain. To shut down emotions is to lose an indispensable part of our sensory apparatus and, beyond that, an indispensable part of who we are. Emotions are what make life worthwhile, exciting, challenging, and meaningful. They drive our explorations of the world, motivate our discoveries, and fuel our growth. Down to the very cellular level, human beings are either in defensive mode or in growth mode, but they cannot be in both at the same time. When children become invulnerable, they cease to relate to life as infinite possibility, to themselves as boundless potential, and to the world as a welcoming and nurturing arena for their self-expression. The invulnerability imposed by peer orientation imprisons children in their limitations and fears. No wonder so many of them these days are being treated for depression, anxiety, and other disorders. The love, attention, and security only adults can offer liberates children from the need to make themselves invulnerable and restores to them that potential for life and adventure that can never come from risky activities, extreme sports, or drugs. Without that safety our children are forced to sacrifice their capacity to grow and mature psychologically, to enter into meaningful relationships, and to pursue their deepest and most powerful urges for self-expression. In the final analysis, the flight from vulnerability is a flight from the self. If we do not hold our children close to us, the ultimate cost is the loss of their ability to hold on to their own truest selves.

I am not talking about curing; I am talking about reducing some of the symptoms to make life better for people with disorders. If we understand that physiological state provides a functional platform for different classes of behavior, then we are aware that when a client is in a physiological state that supports fight/flight, the client will not be available for social behavior. If the client is in a physiological state of shutting down, the client is functionally immune to social interactions. An important treatment goal is to provide the client with the ability to access the physiological state that enables social engagement. In developing this capacity, the client is informed that access to this physiological state is limited, due to our neuroception processes, to safe environments. With that knowledge, we need to structure settings to remove sensory cues that trigger a neuroception of danger and life threat.

The vestibular system tells us about up and down and whether we are upright or not. It tells us where our heads and bodies are in relation to the earth’s surface. It sends sensory messages about balance and movement from the neck, eyes, and body to the CNS for processing and then helps generate muscle tone so we can move smoothly and efficiently. This sense tells us whether we are moving or standing still, and whether objects are moving or motionless in relation to our body. It also informs us what direction we are going in, and how fast we are going. This is extremely useful information should we need to make a fast getaway! Indeed, the fundamental functions of fight, flight, and foraging for food depend on accurate information from the vestibular system. Dr. Ayres writes that the “system has basic survival value at one of the most primitive levels, and such significance is reflected in its role in sensory integration.” The receptors for vestibular sensations are hair cells in the inner ear, which is like a “vestibule” for sensory messages to pass through. The inner-ear receptors work something like a carpenter’s level. They register every movement we make and every change in head position—even the most subtle. Some inner-ear structures receive information about where our head and body are in space when we are motionless, or move slowly, or tilt our head in any linear direction—forward, backward, or to the side. As an example of how this works, stand up in an ordinary biped, or two-footed, position. Now, close your eyes and tip your head way to the right. With your eyes closed, resume your upright posture. Open your eyes. Are you upright again, where you want to be? Your vestibular system did its job. Other structures in the inner ear receive information about the direction and speed of our head and body when we move rapidly in space, on the diagonal or in circles. Stand up and turn around in a circle or two. Do you feel a little dizzy? You should. Your vestibular system tells you instantly when you have had enough of this rotary stimulation. You will probably regain your balance in a moment. What stimulates these inner ear receptors? Gravity! According to Dr. Ayres, gravity is “the most constant and universal force in our lives.” It rules every move we make. Throughout evolution, we have been refining our responses to gravitational pull. Our ancient ancestors, the first fish, developed gravity receptors, on either side of their heads, for three purposes: 1) to keep upright, 2) to provide a sense of their own motions so they could move efficiently, and 3) to detect potentially threatening movements of other creatures through the vibrations of ripples in the water. Millions of years later, we still have gravity receptors to serve the same purposes—except now vibrations come through air rather than water.

Nature designed our vestibular receptors to be extremely sensitive. Indeed, our need to know where we are in relation to the earth is more compelling than our need for food, for tactile comfort, or even for a mother-child bond.

Bilateral (from the Latin for “both sides”) coordination means that we can use both sides of the body to cooperate as a team. A well-regulated vestibular system helps us to integrate sensory messages from both sides of our body. By the age of three or four, a child should be crossing the midline. For the child who avoids crossing the midline, coordinating both body sides may be difficult. When she paints at an easel, she may switch the brush from one hand to the other at the midway point separating her right and left sides. She may appear not to have established a hand preference, sometimes using her left and sometimes her right to eat, draw, write, or throw. It may also be hard to survey a scene or to track a moving object visually without stopping at the midline to blink and refocus. The child with poor bilateral coordination may have trouble using both feet together to jump from a ledge, or both hands together to catch a ball or play clapping games. She may have difficulty coordinating her hands to hold a paper while she cuts, or to stabilize the paper with one hand while she writes with the other. Poor bilateral coordination, a sensory-based motor disorder, is often misinterpreted as a learning disability such as dyslexia. In fact, this difficulty can lead to learning or behavior problems, but it does not ordinarily mean that a child is lacking in intelligence or academic ability.

