Believing in better for all families
It is the school holidays, you are wearing your shoulders as a hat, your jaw is clenched, your eyes are doing that weird twitchy thing and it is only 10am!
Well done! Consider it a massive win that it is 10am and you are all still alive.
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The Autism Awareness Centre defines Sensory Processing Disorder like this…
Continue readingSPD (formerly called Sensory Integration Disorder) is a condition where the brain and nervous system have trouble processing or integrating stimulus.
SPD is a neurophysiological condition in which sensory input – either from the environment or from one’s body – is poorly detected, or interpreted and (or) to which atypical responses are observed. For a child with SPD, processing the feelings of hot or cold, tired, hungry, lights and sound can be challenging and overwhelming.
SPD can even evoke irregular responses that can cause health issues like not registering temperature in a typical way that allows the individual to dress appropriately for health and safety’s sake. Like with autism, SPD exists on a spectrum and can affect only one sense like hearing, or taste, or all of them. As a parent, the real challenges of SPD are figuring out if your child is hurt, cold, hungry etc…and then helping them get to the point where they can regulate themselves.
With just a few days until the Easter holidays are upon us, my mind has turned to my favourite pastime – how can I occupy my child for the most amount of time but for the least amount of money.
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I cannot work out whether as I get older I am turning into my mother, Hyacinth Bucket or Victor Meldrew. I suspect I am channelling all of them and quite frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.
One of the things that brings out these pedants in me is semantics, defined as the meaning of a word, phrase or text.
In the world of our children and their challenges, there are a myriad words and phrases so loaded that the actual meaning of the words is lost beneath a mountain of inference and vernacular – and if I sound like I have swallowed the Oxford English Dictionary then good – think of this as your claim to intellectual reading for the week!
Ok, so what am I actually getting at? Well I have 5 words or phrases that really get on my t##s (normal service resumed). They irritate me much more than they should and cause Hyacinth and Victor to surface dramatically.
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Because of the complex nature of our young people, it can be difficult to find appropriate educational settings for them. Sometimes they can find themselves out of school due to exclusion. Sometimes a placement move. Sometimes it is the case that parents have felt no choice but to off-roll their young people because their setting ‘doesn’t get them’.
Recently, media has focussed on the number of ‘electively’ home schooled young people with SEND – some of whom, their carers would argue, were certainly NOT at home through choice.
If you are in the situation where you are trying to find and secure a place in an educational setting, there are a number of things you can try.
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Last May I gave up my job of 18 years. I had totally fallen out of love with teaching – not with the actual act of teaching, that is, but with the increasing nonsense and narrow curriculum that went with it. As I have mentioned several times before, I felt I had no choice but to home educate my son, so there was a swift exit, don’t look back!
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Hurrah for half term in Pash Towers!
Last week was a ‘catching up with reality’ week, and it got us thinking about the little strategies we have developed that make a big difference.
Some are attachment related, some sensory and some adoption – so hopefully there might be either something you can use or something you can add. We don’t know about you, but if you can make a difference with the little things, life can run just that tiny bit more smoothly. And if life is running more smoothly, we can save our time and energy for the really important stuff.
So here are some of our top tips and strategies for dealing with some of the everyday sensory triggers our children face, plus a couple of extras on managing tricky adoption related stressors!
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We went to London as a family at the weekend. Ted loves all things London. He has a full wall Underground map in his bedroom. Big Ben bedlinen. A bowler hat light shade.
We’ve been to London before but they were much younger then. We had a great time apart from Ted braining himself on a railing whilst boarding a river cruise.
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The conversation in the car went something like this…
Bob: We are made of water you know.
Miss Minx: We are made of DNA.
B: What’s that?
MM: Erm bones and things and stuff inside!
B: Oh!
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