Once upon a time a sweet little girl was born.
Everything was going smoothly until developmental delays were discovered.
Although she was speaking 3 syllable words at 12 months, she was not crawling, pulling up to stand, or even getting up or down in a laying down position.
PHYSICAL AND SPEECH THERAPY BEGINS
After a year of physical therapy, she eventually gained gross motor skills, after which she also began speech therapy.
DEVELOPMENTAL SPECIALIST EXAM
A new pediatrician, Dr. Habel, did her 2 year check up.
He recommended that she see a visiting developmental pediatrician, Dr. Morton who was traveling up to Sheppard AFB from Lackland AFB.
Dr. Morton was intrigued by my daughter, whom he said definitely had something going on, but short of a very scary to her MRI, there is nothing to be done but push forward because she was so high functioning.
All those who worked with her agreed she was high functioning and quite intelligent, though something was amiss. No one knew exactly what.
Later that year her brother was born six weeks early.
He spent 3 weeks in the NICU, but everything was tracking well.
Six months later Dr. Habel also sent him to physical therapy because he wasn’t sitting up by himself. Nor was he ingesting enough calories.
Then Dr. Habel recommended him to see Dr. Morton, the developmental pediatrician.
Dr. Morton remembered us from a year before.
Again, he saw my son as high functioning, so there were no special services Dr. Morton could recommend.
OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY BEGINS
Meanwhile Dr. Habel also sent him to an occupational therapist at the base hospital.
Soon after meeting my 6 month old son, she assessed he had a texture issue with baby food in his mouth.
She diagnosed him with Sensory Integration Disorder, which I had never heard of before.
She said we’d focus on texture-based activities to encourage him to eat.
My 3yo dd was with us at the evaluation.
The OT said dd also had SI and encouraged us to include her in the therapy activities at home.
That way one wouldn’t feel left out and the other wouldn’t feel like the odd ball.
This would build team spirit while helping both.
Besides, it’s all fun and good for anyone to do. Especially when Luke the therapy dog was there to help.
When Maj Perry asked how his civilian physical therapy was going, I told her he was still having trouble sitting up independently.
Maj Perry said that he didn’t have strong enough core muscles to hold himself up in a sitting position.
To develop them, Maj Perry showed me a quick and easy exercise to do for fun with him at home, which we did a lot of while watching the USA Olympics gymnastics team in Atlanta.
After that explanation and solution, bam! In two days he was sitting up by himself!
Three months later there were no improvements with his eating, so Dr. Habel referred us to WHMC in San Antonio for medical testing which proved ds was perfectly healthy!
That’s when the WHMC OT came to me with an idea.
WHAT IS SENSORY INTEGRATION DISORDER?
He explained that SI therapy is comprised of 3 parts.
When they focus on one specific area of concern, they see few results.
But when they focus on all 3 parts of SI therapy, their patients make greater gains.
As the OT explained the 3 parts of SI and how it affects childhood development, I sketched it out in my notebook (see header photo):
At the base of the pyramid are the three parts:
*proprioceptive – messages from joints during movement
*kinesthetic/ vestibular – knowing your body’s position in space while moving
*tactile – feeling things
DEVELOPMENTAL STEPS
Most babies normally progress with the proprioceptive, vestibular, and tactile senses well, developing at a normal rate.
As they reach toddlerhood, they move on to developing auditory and visual skills, the next level on the pyramid.
In their continuing development, they reach the next level, audio visual perception, which is typically developed in preschool and kindergarten years.
After the audio visual perception is developed, the child is ready to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, the next level of the pyramid.
By teenage years, they enter the highest point of the pyramid, abstract thinking skills.
When children have a glitch in one of these areas developmentally, abstract thinking (the top of the pyramid) cannot be attained unless intervention is done.
REVAMPED OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY PROGRAM
After our meeting, I called our OT back home to update her with the news which she was glad to hear.
She was going to use that very recommendation of using all three parts of the program with all her clients.
On our first day back in the OT office, instead of only focusing on texture, she also incorporated activities for vestibular and proprioceptor, as promised.
She also gave me lots of reading material, including a book written by Jean Ayres the pioneer in the topic: Sensory Integration and the Child.
She specifically taught me how to think SI all the time, showing me lots of examples in the clinic.
I devoured all my reading material at home and worked played with the kids.
Then each week in her office she’d play with the kids, teaching us new techniques and answering any questions I had.
Weekly we repeated this process.
No obvious results were noticed until 6 months when we returned to San Antonio for follow-up medical appointments at WHMC and a visit with my parents.
ENCOURAGED BY RESULTS
On our eight hour drive to San Antonio, a bathroom pit stop time arrived, which was always a dreaded moment for my daughter.
Being enormously sensitive to loud noises, my dd hated the toilet flushing in the women’s bathroom. Every time she would cry.
This time however she didn’t react at all to the noise.
She was perfectly calm. Wow!
With elation I reported that to the WHMC OT team at our checkup, and then again to Maj Perry back home. All the OT’s burst into huge smiles!
One of dd’s other fears while a toddler was that she didn’t want to sleep alone in her bedroom anymore.
I kept finding her sleeping on the floor near her brother’s crib.
Finally, I moved her bed into his bedroom, making that the dedicated sleeping room and her old bedroom the dedicated playroom.
Another huge fear for my dd was thunderstorms, especially where we lived in Tornado Alley where major storms were both wicked and frequent.
Tornado sirens sometimes blasted nightly.
She had a picture of an angel guiding a little boy and girl over a bridge that one of my friends had given her when she was born.
I hung it over her bed and showed it to her during storms.
During storms I’d hold her and take her to the picture to talk about it.
But it was after I told the story of Noah with flannelgraph that her fears subsided.
A few years later we moved to San Antonio and bought our first house.
I wanted her to have her own room, but wondered how well that would go over.
She happily chose her own bedroom and there she peacefully slept, never again to feel all alone in there.
ALWAYS LOOKING FOR NEW ACTIVITIES
A pattern I had noticed in our first year of Sensory Integration, was that in time old activities became…old!
Telling Maj Perry that, she taught me to add a new stimulus to old activities, while looking for new ones.
For example, when swinging on the playground no longer seemed effective, I started gently swinging them side by side…or suddenly stopping them…or twisting the swing so they’d twirl in space.
They loved it all!
And of course I taught them and reminded them to hold on tightly.
When my kids were younger, I focused on nature experiences and playgrounds instead of museums.
SeaWorld became a huge favorite that incoportated both nature and the world’s largest playground ever!
Beach and mountain vacations predominated museum experiences.
We will never know exactly when this or that SI activity benefited various inhibitions or the overall path to development. SI cannot be evaluated by a blood test.
At the end of the day I’ve learned that variety, opportunity, and movement are major keys to development, all of which encompassed SI.
DYSPRAXIA DIAGNOSIS
Maj Perry had also very quickly diagnosed my daughter with dyspraxia, which is basically problems with motor planning.
That was an ah-ha moment.
Every thing new my daughter had ever needed to learn, from crawling, to sitting up, to taking her first steps, etc, needed literal step by step guidance.
THE BRAIN’S AMAZING NEUROPLASTICITY
When I first asked Maj Perry what the prognosis was, she had no idea.
Yet over the years I have learned that the neuroplasticity of the brain allows it to adapt and learn new things, even after injury.
That explains why many so many of our activities, learning techniques, unique experiences, good health habits, and home structure worked over the years, which stunned even our vision therapist and team who talk about how movement is vision and that the brain has neuroplasticity.
EPILOGUE 2016
When my daughter began college, we learned that my daughter needed vision therapy, which explained her difficulty with schoolwork, because her eyes did not track well.