An occupational therapist will usually evaluate the child in her office. The evaluation is ordinarily a pleasant experience. While costs vary, expect to spend several hundred dollars. This will be money well spent, and it may be covered by health insurance. Here are some of the areas an OT investigates: Fine- and gross-motor developmental levels Visual-motor integration (doing puzzles or copying shapes) Visual discrimination Neuromuscular control (balance and posture) Responses to sensory stimulation (tactile, vestibular, and proprioceptive) Bilateral coordination Praxis (motor planning)

revisions in this second edition of The Out-of-Sync Child reflect Dr. Miller’s work. Her wonderful book, Sensational Kids: Hope and Help for Children with Sensory Processing Disorder (Perigee, 2007), explains the terminology in detail.

Sometimes, your child may function well, and other times, she will resist going to school, spill her milk, and fall. Expect inconsistency. When she stumbles, try to be understanding. Break challenges into small pieces. Encourage her to achieve one goal at a time to feel the satisfaction of a series of little successes. Remember that you have had years of experience in learning to deal with the world, and that the child has not.

Discipline When the child loses control, avoid punishment. Loss of self-control is scary enough; punishment adds guilt and shame. Comment on the child’s negative behavior, not on the child: “Your yelling makes me angry,” rather than “You infuriate me!” Help the child find a quiet space, away from sensory overload, as a technique to regain self-control. Let him decide the length of the time-out, if possible. Set limits, to make a child feel secure. Pick one battle at a time to help him develop self-control and appropriate behavior. Be firm about the limits you set. Show him that his feelings won’t change the outcome; a rule is a rule. “I know you’re mad because you want to play with the puppy, but it is suppertime.” Discipline consistently. Use gestures and empathy to explain why you are disciplining him. (Discipline means to teach or instruct, not punish.) After you tell him what you are going to do, then do it. Determine appropriate consequences for misbehavior. A natural consequence is best, because it is reasonable, factual, and you don’t impose it: “If you skip breakfast, you will be hungry.” A logical consequence, in which the child is responsible for the outcome of his behavior, is second best: “If you throw food, you must mop it up.” An applied consequence, in which the punishment doesn’t exactly fit the crime, is useful when nothing else works: “If you spit on the baby, you may not play with your friends,” or “If you hit me, you may not watch TV.” Reward appropriate behavior with approval.

Do build on the child’s strengths: “You are such a good cook! Help me remember what we need for our meat loaf recipe. Then, you can mix it.” Or, “You have energy to spare. Could you run over to Mrs. Johnson’s house and get a magazine she has for me?” Think “ability,” not “disability.” Do build on the child’s interests: “Your collection of rocks is growing fast. Let’s read some books about rocks. We can make a list of the different kinds you have found.” Your interest and support will encourage the child to learn more and do more. Do suggest small, manageable goals to strengthen your child’s abilities: “How about if you walk with me just as far as the mailbox? You can drop the letter in. Then I’ll carry you piggy-back, all the way home.” Or, “You can take just one dish at a time to clear the table. We aren’t in a hurry.” Do encourage self-help skills: To avoid “learned helplessness,” sponsor your child’s independence. “I know it’s hard to tie your shoes, but each time you do it, it will get easier.” Stress how capable she is, and how much faith you have in her, to build her self-esteem and autonomy. Show her you have expectations that she can help herself. Do let your child engage in appropriate self-therapy: If your child craves spinning, let him spin on the tire swing as long as he wants. If he likes to jump on the bed, get him a trampoline, or put a mattress on the floor. If he likes to hang upside down, install a chinning bar in his bedroom doorway. If he insists on wearing boots every day, let him wear boots. If he frequently puts inedible objects into his mouth, give him chewing gum. If he can’t sit still, give him opportunities to move and balance, such as sitting on a beach ball while he listens to music or a story. He will seek sensations that nourish his hungry brain, so help him find safe ways to do so. Do offer new sensory experiences: “This lavender soap is lovely. Want to smell it?” Or, “Turnips crunch like apples but taste different. Want a bite?” Do touch your child, in ways that the child can tolerate and enjoy: “I’ll rub your back with this sponge. Hard or gently?” Or, “Do you know what three hand squeezes mean, like this? I-Love-You!

