Bentley and SPD

In December, Bentley came home from school and pronounced it as the "WORST DAY EVER!

He couldn't jump rope.

He couldn't play on the monkey bars.

He couldn't pump himself on the swings.

"This worst day ever business" was becoming a regular occurrence and I didn't know what to do. But I did know that life as a first grader shouldn't be so hard. And life seemed really hard for him. The number of "I hate yous" scrawled on the stair wall kept increasing and we knew something wasn't right, but we had no idea what.

Chod was out of town at meetings. So I called Deidra and told her our frustration.

We know that Bentley has hardly any muscle (which could be from never eating protein or iron). So she suggested finding exercises for him to do.

I went back dealing with things here and she continued her search for exercises. The next day she called to tell me she thought he might have Sensory Processing Disorder. Most of the sites she found for exercises were occupational therapy sites, which led her in that direction. She then talked to her OT friend that suggested we read The Out of Sync Child.

Chod and I read it, and it seemed like they were describing our child. Suddenly, his quirks were making sense. SPD has 2 spectrums, the sensory avoider and the sensory seeker. Out of the symptoms we read it seemed like exactly half of them were Bentley.

I talked to his teacher, who gave out a huge sigh of relief and started telling me about the tests she had requested, because she couldn't figure out what was going on either, but that he was passing them all.

We ended up finding an OT on campus and we have been working with him for the last 5 months. There have been lots of tests, in fact we are still testing, and have learned that out of the 7 senses (auditory, olfactory, touch, taste, sight, proprioception, and vestibular) Bentley has some to definite dysfunction in all of them.

Which explains that when he is invited over to a friend house he often asks, "Does your house stink? Cause I don't like going to houses that stink." It also explains why he is selective in his foods (texture), why he hates fire drills (the pushing in and out of the building), why he stands in the back of the line (so he isn't bumped into), why heights and open rise stairs freak him out (gravitational insecurity), why he would spin and spin in circles (he did it to regulate his body), why certain music scares him, and why he is so darn stubborn. Kids with SPD have to adapt and find ways to cope because there isn't a cure. Being in control is one of the ways he can ensure he is safe.


It has been a huge relief to have answers to things that we knew just weren't quite right. Bentley falls in the sensory avoider category, and there are still tests to be taken and answers to find, because as the audiologist said, we're still peeling off layers and discovering lots about this guy.

It's a new road we are traveling down and I feel like we've come a long way. He no longer spins, doesn't chew on his sleeves nearly as often, and he ate an entire hamburger a couple weeks ago-his 1st ever!