Sensory Processing Disorder and the Classroom

I began to write about SPD or Sensory Processing Disorder on my facebook page: Challenging Children. Many children in the classroom have difficulty with processing information that comes through the senses. The sensory difficulties which are truly neurological disabilities. The processing problems may be difficulty reading verbal or nonverbal cues. An inability to understand an auditory message. Sensory processing difficulties are the result of a disorganized brain...a child may have difficulty modulating his/her responses and is overly responsive or under resposive. A child may have sensory discrimination problems and misreads touch. Such a child may lash out at anyone who brushes up against him. And so what is a teacher to do about such a child even if the child has been identified. And realize, please that many children with SPD have not been identified. These children need understanding and support and what follows is a list of strategies for the classroom to help such children. And the very good news about these strategies is that they also help every child in your classroom. Children need a safe, calm environment that is free from distraction. Every child needs frequent breaks in the work period to move and to stretch. Every child wishes to know that someone is paying attention. Paying attention to her needs, her strengths and weaknesses, ups and downs and likes and dislikes. Every child needs to feel valued in order to be successful. Children need to know this regardless of their abilities in relation to others. A child needs to know that his ideas are of value and he if valued. And as you can see, if this is how you run your classroom all children can thrive regardless of whether or not they have a sensory processing challenge.

P.E.A.C.E.F.U.L. Parenting

This week 2 of the families/children that I work with have been in some kind of crisis. One foster mother told me that she didn't know if she could continue to foster her daughter because she really didn't feel connected to her and the young girl is disrespectful and oppositional. Later that night the girl wrote a suicide note and said she had anger issues and either needed to die or go back to residential placement. Foster Mom sent child off to school in the morning and later that afternoon, told her that she was going to go to respite care. The girl locked herself in the bathroom and sliced at her wrists with a hair shears and said it was all her fault that the placement wasn't working she had anger issues. The second foster mother asked for her young foster son to be taken somewhere that he could get some help because she feared for the well-being of her family which included her other 3 foster children who are siblings to the boy. He had taken a steak knife to attack his foster sister (bio child of foster mom)because she was annoying him by tapping him in order to get him off the computer for her turn. She fortunately held a pillow up which he proceeded to slash...not poke, but slash. The foster mother wanted him to get help that she felt they were unable (i.e. unequipped) to give to him. She stated that she would have asked for this even if he had been her bio child and also if he had attacked his siblings. Her message was clear...this boy needs help; please get him some help. We are here for him, but right now he can't stay here.

I have been trying to sort out the meaning of these incidences because though both foster parents were asking for "removal" the message from each seemed quite different. The first foster mother is done because she doesn't feel that this young girl is attached to her and she is not connected to the girl. The second foster mother also asked for removal of the child who is clearly a danger to others and to himself. And while sorting all of this out, it became clear that the difference is a love based response as opposed to a fear based reaction. Bryan Post talks about P.E.A.C.E.F.U.L. Parenting and this is parenting that shows Patience, connects through Empathy by providing Acceptance, approaches with Compassion, offers Encouragement, showers with Forgiveness, and seeks to truly Understand; and the thread that runs through it all is Love.

Parental Reaction

And here is another thing that happens when, as parents, we cannot look at what is beneath a child's misbehavior. Yes, it leads us to fear and also to guilt, blame or sometimes, shame. The misbehavior ignites all the negative feelings that a parent is experiencing when their child acts out. And to soothe our own feelings we have to extinguish this misbehavior. And one can get to a place of responding rather than reacting to our children's behaviors if we are mindful or our own reactions. And from this place of mindfulness, we can become response-able rather than reactive. We can parent from a place of love and be with our child in the moment.