Do encourage movement: “Let’s swing our arms to the beat of this music. I always feel better when I stretch, don’t you?” Movement always improves sensory processing. Do encourage the child to try a new movement experience: “If you’re interested in that swing, I’ll help you get on.” Children with dyspraxia may enjoy new movement experiences but need help figuring out how to initiate them. Do offer your physical and emotional support: “I’m interested in that swing. Want to try it with me? You can sit on my lap, and we’ll swing together.” The child who is fearful of movement may agree to swing at the playground if he has the security of a loving lap. (Stop if he resists.) Do allow your child to experience unhappiness, frustration, or anger: “Wow, it really hurts when you don’t get picked for the team.” Acknowledging his feelings allows him to deal with them, whereas rushing in to make it better every time he’s hurt prevents him from learning to cope with negative emotions. Do provide appropriate outlets for negative emotions: Make it possible to vent pent-up feelings. Give her a ball or a bucketful of wet sponges to hurl against the fence. Designate a “screaming space” (her room, the basement, or garage) where she can go to pound her chest and shout. Do reinforce what is good about your child’s feelings and actions, even when something goes wrong: “You didn’t mean for the egg to miss the bowl. Cracking eggs takes practice. I’m glad you want to learn. Try again.” Help her assess her experience positively by talking over what she did right and what she may do better the next time. How wonderful to hear that an adult is sympathetic, rather than judgmental! Do praise: “I noticed that you fed and walked the dog. Thanks for being so responsible.” Reward the child for goodness, empathy, and being mindful of the needs of others. “You are a wonderful friend,” or “You make animals feel safe.” Do give the child a sense of control: “If you choose bed now, we’ll have time for a long story. If you choose to play longer, we won’t have time for a story. You decide.” Or, “I’m ready to go to the shoe store whenever you are. Tell me when you’re ready to leave.” Impress on the child that others don’t have to make every decision that affects him. Do set reasonable limits: To become civilized, every child needs limits. “It’s okay to be angry but not okay to hurt someone. We do not pinch.

Do recall how you behaved as a child: Maybe your child is just like you once were. (The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!) Ask yourself what you would have liked to make your childhood easier and more pleasurable. More trips to the playground, free time, or cuddling? Fewer demands? Lower expectations? Try saying, “When I was a kid and life got rough, I liked to climb trees. How about you?” Do respect your child’s needs, even if they seem unusual: “You sure do like a tight tuck-in! There, now you’re as snug as a bug in a rug.” Or, “I’ll stand in front of you while we’re on the escalator. I won’t let you fall.” Do respect your child’s fears, even if they seem senseless: “I see that your ball bounced near those big kids. I’ll go with you. Let’s hold hands.” Your reassurances will help her trust others. Do say “I love you”: Assure your child that you accept and value who she is. You cannot say “I love you” too often! Do follow your instincts: Your instincts will tell you that everyone needs to touch and be touchable, to move and be movable. If your child’s responses seem atypical, ask questions, get information, and follow up with appropriate action. Do listen when others express concerns: When teachers or caregivers suggest that your child’s behavior is unusual, you may react with denial or anger. But remember that they see your child away from home, among many other children. Their perspective is worth considering. Do educate yourself about typical child development: Read. Take parent education classes. Learn about invariable stages of human development, as well as variable temperaments and learning styles. It’s comforting to know that a wide variety of behaviors falls within the normal range. Then, you’ll find it easier to differentiate between typical and atypical behavior. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a six-year-old is just a six-year-old! Do seek professional help: SPD is a problem that a child can’t overcome alone. Parents and teachers can’t “cure” a child, just as a child can’t cure himself. Early intervention is crucial. Do keep your cool: When your child drives you crazy, collect your thoughts before responding, especially if you are angry, upset, or unpleasantly surprised. A child who is out of control needs the calm reassurance of someone who is in control. She needs a grown-up. Do take care of yourself: When you’re having a hard day, take a break! Hire a babysitter and go for a walk, read a book, take a bath, dine out, make love. Nobody can be expected to give another person undivided attention, and still cope.

With the most complex brain in the animal kingdom, humans have the most complex nervous system. Its main task is to process sensations. The nervous system has three main parts, working in harmony. One is the peripheral nervous system, running through organs and muscles, such as the eyes, ears, and limbs. The second part is the autonomic nervous system, controlling involuntary functions of heart rate, breathing, digestion, and reproduction. The third part is the central nervous system (CNS), consisting of countless neurons, a spinal cord, and a brain.

hippocampus (Greek for “sea horse,” which it resembles)

The child who feels uncomfortable in his own skin may have poor motor planning, or dyspraxia. He may move awkwardly and have difficulty planning and organizing his movements. Thus, he may shun the very activities that would improve his praxis.

In addition, the child with poor tactile awareness in his mouth, lips, tongue, and jaw may have a sensory-based motor problem called oral apraxia, which affects his ability to produce and sequence sounds necessary for speech.

Perceptual motor therapy provides integrated movement experiences that remediate gross-motor, fine-motor, and visual discrimination problems. Activities, including sensory-input techniques, stimulate left/right brain communication to help the child interpret incoming information to the nervous system. Goals are to develop more mature patterns of response to specific stimuli, improve motor skills and balance, and stimulate alternate routes to memory and sequencing for those children who do not respond to the methods taught in the conventional classroom.

The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun (Perigee, 2006), The Goodenoughs Get in Sync (Sensory World, 2010), Growing an In-Sync Child (Perigee, 2010), and In-Sync Activity Cards (Sensory World, 2012).

Activities to Develop the Tactile Sense Rub-a-Dub-Dub—Encourage the child to rub a variety of textures against her skin. Offer different kinds of soap (oatmeal soap, shaving cream, lotion soap) and scrubbers (loofah sponges, thick washcloths, foam pot-scrubbers, plastic brushes). Water Play—Fill the kitchen sink with sudsy water and unbreakable pitchers and bottles, turkey basters, sponges, eggbeaters, and toy water pumps. Or, fill a washtub with water and toys and set it on the grass. Pouring and measuring are educational and therapeutic, as well as high forms of entertainment. Water Painting—Give the child a bucket of water and paintbrush to paint the porch steps, the sidewalk, the fence, or her own body. Or, provide a squirt bottle filled with clean water (because the squirts often go in the child’s mouth). Finger Painting—Let the sensory craver wallow in this literally “sensational” activity. Encourage (but don’t force) the sensory avoider to stick a finger into the goop. For different tactile experiences, mix sand into the paint, or place a blob of shaving cream, peanut butter, or pudding on a plastic tray. Encourage him to draw shapes, letters, and numbers. If he “messes up,” he can erase the error with his hand and begin again. Finger Drawing—With your finger, “draw” a shape, letter, number, or design on the child’s back or hand. Ask the child to guess what it is and then to pass the design on to another person. Sand Play—In a sandbox, add small toys (cars, trucks, people, and dinosaurs), which the child can rearrange, bury, and rediscover. Instead of sand, use dried beans, rice, pasta, cornmeal, popcorn, and mud. Making mud pies and getting messy are therapeutic, too.

Feelie Box—Cut a hole in a shoebox lid. Place spools, buttons, blocks, coins, marbles, animals, and cars in the box. The child inserts a hand through the hole and tells you what toy she is touching. Or, ask her to reach in and feel for a button or car. Or, show her a toy and ask her to find one in the box that matches. These activities improve the child’s ability to discriminate objects without the use of vision. “Can You Describe It?”—Provide objects with different textures, temperatures, and weights. Ask her to tell you about an object she is touching. (If you can persuade her not to look at it, the game is more challenging.) Is the object round? Cool? Smooth? Soft? Heavy? Oral-Motor Activities—Licking stickers and pasting them down, blowing whistles and kazoos, blowing bubbles, drinking through straws or sports bottles, and chewing gum or rubber tubing may provide oral satisfaction. Hands-on Cooking—Have the child mix cookie dough, bread dough, or meat loaf in a shallow roasting pan (not a high-sided bowl). Science Activities—Touching worms and egg yolks, catching fireflies, collecting acorns and chestnuts, planting seeds, and digging in the garden provide interesting tactile experiences. Handling Pets—What could be more satisfying than stroking a cat, dog or rabbit? People Sandwich—Have the “salami” or “cheese” (your child) lie facedown on the “bread” (gym mat or couch cushion) with her head extended beyond the edge. With a “spreader” (sponge, pot scrubber, basting or vegetable brush, paintbrush, or washcloth) smear her arms, legs, and torso with pretend mustard, mayonnaise, relish, ketchup, etc. Use firm, downward strokes. Cover the child, from neck to toe, with another piece of “bread” (folded mat or second cushion). Now press firmly on the mat to squish out the excess mustard, so the child feels the deep, soothing pressure. You can even roll or crawl across your child; the mat will distribute your weight. Your child will be in heaven.

Activities to Develop the Vestibular System Rolling—Encourage your child to roll across the floor and down a grassy hill. Swinging—Encourage (but never force) the child to swing. Gentle, linear movement is calming. Fast, high swinging in an arc is more stimulating. If the child has gravitational insecurity, start him on a low swing so his feet can touch the ground, or hold him on your lap. Two adults can swing him in a blanket, too. Spinning—At the playground, let the child spin on the tire swing or merry-go-round. Indoors, offer a swivel chair or Sit ’n Spin. Monitor the spinning, as the child may become easily overstimulated. Don’t spin her without her permission! Sliding—How many ways can a child swoosh down a slide? Sitting up, lying down, frontwards, backwards, holding on to the sides, not holding on, with legs straddling the sides, etc. Riding Vehicles—Trikes, bikes, and scooters help children improve their balance, motor planning, and motor coordination. Walking on Unstable Surfaces—A sandy beach, a playground “clatter bridge,” a grassy meadow, and a waterbed are examples of shaky ground that require children to adjust their bodies as they move. Rocking—Provide a rocking chair for your child to get energized, organized, or tranquilized.

Riding, balancing, and walking on a seesaw. Balancing on a Teeter-Totter—Center a board over a railroad timber. (See The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun for ideas.) Sitting on a T-stool—A T-stool helps improve balance, posture, and attention. (See The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun for ideas.) Balancing on a Large Therapy Ball—Your child can lie on her stomach, on her back, or sit and bounce. Some balls have handles for bouncing up and lower (hippity-hopping). Tummy Down, Head Up—Have the child lie on her stomach. On the floor, she can rock to and fro to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”; draw on paper while listening to music, using crayons, which require her to bear down to make a mark; and play with small toys. On a swing or therapy ball, she can “draw” on the ground or carpet with a stick; throw sponges into a basket; and bat a suspended ball with a cardboard tube. Jogging—Run around the block together!

Activities to Develop the Proprioceptive System Lifting and Carrying Heavy Loads—Have the child pick up and carry soft-drink bottles to the picnic; laundry baskets upstairs; or grocery bags, filled with nonbreakables, into the house. He can also lug a box of books, a bucket of blocks, or a pail of water from one spot to another. Pushing and Pulling—Have the child push or drag grocery bags from door to kitchen. Let him push the stroller, vacuum, rake, shove heavy boxes, tow a friend on a sled, or pull a loaded wagon. Hard muscular work jazzes up the muscles. Hanging by the Arms—Mount a chinning bar in a doorway, or take your child to the park to hang from the monkey bars. When she suspends her weight from her hands, her stretching muscles send sensory messages to her brain. When she shifts from hand to hand as she travels underneath the monkey bars, she is developing upper-body strength. Hermit Crab—Place a large bag of rice or beans on the child’s back and let her move around with a heavy “shell” on her back. Joint Squeeze—Put one hand on the child’s forearm and the other on his upper arm; slowly press toward and away from his elbow. Repeat at his knee and shoulder. Press down on his head. Straighten and bend his fingers, wrists, elbows, knees, ankles, and toes. These extension and flexion techniques provide traction and compression to his joints and are effective when he’s stuck in tight spaces, such as church pews, movie theaters, cars, trains, and especially airplanes where the air pressure changes. Body Squeeze—Sit on the floor behind your child, straddling him with your legs. Put your arms around his knees, draw them toward his chest, and squeeze hard. Holding tight, rock him forward and back.

Bear Hugs—Everyone needs twelve hugs a day. Pouring—Let the child pour sand, beans, or water from one container to another. Opening Doors—Is this hard? Then your child needs practice! Take the time to let her do it all by herself. Back-to-Back Standing Up—Position two children on the floor, back to back. Ask them to “dig their feet into the floor” and to stand up together by pressing against each other’s back. Bulldozer—One child sits in a large cardboard box or on a folded gym mat, and another child pushes the load across the floor, using his head, shoulders, back, or feet to make it move. Arm Wrestling—If you are stronger than your child, please let him win once in a while.

Activities to Develop the Auditory System Simplify your language. Speak slowly, shorten your comments, abbreviate instructions, and repeat what you have said. Reinforce verbal messages with gestural communication: facial expressions, hand movements, and body language. Talk to your child while she dresses, eats, or bathes, to teach her words and concepts, such as nouns (sunglasses, casserole), body parts (thumb, buttocks), prepositions (around, through), adjectives (juicy, soapy), time (yesterday, later), categories (vegetables/fruits), actions (zip, scrub), and emotions (pleased, sorry). Share your own thoughts. Model good speech and communication skills. Even if the child has trouble responding verbally, she may understand what you say. Take the time to let your child respond to your words and express his thoughts. Don’t interrupt, rush, or pressure him to talk. Be an active listener. Pay attention. Look your child in the eye when she speaks. Show her that her thoughts interest you. Help your child communicate more clearly. If you catch one word, say, “Tell me more about the truck.” If you can’t catch his meaning, have him show you by gesturing. Reward her comments with smiles, hugs, and verbal praise, such as, “That’s a great idea!” Your positive feedback will encourage her to strive to communicate. (Don’t say, “Good talking,” which means little to the child and implies that all you care about is words, rather than the message the child is trying to get across.) Use rhythm and beat to improve the child’s memory. Give directions or teach facts with a “piggyback song,” substituting your words to a familiar tune. Example: To the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” sing, “Now it’s time to wash your face, Brush your teeth, comb your hair, Now it’s time to put on clothes, So start with underwear!” Encourage your child to pantomime while listening to stories and poems, or to music without words. Read to your child every day!

Activities to Develop the Visual System Making Shapes—Let your child draw or form shapes, letters, and numbers in different materials, such as playdough, finger paint, shaving cream, soap foam, sand, clay, string, pudding, or pizza dough. Mazes and Dot-to-Dot Activities—Draw mazes on paper, the sidewalk, or the beach. Have the child follow the mazes with his finger, a toy car, a crayon, a marker, or chalk. On graph paper, make dot-to-dot patterns for the child to follow. Peg Board—Have the child reproduce your design or make his own. Cutting Activities—Provide paper and scissors and have your child cut fringe and strips. Draw curved lines on the paper for her to cut. Cutting playdough is fun, too. Tracking Activities—Lie on your backs outside and watch birds or airplanes, just moving your eyes while keeping your heads still. Jigsaw Puzzles! Block Building!!

Office and Classroom Tools—Have the child cut with scissors; use a stapler and hole puncher; draw with crayons and chalk; paint with brushes, feathers, sticks, and eyedroppers; squeeze glue onto paper in letters or designs, sprinkle sparkles on the glue, and shake off the excess; and wrap boxes with brown paper, tape, and string. MOTOR PLANNING Jumping from a Table—Place a gym mat beside a low table and encourage the child to jump. After each landing, stick tape on the mat to mark the spot. Encourage the child to jump farther each time. Walking Like Animals—Encourage the child to lumber like a bear, on all fours; a crab, from side to side on all fours; a turtle, creeping; a snake, crawling; an inchworm, by stretching flat and pulling her knees toward her chest; an ostrich, while grasping her ankles; a duck, squatting; a frog, squatting and jumping; a kangaroo or bunny, jumping; a lame dog, with an “injured” leg; a gorilla, bending her knees; a horse, galloping. Playground Games—Remember Simon Says, Ring-Around-the-Rosy, The Hokey-Pokey, London Bridge, Shoo Fly, and Mother, May I? Insy-Outsy—Teach the child to get in and out of clothes, the front door, and the car. With a little help, the child may become able to perform these tasks independently, even if it takes a long time!

BILATERAL COORDINATION Ball Catch—Toss a large beach ball gently to the child from a short distance. As he becomes more competent, use a smaller ball and step farther away. Ball Whack—Have the child hold a baseball bat, rolling pin, broomstick, book, cardboard tube, or ruler in both hands. Remind her to keep her feet still. Toss her a big ball. As she swings, her body will rotate, as her arms cross the midline. Two-Handed Tetherball—Suspend a sponge ball at the child’s eye level from a string attached to a wide doorframe. Let your child choose different “bats.” Have her count how many hits she makes without missing. Try four-handed tetherball, in which you play, too. Balloon Fun—Using both hands together, the child bounces or tosses up a balloon and catches it. He can keep it afloat by whacking it with open hands or batting it repeatedly with hands clasped together in one large “fist.” Rolling-Pin Fun—Provide the child with a cylindrical block or a rolling pin without handles, so he presses down with his opened hands. Have him roll real dough, playdough, crackers, clay—or mud! Body Rhythms—While you chant or sing, clap, and tap different body parts and have your child imitate your motions. Tip your head from side to side, wave your arms overhead, shake icky sticky glue off your hands, pound your chest, slap your hips, bend from side to side, hunch and relax your shoulders, stamp your feet, and hop from foot to foot. Use both hands together or alternately.

Eggbeater Fun—Give your child an eggbeater to whip up soapsuds or mix up a bowl of birdseed, or of uncooked beans and rice. Marble Painting—Line a tray or cookie sheet with paper. Put a few dabs of finger paint in the center of the paper. Provide a marble to roll through the paint to make a design. Great wrapping paper! Ribbon Dancing—Attach ribbons, streamers, or scarves to the ends of a dowel. Holding the dowel with both hands, the child swirls the ribbons overhead, from side to side, and up and down. (No dowel? Give him a ribbon for each hand.) This activity also improves visual-motor coordination. Two-Sided Activities—Encourage the child to jump rope, swim, bike, hike, row, paddle, and do morning calisthenics.

SNACK AND MEAL TIME Provide a chair that allows the child’s elbows to be at table height and feet to be flat on the floor. A stool or pillow may help. (Kids fidget less when they feel grounded.) Offer a variety of ways to eat food, e.g., eat pudding with a spoon, or scoop it up with fingers; use a spoon or a fork to eat corn kernels, or use both hands to munch corn on the cob; and spoon chicken broth, or lift the bowl to her mouth. Offer a variety of foods with different textures: lumpy, smooth, crunchy, chewy. Keep portions small, especially when introducing new foods. Let the child pour juice or milk into a cup. A tipless cup will help prevent accidents. The child who frequently overreaches or spills juice needs much practice. Encourage the child to handle snack-time or mealtime objects. Opening cracker packages, spreading peanut butter, and eating with utensils are good for proprioception, bilateral coordination, and fine-motor skills.

CHORES Together, make a list of chores he can do to help around the house: Make his bed, walk the dog, empty wastebaskets, take out trash, pull weeds, rake, shovel, sweep, vacuum, fold laundry, empty the dishwasher, set and clear the table. Let him know you need and appreciate him. Make a routine and stick to it. If the child is forgetful, make a chart and post it on the refrigerator. When he finishes a chore, let him stick a star on the chart. Reward him with a special privilege or outing when he accumulates several stars. Break chores down into small steps. Let her clear the table one plate at a time. (She doesn’t have to clear all the dishes.) BATHING Let the child help regulate the water temperature. Provide an assortment of bath toys, soaps, and scrubbers. Scrub the child with firm, downward strokes. Provide a large bath sheet for a tight wrap-up. SLEEPING Give your child notice: “Half an hour until bedtime!” or “You can draw for five more minutes.” Stick to a bedtime routine. Include stories and songs, a look at a sticker collection, a chat about today’s events or tomorrow’s plans, a back rub and snug tuck-in. Children with tactile defensiveness are very particular about clothing, so provide comfortable pajamas. Some like them loose, some like them tight; some like them silky, some don’t like them at all. Nobody likes them bumpy, scratchy, lacy, or with elasticized cuffs. Use percale or silk sheets for a smooth and bumpless bed. Let your child sleep with extra pillows and blankets, in a sleeping bag or bed tent, or on a waterbed. Life at home can improve with a sensory diet and attention to your child’s special needs, and life at school can improve as well.

The will, it was becoming clear, has the power to change the brain—in OCD, in stroke, in Tourette’s, and now in depression—by activating adaptive circuitry. That a mental process alters circuits involved in these disorders offers dramatic examples of how the ways someone thinks about thoughts can effect plastic changes in the brain. Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, calls this top-down plasticity, because it originates in the brain’s higher-order functions. “Bottom-up” plasticity, in contrast, is induced by changes in sensory stimuli such as the loss of input after amputation. Merzenich’s and Tallal’s work shows the power of this bottom-up plasticity to resculpt the brain. The OCD work hints at the power of top-down plasticity, the power of the mind to alter brain circuitry.

For example, attending a noisy, crowded party can be overwhelming. Taking a bumpy airplane ride can overload your brain with rapid movement sensations. Lingering in bed with the flu can prevent you from receiving sufficient movement experiences and make you feel weak. Walking from a well-lit room into a dark closet can deprive your eyes of light and therefore your brain of visual sensations. Not being in control of oneself is very unpleasant, but an occasional disorganizing experience is normal. It is when the brain is so disorganized that a person has difficulty functioning in daily life that the person is diagnosed as having Sensory Processing Disorder.

Our senses give us the information we need to function in the world. Their first job is to help us survive. Their second job, after they assure us that we are safe, is to help us learn how to be active, social creatures. The senses receive information from stimuli both outside and inside our bodies. Every move we make, every bite we eat, every object we touch produces sensations. When we engage in any activity, we use several senses at the same time. The convergence of sensations—especially touch, body position, movement, sight, sound, and smell—is called intersensory integration. This process is key and tells us on the spot what is going on, where, why, and when it matters, and how we must use or respond to it. The more important the activity, the more senses we use. That is why we use all our senses simultaneously for two very important human activities: eating and procreating. Sometimes our senses inform us that something in our environment doesn’t feel right; we sense that we are in danger and so we respond defensively. For instance, should we feel a tarantula creeping down our neck, we would protect ourselves with a fight-or-flight response. Withdrawing from too much stimulation or from stimulation of the wrong kind is natural. Sometimes our senses inform us that all is well; we feel safe and satisfied and seek more of the same stimuli. For example, we are so pleased with the taste of one chocolate-covered raisin that we eat a handful. Sometimes, when we get bored, we go looking for more stimulation. For example, when we have mastered a skill, like ice skating in a straight line, we attempt a more complicated move, like a figure eight. To do their job well, so that we respond appropriately, the senses must work together. A well-balanced brain that is nourished with many sensations operates well, and when our brain operates smoothly, so do we. We have more senses than many people realize. Some sensations occur outside our bodies, and some inside.

According to Dr. Ayres, “Over 80 percent of the nervous system is involved in processing or organizing sensory input, and thus the brain is primarily a sensory processing machine.

A Variation of Dr. Ayres’s “Four Levels of Sensory Integration” By the time a child is ready for preschool, the blocks for complex skill development should be in place. What are these blocks? • Ability to modulate touch sensations through the skin, especially unexpected, light touch, and to discriminate among the physical properties of objects by touching them (tactile sense), • Ability to adjust one’s body to changes in gravity, and to feel comfortable moving through space (vestibular sense), • Ability to be aware of one’s body parts (proprioceptive sense), • Ability to use the two sides of the body in a cooperative manner (bilateral coordination), and • Ability to interact successfully with the physical environment; to plan, organize, and carry out a sequence of unfamiliar actions; to do what one needs and wants to do (praxis).

Sensory Processing Disorder is difficulty in the way the brain takes in, organizes and uses sensory information, causing a person to have problems interacting effectively in the everyday environment. Sensory stimulation may cause difficulty in one’s movement, emotions, attention, or adaptive responses. SPD is an umbrella term covering several distinct disorders that affect how the child uses his senses. Having SPD does not imply brain damage or disease, but rather what Dr. Ayres called “indigestion of the brain,” or a “traffic jam in the brain.” Here is what may happen: • The child’s CNS may not receive or detect sensory information. • The brain may not integrate, modulate, organize, and discriminate sensory messages efficiently. • The disorganized brain may send out inaccurate messages to direct the child’s actions. Deprived of the accurate feedback he needs to behave in a purposeful way, he may have problems in looking and listening, paying attention, interacting with people and objects, processing new information, remembering, and learning.

Arousal, activity level, and attention are self-regulation problems that frequently coexist with SPD. • Unusually high arousal and activity level: The child may be always on the go, restless, and fidgety. He may move with short and nervous gestures, play or work aimlessly, be quick-tempered and excitable, and find it impossible to stay seated.

Regulatory Disorders SELF-REGULATION The child may have difficulty modulating (adjusting) his mood. He may be unable to “rev up,” or to calm down once aroused. He may become fussy easily. He may have difficulty with self-comforting after being hurt or upset. Delaying gratification and tolerating transitions from one activity to another may be hard. The child may perform unevenly: “with it” one day, “out of it” the next. Therapy, a “sensory diet” and nutritional supplements are some of the treatments that may help (see Chapter Nine

• Inattention: Perhaps because of sensory over- or underresponsiveness, the child may have a short attention span, even for activities he enjoys. He may be highly distractible, paying attention to everything except the task at hand. He may be disorganized and forgetful. • Impulsivity: To get or avoid sensory stimulation, the child may be heedlessly energetic and impetuous. She may lack self-control and be unable to stop after starting an activity. She may pour juice until it spills, run pell-mell into people, overturn toy bins, and talk out of turn.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL FUNCTIONING Another coexisting regulatory problem may be how the child feels about himself and relates to other people. • Poor adaptability: The child may resist meeting new people, trying new games or toys or tasting different foods. He may have difficulty making transitions from one situation to another. The child may seem stubborn and uncooperative when it is time to leave the house, come for dinner, get into or out of the bathtub, or change from a reading to a math activity. Minor changes in routine will readily upset this child who does not “go with the flow.” • Attachment problem: The child may have separation anxiety and be clingy and fearful when apart from one or two “significant olders.” Or, she may physically avoid her parents, teachers, and others in her circle. • Frustration: Struggling to accomplish tasks that peers do easily, the child may give up quickly. He may be a perfectionist and become upset when art projects, dramatic play, or homework assignments are not going as well as he expects. • Difficulty with friendships: The child may be hard to get along with and have problems making and keeping friends. Insisting on dictating all the rules and being the winner, the best, or the first, he may be a poor game-player. He may need to control his surrounding territory, be in the “driver’s seat,” and have trouble sharing toys. • Poor communication: The child may have difficulty verbally in the way she articulates her speech, “gets the words out,” and writes. She may have difficulty expressing her thoughts, feelings, and needs, not only through words but also nonverbally through gestures, body language, and facial expressions. • Other emotional problems: He may be inflexible, irrational, and overly sensitive to change, stress, and hurt feelings. Demanding and needy, he may seek attention in negative ways. He may be angry or panicky for no obvious reason. He may be unhappy, believing and saying that he is dumb, crazy, no good, a loser, and a failure. Low self-esteem is one of the most telling symptoms of Sensory Processing Disorder. • Academic problems: The child may have difficulty learning new skills and concepts. Although bright, the child may be perceived as an underachiever.

Among the researchers’ findings is evidence that many children with SPD differ from children with ADHD in their responses to unexpected sensations, such as light touches, loud noises, flickering lights, strong smells, and being tilted backward in a chair. Children with ADHD tend to alert to these novel sensations and then, like most people, habituate—i.e., become easily accustomed—to them. Life goes on. Some children with SPD, however, may not alert to these everyday sensations. Life does not affect them much. Other children with SPD may be continually on alert and may not become accustomed to the sensations at all. Life affects them too much.